Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.0

Inquiry

The proposed Ramapo Sustainability Center at the Ramapo College of New Jersey will be providing a convenient and accessible area to facilitate the buildin?s recycling program. As per the LEED MR Prerequisite, the project will be providing enough area to facilitate the recycling of paper, glass, plastics, and metals. In addition, the project will be composting human waste with composting toilets . Because this project is only approximately 4,300 square feet, the current design does not include the 82 square feet prescribed in the LEED V2.0 Reference Guide (Pg. 171) as the amount of area that has to be dedicated to the storage and collection of recyclables for projects of less than 5,000 square feet. Currently the project has approximately 20 square feet of area dedicated to the storage and collection of recyclables. This will be adequate to handle the amount of recyclable solid waste that will be generated from a facility that includes only two classrooms, a student activity room, a green house, and one small office. This is adequate because the Ramapo College cleaning staff will be collecting the recyclables regularly and storing them in recycling dumpsters that serve the entire campus. The dumpsters are then collected regularly by the contracted recycling service. Because this issue involves a LEED Prerequisite, the design team would like a definitive ruling from the USGBC to determine if the measures as currently designed will meet the requirements for the MR Prerequisite or to determine if additional measures may be necessary.