Baumann Consulting is celebrating 10 years of high-performance building solutions. To commemorate a decade of business, we held events in our Washington, D.C., Chicago and Frankfurt offices to celebrate with our coworkers, colleagues, industry leaders and business partners.

All of our events were as sustainable as possible, thanks in large part to working with local composting organizations. At both events, we used compostable plates, napkins, silverware, and cups and encouraged recycling of all bottles and trash generated during our event. This aligns with Baumann’s mission to encourage sustainability not only in our work but also within our office spaces and among our own employees.

In DC, we worked with our regular compost service provider to manage the compostable waste generated at our event. Veteran Compost, a veteran-owned and run business focused on turning food scraps into high-quality organic compost in the Washington, D.C. metro area. We generated 60 pounds of compost in addition to our regular weekly composting efforts, diverting 60 lbs of greenhouse gasses and sequestering 20 lbs in the fields at Whitehall Farm, Virginia. In Chicago, we worked with Healthy Soil Compost. They bicycle year-round and work with a commercial earthworm farm in order to process their compost. We generated around 6 lbs of compostable material, which means we avoided burning 5 gallons of diesel fuel for the waste that would have been diverted to a landfill and means 2 lbs of greenhouse gas will be sequestered.

We also engaged in important conversations about topics related to the green building industry. Presentations on EDGE building certifications and on the optimization of high-efficiency buildings. We also posed questions to our guests in order to spark discussions on the state of the industry, with some interesting results:

• When will net-zero buildings be mandated in DC? Answers ranged from 2020 – 2050, with the median response being the year 2025. We hope to also see this much progress on highly efficient buildings so soon!
• What is the largest source of energy consumption in a building? The overwhelming number of people provided answers related to heating and cooling, including HVAC, heating, chillers, and boilers. More creative responses also included people.
• How much C02 emissions does one tree offset? Answers varied from 1/4 of a ton to 1 ton over to even 21 tons per year. The answer is, of course, dependent on the type, size, and age of a tree. However, an average tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year and can sequester 1 ton of carbon dioxide by the time it reaches 40 years old.

We look forward to what the next 10 years will bring and to many more years of fruitful business, partnership, and discussions.