Heifer Wins Phoenix Award

Heifer International Wins EPA’s Phoenix Award For Its New ‘Green’ World Headquarters
World Hunger Organization Builds Environmentally Innovative Office Building

BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2006 – Heifer International, the world hunger organization that provides livestock to impoverished people in more than 50 countries around the world, today received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 6 Phoenix Award for cleaning up a contaminated industrial site and building a new “green” building on it.

The Heifer International Center at 1World Avenue in Little Rock is adjacent to the Clinton Presidential Library in the River Market area. The Phoenix Awards honor organizations that redevelop contaminated industrial brownfields.

Heifer’s $17.5 million headquarters, built on the site of abandoned rail and trucking facilities, features many “green” elements – recycled and recyclable materials, insulation made from soybeans and cotton, solar lighting and heating for energy efficiency, an innovative parking lot that collects water for a constructed wetlands surrounding the building that cleans and purifies rainwater falling on the site, and a 25,000-gallon municipal water tower that collects water from the roof for flushing toilets and in the building’s supplemental radiant heating system.

The four-story, 94,000-square-foot building is a narrow 62 feet wide at its widest point, so the large windows bring indirect sunlight to every workstation in the building. The building materials include recycled steel and brick, bamboo flooring, recyclable tile carpeting, and raised floors.

Heifer partnered with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in reclaiming the property where it built the center.

The building was honored at an awards ceremony during a national environmental conference, Brownfields 2006, in Boston, Mass. Phoenix Award winners will showcase their projects with case study presentations and exhibits for the more than 7,500 participants.
Erik Swindle, Heifer’s facilities manager, and Eileen Oldag, a development officer, spoke Monday at the conference, describing how Heifer had transformed the polluted site into a clean, healthy environment or its work force in line with its environmental work around the world. Donna Jared, vice president of development, accepted the award for Heifer