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EMERALD BLOG

Laura Steinbrink

Ms. Steinbrink has over eleven years of experience leading project teams to discover and implement sustainability goals in business and the built environment. She grew Emerald Built Environments over that time to an internationally-sought after partner to owners and their architects and project teams. Ms. Steinbrink excels at facilitating eco-charrettes and strategy sessions that align the owner’s business and financial objectives with their renovation and new construction projects thereby establishing clear goals and strategies for project delivery. Her experience spans heavy industry to retail, housing, commercial, education, medical facilities and roads and bridges.

Using Calories to Understand The Planet's Health

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you may be familiar with the hack to offset eaten calories with burned calories (exercise) to justify that plate of nachos. Speaking from experience, I’ve noticed the most benefit comes from overall increase in...

Exploring Scope 3 Emissions

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, goes the well-known saying. Since your company’s emissions add up in your customer’s Scope 3 inventory, the lower your emissions, the more treasure you are to your customers. It really is an important area...

This Year's Emerald Gives Winner

Annually, the Emerald team selects one U.S. non-profit organization to support in seeking a sustainable building certification. This program is called Emerald Gives. Started in 2020 as a way for the company to give back, this is an initiative we're...

Are Electric Vehicles Sustainable?

The market for electric vehicles (EVs) is growing worldwide. Auto manufacturers are adapting to the growing demand for sustainable vehicles. Among others, Audi pledged to go all-electric by 2033, and GM will end production of its gas-powered...

Got Water? How Buildings Can Help with the Global Water Crisis

As it stands, the Earth’s freshwater sources are shrinking. The UN projects that if trends continue, the world will face a 40% shortfall in water availability by 2030. According to the World Wildlife Fund, about 1.1 billion people lack access to...

Reimagining What It Means to Deep Six Construction Waste

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the construction industry was responsible for more than 600 million tons of debris in 2018. For reference, that is more than twice the amount of municipal solid waste the country produced that...

The Next Step in Carbon Reduction: Net Zero Waste

As of 2018, the United States produced the most waste in the world, weighing in at 5.6 pounds per capita daily, or over 1 ton annually.The scarier part of this story is that less than 25% of the waste is recycled.

The Push Towards Net Zero Manufacturing

As the calls for proactive action on climate change become increasingly louder, governments and people are noticing the environmental records of the companies and brands they support. For more than a century, environmental degradation was mostly...

Mass Timber Misconceptions

Intro CLE, currently the largest timber-frame building in the United States, is under construction in Cleveland, Ohio. This project is seeking LEED Gold Certification and will feature almost 300 apartments, 36,000 square feet of retail space, and a...