NASA Goes Green and Platinum

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The design and construction team is gunning for a LEED Platinum rating.

In keeping with President Obama’s “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance” executive order, we’ve seen a decisive push for greener federal buildings over the past year. It even appears that different agencies are actually vying with each other for the most sustainable buildings—NASA seems absolutely thrilled that the new Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility, at the Kennedy Space Center, will be its greenest facility ever.

The building will be “a future hub for spacecraft fueling support and a storage facility for cryogenic fuel transfer equipment,” so I was expecting suitably fancy, futuristic technology. Instead, the design and construction team is gunning for a LEED Platinum rating with some good old-fashioned methods—recycling and Dumpster diving.

As the building is being constructed, between 90 and 95 percent of the waste generated is either being repurposed on site or sent to local recyclers for processing. But employees from other NASA departments are also rummaging through the Dumpsters and coming up with crazy ideas for re-using what they find. For instance, one employee has decided to put construction waste at the service of the Kennedy Space Center’s protected wildlife—the silt fences, which would normally go into a landfill, will instead be used to guard the burrows of gopher tortoises.

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