CITY OF INDUSTRY, CALIF.—Bentley Prince Street’s California mill has become the first carpet manufacturing facility in the country to receive a silver rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB), company President Anthony Minite announced. The mill is also the first manufacturing facility of any kind to be certified under LEED-EB v2.0.
“Certifying our building under LEED-EB is an important part of our sustainability mission on a number of levels,” Minite said. “Not only is it in line with our mission to eliminate any negative impact our company may have on the environment by 2020, it’s also a way we can influence others to take action. We believe we have a responsibility to demonstrate that the perceptions of what types of facilities can—and should—be LEED certified need to be expanded to the manufacturing sector. We hope our LEED-EB certification will encourage other manufacturers to follow our lead and attempt to do the same.”
As the largest commercial carpet manufacturer in California, Bentley Prince Street produces and ships more than 7 million yards of carpet each year at its 280,000-square-foot facility. With the industry’s most comprehensive vertical carpet manufacturing facility, it can closely coordinate product development and manufacturing, and exercise quality control over all aspects of production to ensure sustainable manufacturing.
Innovation Credits Earned
In the certification, Bentley Prince Street received Innovation credits for exceptional performance above LEED requirements in a number of areas, including:
• An environmentally preferable purchasing policy with 95 percent of purchases meeting sustainability criteria and 100 percent being IAQ compliant;
• An on-site waste diversion program that recycles office and manufacturing waste, with 95 percent of all waste, and 100 percent of construction waste, diverted from landfill;
• Comprehensive sustainability education programs for employees, customers, suppliers and community partners; and
• Detailed emission reporting methods as a charter member of the California Climate Action Registry where it has been certifying greenhouse gas emissions since 2002.
Other key facility environmental highlights of the facility include:
• 100 percent of Bentley Prince Street’s electrical energy requirements are renewable;
• The company utilizes one of the first privately funded photovoltaic solar arrays in the industry to provide a portion of electrical energy for manufacturing processes;
• Waste sent to landfill has been reduced by 95 percent;
• Absolute GHG emissions have been reduced by 75 percent;
• Water intake has been reduced by 71 percent; and
• Overall energy use has been reduced by 57 percent.
Go to USGBC and Bentley Prince Street.
