Hardwear Sessions

The Ford Plant allowed Mountain Hardwear the opportunity to design a work space that best fulfills our business needs while significantly preventing landfill waste and consumption of raw materials. Many "modern" office buildings have a non-configurable internal construction that would not have worked with our business needs. Thus, we would have, most likely, had to generate a large amount of waste in order to modify the building to our operational needs. Additionally, constructing a new building would have meant using significantly more tons of steel and concrete than were required for the modifications we did make within our space.

Another key sustainable component of our new space is that 100% of our annual electrical needs will be supplied by on-site solar power. The saw tooth roof design is a perfect host for a solar panel array. Our neighbor at the Ford Plant is SunPower. SunPower designs, manufactures and delivers the highest efficiency solar electric technology worldwide. Mountain Hardwear has worked with SunPower and the property developer so that we can purchase enough of the power generated from the 1 megawatt system to cover our total annual electrical needs.

Just because we are "going solar" does not mean that we plan to waste power. The large northern skylights and banks of western and northern windows allowed us to install less fluorescent lighting per square foot than would have been possible elsewhere. The open space lighting that we do have is controlled by photo cells so output is less when there is enough natural light. All the offices and meeting rooms have motion detectors to turn off the lighting when the rooms are not in use.

We have designed a ventilation system that will draw in the cool bay air during the summer months to keep our space cool. It is projected that this will allow us to use less air conditioning than we use today.

We made sustainable decisions from top to bottom in our new space. In addition to our hanging fluorescent lighting, we made sustainable flooring decisions. In many areas, we did not use any floor covering. We cleaned and sealed the existing concrete floor thus significantly reducing our consumption of materials. In our showrooms we used 100% natural, nontoxic, dye free, wool/hemp/cotton, bio-degradable carpeting from Earth Weave Carpet Mills. Our employee store uses compressed bamboo flooring. The recreational room uses flooring tiles made from recycled tires. Our work areas are covered carpet tiles that are recognized as a California Gold Sustainable Carpet Standard.

Office furniture is an essential component to an effective workplace. Mountain Hardwear spent a great deal of time and energy to locate a partner that would provide us with sustainable furnishings for our new work space. We are proud to have partnered with Teknion, which received the 2007 GLOBE Award for Environmental Excellence. All of Teknion's factories are ISO 140001 certified for Environmental Management. We were able to work with Teknion to ensure all of our furniture is PVC free which is an innovation in office furniture. Please do not worry about our existing furniture, we are working with one of the bay area's leading re-use companies, who will be working with us to sell, donate and recycle all of our old furniture.

The Ford Plant will also allow Mountain Hardwear employees to have more fun. Because the building is located right on the San Francisco Bay and the Bay Trail, we will be providing our employees bicycles and kayaks that they can be checked out in order to take a ride along or in the bay. Many of our employees will continue to ride their bikes to work and one or two may even use the on-site kayak launch in order to kayak to work!!!

There is also a shuttle bus free to employees that runs every weekday morning and evening from the Ford Plant to the Richmond BART station.

In addition to the sustainable features of the facility, the employees of Mountain Hardwear will continue their sustainable practices and even implement a few new ones. We have committed ourselves to significantly reducing our use of disposal products such as utensils, plates and cups. Our kitchen areas include dishwashers and will be stocked with plates, glasses and utensils so employees and guests can use and re-use these items. In those cases where we cannot use "re-usable" plates and utensils, we will continue to use products made from compostable and biodegradable raw materials. Employees will continue to separate their trash from their recyclable waste. But, we will now be able to separate waste that is compostable.

Mountain Hardwear prides itself on innovation in product, people and process. Albert Kahn was one of the world's best innovators of places. With our relocation to the Ford Plant, Mountain Hardwear is proud to be headquartered in such an innovative place.