Georgia-Pacific Center Goes on a Diet
At 51 floors tall and approximately 1.1 million square feet in size,
Georgia-Pacific's headquarters
building in downtown Atlanta has a healthy appetite for energy, water and other resources. Recently,
the building cut back on its consumption and earned LEED® Silver certification for existing
buildings from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program establishes a standard for measurement of green building and sustainability. The standard for existing buildings provides benefits to building owners and tenants. In earning the Silver level of certification, GP Center's owners and managers:
- Reduced potable water consumption by 425,000 gallons annually by installing more efficient plumbing fixtures
- Retrofitted parking garage lights to reduce electrical consumption by 60 percent annually
- Diverted 35 percent of ongoing consumables (paper, plastic, glass, metals) from landfills
- Introduced day cleaning, which reduces operation of building lighting by more than 1,000 hours per year
In addition, GP Center is a participant in the Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge, which is part of a national initiative to make commercial buildings more energy efficient. The goal of the Atlanta program is to reduce energy and water consumption in participating buildings by at least 20 percent by 2020.
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