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Apple provides facts & figures to support “greenest building on the planet” claims

Rendering-Apple-spaceship-campus

After Tim Cook recently claimed at an environmental conference that its new ‘Spaceship’ headquarters would be “the greenest building on the planet,” Apple today provided (via Business Insider) a few illustrative facts and figures to support the claim.

For example, Cupertino law requires that construction sites reuse at least 75% of their demolished materials. Apple says it’s using over 90% of the old headquarters in building the new one.

This includes recycling all of the concrete from its present headquarters to form part of the foundations of the new campus. Trees cleared from the construction site are being turned into lumber for use in the building.

Once completed, Apple says that not only will 100 percent of its energy come from renewable sources (Apple is building a large solar farm at the site), but that the unique design of the structure means it will require far less energy to run than a conventional building.

The new HQ will also save money on heating and cooling. Apple says the building will have natural ventilation for 75% of the year.

While these are just a few snippits, we’re likely to hear more as construction work progresses.

Apple places a high priority on its environmental credentials, hiring former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to oversee environmental issues, building a dedicated microsite for environmental responsibility, releasing an Earth Day video narrated by Tim Cook, and running press ads calling on other companies to follow its example.

The spaceship is on the way: aerial photo shows demolition work on Apple’s Campus 2 site

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Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ headquarters has been a long time in the coming, with Steve Jobs presenting the plans to the Cupertino city council back in 2011, but work has finally begun. KCBS eye-in-the-sky reporter Ron Cervi took the above Instagram photo, showing that demolition work on the site is now underway.

While we heard last month that the demolition phase was starting, this is the first visible evidence we’ve seen. Apple also recently constructed a full-size mockup of one small section of the building in order to test construction methods and enable the company to see how the concrete elements would look in real life … 
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Apple receives full set of building permits for its ‘spaceship’ campus today [Update: video added]

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View of the main campus from the on-site auditorium building

Apple will receive the full set of building permits for its ‘spaceship’ campus in Cupertino today, following a formal approval vote by the full council. This final vote was  just a rubber-stamping exercise, with the go-ahead effectively granted a month ago.

We have a pretty detailed idea of what to expect, thanks to a detailed scale model, project video and series of renders made available by Apple as part of its planning application.

It’s taken the company some time and work to reach this point. The company initially faced objections from local residents on environmental and traffic grounds, prompting CFO Peter Oppenheimer to send out a brochure to local residents to alleviate concerns, and the project is reportedly $2B over-budget. But work can now begin, with completion expected in 2015 or 2016.

You can watch the video of the full council meeting below.