Can people be “LEED” certified?

We all know LEED, which stands for Lead­er­ship in Energy and Envi­ron­men­tal Design, as a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process for green build­ings and neigh­bor­hoods.  A per­son can be LEED accred­ited but not, as many peo­ple think, LEED certified.

Being LEED accred­ited doesn’t mean that a per­son is “green” as we might think, but sim­ply that he has the abil­ity to per­form and under­stand the LEED processes in design­ing and plan­ning a build­ings or a neighborhoods.

What if there was a way to become “LEED” certified?

Well, this might actu­ally exist.

Prac­ti­cally Green is a website/system that leads you to become “greener” and have a health­ier and sus­tain­able lifestyle. As the founder, Susan Hunt Stevens, men­tions on her web­site, she was inspired by the LEED rat­ing sys­tem and tried to apply it to peo­ple instead of buildings.

Prac­ti­cally Green has very solid stand­points and goals. As a mat­ter of fact, they men­tion in the web­site that “Going green isn’t just about using less energy, pro­duc­ing less waste, and reduc­ing expo­sure to harm­ful sub­stances (though we’re not com­plain­ing when that hap­pens!); it’s also about clar­i­fy­ing what’s con­fus­ing, offer­ing moti­va­tion, and help­ing peo­ple embrace and even share their new way of life.”

How it works?

The first thing you start doing is giv­ing basic infor­ma­tion about your­self such as where you live, how many adults you live with, or the square footage of your house. After com­plet­ing that step, you can cre­ate or pick “goals.” This is the part that makes this web­site inter­est­ing. For instance, you can decide to recy­cle glass bot­tles or recy­cle alu­minum cans and other met­als, while giv­ing your­self dead­lines. (That might be pretty handy, espe­cially if you tend to pro­cras­ti­nate). Addi­tion­ally, other goals such as “switch­ing to a nat­ural deodor­ant” include why you might want to do it and also some prod­ucts related to the goal in which you are try­ing to pursue.

All of the goals are divided into sec­tions such as Water, Energy, Health and Stuff. The more goals you achieve, the more points you receive, which helps you win badges. The badges are what makes you a “green” per­son, mean­ing that the more badges you get, the prouder you can be about yourself.

If you are look­ing to change your lifestyle and change the way things are done in your com­mu­nity, even though you don’t nec­es­sar­ily know how to become “greener,” Prac­ti­cally Green could be a great tool help­ing you achieve your goals.

Photo cred­its: USBGC, BCWE​.org, Green-salon, Prac­ti­cal­ly­Green