As a certified B Corporation, we are committed to being part of the solution to the climate crisis, the racial justice reckoning taking place in the U.S., and other challenges facing the communities where we live and work. Approaching the halfway point of 2022 gives us the opportunity to measure our progress toward our social and environmental goals and determine where we might need to make adjustments in order to meet or exceed our goals. 

We’re sharing our findings as a way to hold ourselves accountable and to welcome input from our clients, trade partners, vendors and community members who might have resources and suggestions to help us reduce our environmental impact and strengthen our social impact. 

We are honored to have recently been recognized as a 2022 Real Leaders Eco Innovation winner and a B Corp Best of the World Honoree in the “Environment” category for four years running. (Out of 4,000 Certified B Corporations worldwide, Green Hammer is among the top 5% B Corps in the impact area of Environment.)

Carbon Emissions Reduction

As a company, we signed the Architecture 2030 Commitment—a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality in the built environment by 2030. We committed to work toward a 80% reduction in predicted energy use intensity (pEUI) across our entire building portfolio. We’ve achieved this goal for the last four years in a row—and, as of 2021, are one of just 15 firms in the nation meeting that goal. 

During the design process, we make many decisions that impact the overall carbon footprint of a building. When selecting materials, we choose products that minimize embodied carbon, or the sum of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with producing, transporting, installing, maintaining and disposing of building materials. This year, we employed two emerging professionals who helped us deepen our understanding for how we can begin to incorporate this metric into our projects. While we have not set a specific target, we are establishing a framework to make this new metric part of our design build process over the next two years.

Using Passive House principles, we design buildings that are extremely energy efficient. In fact, our buildings typically use 80% less energy than the regional average, and nearly eliminate the average single-family household carbon emissions of 10.5 tons of carbon equivalent annually. We then recommend to clients that they offset the building’s remaining energy needs with on-site solar panels or by investing in off site renewable energy production such as community solar. 

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified Lumber 

At a minimum, 20% of all the wood purchased for each project is FSC-certified. Our goal is to increase the use of sustainably managed wood products at every stage of product selection. We have revamped our tracking and reporting system for all lumber purchases so that we can more accurately compare our spending on FSC-certified lumber to conventional lumber. We also prioritize purchasing lumber harvested from the Pacific Northwest to minimize the carbon emissions from transporting lumber. 

Waste Diversion 

We have always been committed to reducing waste at job sites, and this year, we decided to up our game by setting a goal of 90% waste diversion across all projects. This process required new skills and shifting our mindset when approaching a new project. In an effort to lower hurdles and ensure employees understand how to incorporate waste management into workflows, we revised our company-wide waste management policy and increased training. Each job site now has its own waste management plan to meet our 90% waste diversion goals. 

Hiring Women and BIPOC-Owned Businesses

We are committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff and trade partner network. In 2019, women- and minority-owned businesses (WMOBE) represented 15% of our sub-contracts, and we set a goal to increase that to 25% or more by the end of 2020, and 50% or more by 2025. Establishing all the new business relationships necessary to meet our aggressive goals has proven to be both an enriching and challenging proposition. We have made significant strides against the goals we set in 2019 and still have more work to do. In 2021 22.15% of spending, excluding wages, taxes, and utilities, went to WMOBE companies, a nearly 50% increase from our 2019 numbers.

In response to falling short of our goal, we began investigating ways we could step up our efforts and more actively reach out to trade partners employing people from underrepresented groups. We are actively working with public organizations and nonprofit associations such as Oregon Tradeswomen, National Association of Minority Contractors, Impact Alliance and Partners in Diversity to recruit candidates for job openings and form new trade relationships with firms outside our network. 

JEDI Staff Trainings

Our JEDI team organized a series of all-staff trainings in 2021-22 to increase awareness about the ways in which racism shapes our built environment and ignite discussions about ways we can change historical injustices in housing through our work. One of those trainings, led by historian Zachary Stacks of Oregon Black Pioneers, focused on the history of racism in Portland’s housing market. Our design team also completed a Critical Race Theory in Design training with Amara Perez to better understand and articulate what JEDI means within the context of Portland's built environment and how we can apply a JEDI lens to future projects. 

Local Spending 

We aim to spend 70% of our annual financial output with locally owned companies. “Local” is defined as a company with a headquarters within 50 miles of our office in Northwest Portland. Spending does not include employee wages, taxes, rent or utilities. In 2020, 73% of our total spending occurred with local companies, demonstrating a deep commitment to supporting local businesses. In 2021, due to a remote project location, purchases with local businesses dropped to 65% of total spending.  We expect our 2022 local spending to rebound now that all our work is in the Portland area.

Volunteering

We love spending time together, including in ways that build community and support causes we are passionate about. In the past year, some of us volunteered to pick up trash during an annual Willamette River clean-up, rolled up our sleeves to build a community pergola at Rose Villa Senior Living, gave presentations about green building for school groups and led tours of our projects. 

The Road Ahead 

Setting goals and tracking progress toward our social and environmental goals is a company-wide effort. Our Sustainability and our Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) committees are leading this important work at Green Hammer. If you have ideas or resources, we’d love to hear from you.