SYRACUSE — It’s been just over two years since Destiny USA received Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, but the giant retail center’s environmental efforts are far from finished. In fact, those initiatives will expand beyond the walls of the mall and reach out further […]
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In fact, those initiatives will expand beyond the walls of the mall and reach out further into the community this year, says Lauren Staniec, sustainability coordinator at Destiny USA.
It was 2012 when Destiny received its LEED gold certification for the core and shell building that houses all the mall’s various tenants. Efforts to obtain that certification included using biodiesel fuel on the construction site, deploying recycled construction materials and low-emission products, implementing a construction waste-management program, and even installing a rainwater-harvesting system. The collected water is used for flushing toilets and irrigation and has resulted in a 40 percent reduction in water usage, Staniec says. Through all its efforts, Destiny has reduced its carbon footprint by 129,524 metric ton carbon-dioxide equivalents — equal to the emissions from burning 748 railcars worth of coal.
Along with emissions reductions, the end result of that effort was the LEED certification, making Destiny the largest retail facility in the world with that designation, Staniec says. More importantly, that effort set the stage for the next phases of environmental initiatives at the mall.
Through 2013 and 2014, the main focus shifted toward tenants and helping them attain LEED certification, Staniec says. The first step in that goal was an internal re-education process because the previous way of doing business and writing leases wasn’t going to work, she says. These days it is a lease requirement that facilities are built to the minimum LEED certification requirements.
To make that requirement easier to meet, tenants can earn 27 pre-approved points on the LEED scale just from being located in Destiny USA, meaning tenants only need to achieve 13 more points in order to hit the required 40 points for LEED certification.
“We knew that in order to do this, to be successful, we had to make it as simple as possible so people would be inclined to participate,” Staniec says.
To date, Destiny has 60 LEED-certified tenants: 30 certified spaces, 25 silver spaces, four gold spaces, and one LEED platinum space.
“It’s been amazing,” Staniec says of the response to the LEED requirement. While tenants’ utilities are metered separately, she says tenants have indicated savings of 25 percent or more on lighting.
Additionally, several tenants have indicated they will take the things they have learned at their Destiny location and implement them at other locations. “They’re taking away the things they’ve seen to be successful,” Staniec says.
As it continues to assist retailers with their LEED certification, Destiny will push its efforts this year to reach further out into the community and beyond, Staniec says.
Eco-tourism will be a hot topic for Destiny this year, she says. In fact, Syracuse in general is becoming a hotbed of eco-tourism activity. Destiny will work with tourists requesting sustainability tours during their travels.
“We have so much going on in this area,” she says, giving credit to the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency (OCRRA) for making it easier to be environmentally friendly.
“They make recycling and composting effortless,” Staniec says. Destiny works with OCRRA to compost food waste and composted roughly 260 tons of pre-consumer food waste in 2014. This year, two tenants have expanded into post-consumer food-waste recycling, she says.
To expand its efforts even further into the community, Destiny is planning its fifth Earth Day event including an electronics-recycling collection. This year, the event will feature a vendor showcase of businesses and organizations within the community that help promote recycling and reuse of items instead of just throwing things away, Staniec says. That includes the Salvation Army, where people can donate items they no longer want instead of tossing them in the trash, and the Rescue Mission, which has already created two full-time jobs around the collection of returnable bottles and cans at Destiny, Staniec says.
“We’re looking to develop more of those [synergies] going forward,” she says.