LD_74_DavidGottfried_Interview.mp3

Harry: So now I’m speaking with David Gottfried who was the original founder of the US Green Building Council and has a new book out called Explosion Green. First of all, welcome David and thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

David: Thanks Harry, it’s great to be here with you.

Harry: Yes. Now a lot of people who listen to the podcasts and read the blogs are probably not aware that my original career is as a green building or a green real estate developer. And I got into green building through a historic renovation project that I started eleven years ago and became something of a specialist in green building materials and my first book that ever was published was called “A Bleed Materials and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,” the most widely recognized green buildings and it was created by the US Green Building Council which means that it was created by David. And the reason that this is relevant to my listeners and to me and to everything is that the built environment has so much to do with our productivity and efficiency in our health that its absolutely essential and it is something I really have uncovered and so forth, so with that bit of a preamble I want to turn over to you David a little bit. How did you get into green building?

David: I studied solar engineering in college and fell in love. I learned that we do have a sun and the sun can produce energy and daylight and we could also open windows and have natural ventilation but that professor at Stanford really woke us up, he taught us about the world and that there are vital signs of earth and 30 years ago talked about climate change and the impact of population growth and that we could make our homes and buildings more efficient and we could also use the sun to create clean energy and he woke me up and even today we are friends and I am lecturing there and he just thought that there is a world here and beyond what most people are talking about and there is also a health impact.

Right, okay. So what a lot of people don't realize I think that are not are not familiar with how green buildings are done is that yes it's nice to have sustainable materials, it's of course nice to have no VOCs which is, for people who don't know - Volatile Organic Compounds which is the famous new car smell but it ended with pain surged he says I'm and sustainable wood bamboo and you know carpet and windows that are very efficient and I geek out on all that and I think that's important but what I think a lot of people don't realize is that the health and happiness of the users have the space is what is often neglected in the way buildings are designed.

David: Yes, most of us take our homes for granted, we buy them, we move in, we have that new cart smell which is not healthy for us, the paints for example they put in biocide and fungicide for shelf life of that paint so that in a year or two after you painted your walls it still looks the same color but that stuff is the toxicity and you don’t want it in the paint so you want to go for those no VOCs no toxicity. It’s also in the furnishings that we are buying those cheep press boards that have non solid wood inside the particles of wood perhaps held together with binders and those make some people sick as well. Carpeting in offices you don’t need the glue anymore. And we need to look at all those

items because it greatly impacts our health and whether we want to be in this space. We are of nature and most of the homes we built don’t allow nature inside, whether its plant material or just day lighting and then you can barely look out the window to see what kind of day it is and link up with our circadian rhythms. The more daylight we have it has been proven kids mass cores are higher and even in Wal-Mart they sell more products in the sections that have sky light over it,

Harry: That's funny. I hope they weren't selling VOC ceiling paint in that section. So there is two sides to it and this is what I really wanted to dig in with you just you just touched on them but on one side there's the avoiding the toxicity issue so creating a clean environment but on the other side those are things that actually do enhance your productivity and your health and happiness such as that access to light. So let's just talk more about that, that's what I think is going to so interesting to everybody who are listening.

David: Well, the air quality impacts your health and productivity hugely. There is a whole field in green building and as you know Harry, that looks at indoor environmental quality and the air is the biggest component so the contribution of all those products and materials combined as well as the activity you are doing. So often a lack in ability and see somebody working with a strong adhesive or the brass cleaner or even walking on the street I can tell that they had a repair man who didn’t care about VOCs. If it smells strongly you need to pay attention. A good friend of ours Dr. Pedrom _______(5:41 – unclear) says that’s the cancer smell and you got to get it out but at the same time day lighting is hugely important you don’t want to have that casino impact where you can’t have any relationship with the sun, you want to have control over your daylight. You don’t have the hot western sum just beating up on your window and overheating you. If you have overhangs that would be great or good window blinds or even an efficient windows that keeps that out the shading coat efficient as long as letting that daylight penetrate into the space if you are designing a new office building. It’s better to have a skinny longer building so that everyone inside has access to the light

Harry: And beyond the access too is the idea of control so one of the elements of the lead rating system is that people want to have controllability over their temperature and their lighting.

David: Yes and most of the time we don’t. You have one little thermostat on a whole floor that might be ten thousand square feet in an older building. It drives us nuts or when you are super high you can’t open the window so operable windows are really important, small thermostat that have a sense of temperature and different zones and your ability to control the temperature where you are sitting. that’s really important, even in the home we are seeing smart thermostat and that’s probably the coolest one that google just bought three months ago for $300M and its got artificial intelligence in it, it links to your Wifi, it has occupancy sensors, your patterns and it lures, so collecting the data and then controlling your space, your environment to your patterns of life as well as your health and productivity. Its really important when somebody knows about the real time pricing of power so you can power, it’s the summer and it’s hot and everybody is running air

conditioning that’s the peak period. There is also the period when we can have the black out

Harry: Right, of course. Actually, my local power company where I live has a thing where they will put in thermostat, not nests unfortunately. I have seven nests in my household. They will put in what they call smart thermostats for you and that allows you to control them remotely but to do that they will do it for free but the agreement that you make is that in the event that they need to they can raise your air temperature by five degrees or something like that in the event that they need to. And you can override it if you want but of course if you're not there you not necessarily going to care and those few degrees can make a huge difference.

David: And then they will pay you for that so you are the power plan of the future for them. And the new power plants were built because of the peak capacity which is exactly at that time you are describing so if 20% of the people just raise their thermostat a few degrees they don’t need the next power plant so they will pay you for that demand size management.

Harry: Right, exactly and I want to go back to thermostat difference for a second, I love the Nest I think they're amazing and this week actually I'm sure you saw this where Google introduced the works with Nest API so now you can have so many things interacting with your Nest thermostat including one of my favorite web sites which is IFTTT so you can get alerts if temperature goes above a certain temperature and in the same regard if you enter a certain area with your iPhone whether it's your office or near your home you can have a thermostat adjust for that as well. But in the studies that I've saw when I was originally looking a lot of late stuff, they even showed that just putting a thermostat with somebody to control it or being able to control even if it didn't actually control the thermostat just that psychological element of feeling some control over their environment was effective as well.

David: Well, I have seen beyond this with building control systems, there is a new one that is call building robotics, its more in the office arena but using phone people can vote on whether they are comfortable or not in different areas and if aggregates those votes and adjusts based on comfort. It gives everyone a voice through their phone. It also through the phone knows where you are in the building using the GPS and so sensor technology is starting to come into our lives in so many ways some of where these…..I have a up by jaw bones, others have Nike feel band and that measures your steps. It also measures your sleep and then the up measures your light sleep versus your deep sleep and how many times you woke up at nights and then it measures you against your own data to see how you are doing with yourself as a baseline as well as the general people who they are collecting information from. So it might say you are in the top percent of sleep or you are significantly behind your average and you started to collect the data and so many interesting areas and then based on that you can boost your performance. It also got a little bit of a big brother element which is a whole other discussion

Harry: Right. Let's talk a little bit. I've been curious to hear your thoughts.

David: Well and even with Google, why did Google buy Nest and pay $300M and now they are coming out with other systems. Nest is in you home, its collecting data, the office is getting data on how you sleep, how you walk and all with the clock competing and we are now able to collect so many realms of data and then compare it and learn patterns. But that data can be sold for a ton of money to people once they know more about you. We see it all over the internet with everything we do and the cookies, that’s the valuable part of this social media, it’s the data. And we are not really aware of what are they doing with our data and then soon they are getting ads and ads that are reflecting things that you have done or websites you surfed even with the app if you are sleeping poorly maybe you are getting ads for better beds and different pillows and certain potions that allow you to sleep better, maybe you are getting invited to the sleep disorder clinic and soon the local sleep therapy person is calling you. So how far does that go? It’s a big debate on the advisory board for when firms have privacy based software social media and their whole thing is we’ve got all those tools of LinkedIn and Facebook but we don’t sell the data. And even if you want adds to be pushed to you, you have to opt in that you want them and the site is free if you want ads and if you don’t want the ads you would pay money but in time you would be able to request certain types of ads that are acceptable put in front of you so you can control you ads and that’s a whole new idea that they have invited. So it’s certainly privacy issues that’s the big global debate because you getting into a spying and I don’t know that we are all aware of how much data they are gathering and then how rich it is in terms of profitability for those firms and where are those lines of privacy and this privacy debate is happening on Capital Hill. I am a big fan of data because I believe without collecting the data whether it’s your weight, your blood pressure, how much gluten you put in your body, whether servings should weigh, certainly measuring your sugar, your cortisone, all those hormones that my wife gets into. It’s very important and then getting those alarms when you are hitting the red zone, that wakes you up. And we need that because we are focused on other things.

But in terms of it being sold and then ads come in based on my behavior without my permission I think we headed into the 1984 big brother stuff.

Harry: Yes and I agree to some extent. Oh and I agree actually I agree actually but for me, it's more of an issue that they're collecting the data and not allowing you to access your own data in a lot of cases. So that that to me is part of a bigger problem in some ways because at least if you know what they're collecting and you can access it that would be something useful that you can then do with it, but a lot of times they somehow make it so that the information that you have provided to them then becomes their proprietary information. But also you mentioned your wife and I should feel like I would be very remiss if I didn't point out that David is married to the wonderful and very informative Dr. Sarah Gottfried who I have interviewed before and she has a wealth of knowledge on hormones and endocrine disruptors which really does relate to green building and everything that we do and so Sarah is awesome and I think it is an interesting combo for you guys that she is sort of the healthy body and you are the healthy environment and that melds together very well as far as I can see.

David: Well you are right. Together we become triple bottom line. I have the academy and the environment and she has the social health side and even my comments about what you are hearing here today comes from living with her and trying to integrate in people’s bodies, hormones with green building and they all merge in the field of health as you know not just with our bodies or health for the building or the impact of the building on health but health of the planner.

Harry: So let’s have a look at the book a little bit. So why explosion green, why now, you have been doing this for twenty years so what prompted the book?

David: So the book was pre-released in November at the 20th anniversary of the US Green Building Council and I felt it important it was a memory to tell our story of how did we come together? Why? And how did we build perhaps the greatest environmental NGO ever in terms of climate change mitigation, resource, depletion issues. We now have about 260 staff just in DC for the USGBC and then we have 99 more countries and lead ended up in 140 countries about 11 billion square feet, 300 thousand projects and create a whole industry. The Gra Hill, rate screen building, the US for 2016 a 200 billion and that’s the US not hitting the other countries. I wanted to tell the story. I wanted to step back and look over 20 years what were our ingredients and the tool kit for transformation. How do we take this seven trillion dollars world’s largest industry and get everyone at the table. How do we get hundreds of governmental agencies to use lead and crix carrots on sticks (I like the carrot of tax credits), and get millions of people to create a new movement and one that’s built on capitalistic principles that you can make more money through green not just the liability side of environmental impact but more that this is the future of growth and the economy. And then there is a theme throughout it more about self reflection, self deprecation, of what is our journey, what is our purpose and mission here on earth and reflecting through the character in the book who tells the story of what happens to David who is me

Harry: So and where do you see the - another green movement per se but lead has evolved I think there is like six or seven version at this point and what direction do you see it going?

David: Version 4 just came out and C but we have many other products beyond construction but with our latest versions USGBC is starting to look at the product and health product declarations we call them HPDs, its moving towards that zero and looking at that in the future, it’s looking more at the real time data and not just when you designed it or the design intent but did you collect the data and how is doing, focusing more on what we call ______(20:00) that which you designed is actually what you got and that you are tweaking it all the time to have continuous improvement to achieve the goals that you have and its moving more into health and productivity and that occupies more than just someone who needs daylight of getting the VOCs out but they need to have comfort and that individual control that we talked about. So those are some highlights. We are also going to move from the L in Leader stands for Leadership and initially we pegged that the only homes that could qualify were at the top 25 percent but what about the other 75 percent of the homes and buildings that not certified and it is not that we have

25% of the market but those are the ones that could qualify and then there are the big fat buildings, I call them the clunker homes and buildings. They are the 500 pounds buildings. How do we get them into the game? And the USGBC is taking a look at that as well.

Harry: Great Harry. I'm really interesting to sort of see where it goes. So the last question I really love to ask people on the podcast is from anything that you do or done and you had the knowledge you gained from Sarah and from your life and for everything that you do, what are your sort of top three personal tips for being more effective in what you do?

David: And you are hitting a lot of this in your last doing which I like. I think a big part of your message is intention ____(21:48 - unclear), you got a look of what you put into your mouth, you got a look at how you move your body and you need to look at what you are thinking and start controlling and taking charge of those things you can do first and the same is true in our homes and our buildings. So we need to look at the water and the waste and the purchase decisions as well and then combining this personal health with the building. I always way say who is in the green building. So I am looking at that Harry. I have invented something and it is something called the life balance sheet which is personal life green rating tool and it takes your personal assets minus your personal liabilities and calculate your self-worth. Using a balance sheet we calculate net worth looking at self worth which gets into how are you doing in this journey of your life and what impact are you leaving here on earth and what stewardship seeds you are planting so there is a good legacy that’s actually healing earth here when you are gone. But one thing that obsesses me is that we have all these beautiful technologies now in terms of knowledge and thousands of practitioners who can make our bodies healthy, our buildings healthy. Yet we are not all living with intentionality we are not all waking up and why is that. And so I have been hanging out with some of Sarah’s friends and neuron science and try to learn more about the brain and I call it regent brain because I believe our survival wiring of the past caveman years kept us alive and warns us about the tiger and if you are freezing you die or if you don’t have food came over. But you don’t need that when you have old foods in a safe way. You know you don’t have to go down the aisle with your spear and your dagger. No one is trying to kill in old foods and you can take this stuff off the shelf. And yet probably if you are dying and someone cut you off and took the last organic gluten food bag off the shelf you probably want to kill him and so you are grabbing for the organics but you don’t have an organic mind, I would say a clean brain and so I am curious with the advent of placidity. Can we lay a new neuron network that creates the survival wiring of the 21st and 22nd century? And how can we invent apps that reprogram our brain so we care about nature, other people here, that we are more humane and our homes and so far we just had one big home. So that’s my new obsession.

Harry: And I think that’s a pretty good thing to be obsessed about. So David, thank you so much. We are going to have everything, all your stuff in the show, but where's the best place that we can find out more about you, the book, everything.

David: I have a website at www.explosiongreen.com and you can go there and learn about the book, there is a opt in for a free conference that I am doing in September. I call it

Explosion Green Life. I interviewed 40 of the people who are the most influential in the work in sustainability and green-ability and the week of September 15 it is free so you can sign up at www.explosiongreen.com and get into the scheme. The one thing I want to mention is that I made some show notes on your last show when you were talking about regenerating your immune system and this is about really regenerating the immune system for earth as well as ourselves so it all ties in together. So it’s fun to be here with you and look at putting an overlay of last doings on our homes and our buildings and you can boost health and productivity by leaning in the weights and the inputs and getting a higher yield.

Harry: Absolutely. Well David, thank you so much that was a very different kind of conversation from the past one that I actually didn’t want to have, so thank you for your time.

David: Thanks for having me and the great work you are doing, the important message and tools you putting out into the world.

Harry: Thank you.