Is green the new color of PAR?

My daughter just turned 4. She’s VERY verbal and has just entered a really cool stage where if she hears us use an unfamiliar word she’ll ask us what it means.

The other night I was describing some features of the (awesome!) new PAR office to my wife when my daughter piped up and asked “What does ‘green’ mean, Daddy?” After an explanation that seemed appropriate for a four-year-old (it involved air, grass, rivers and Kermit the Frog), I told her about a few of the things that make our new building more environmentally-friendly.

• Rather than building new, the space itself is reused. And we have some space left over, if anyone is interested.
• There’s a TON of natural light in the building fromsix skylights and a strip of windows that circles the exterior. Aside from being better for our eyes, we needfewer overhead light fixtures.And most of the offices on theoutside wall have internal windows that let light flow through the offices to the interior parts of the building.
• Motion sensors in all the offices and some other areas make sure the lights aren’t on when we aren’t there.
• Filtered cold water in the kitchen instead of bottled water.
• There may be as many as 20 HVAC zones throughout the building (haven’t gotten the full training session on what they are, so I’m not totally sure). Hope my neighbors like my temperature settings!
• The men’s room has water-free urinalsand both restrooms utilize dual-flush flushometers on the commodes.(Side note: I’m weirdly enthralled with the word “flushometer.” And can you believe it doesn’t show up in Wikipedia?) (Side note #2: For those staff members who didn’t think I’d look it up, the small flush uses 1.1 gpf; the bigger flush is 1.6 gpf.)
• And best of all, the whole staff was recycled instead of buying new.

I’m sure there are lots more things to cover, but I’ll leave that up to somebody else to chronicle.