News Sustainable Biz FTCH's James McCarty: LEEDing the world
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James McCarty, Sustainable Programs Manager, Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr & Huber Inc.
Board of Directors, U.S. Green Building Council West Michigan Chapter
Location: FTC&H headquarters
Photo and story: Joe Boomgaard
West Michigan has long been cited as a hub of sustainability knowledge, and some of local professionals have been exporting that expertise to the far corners of the world. Take Jim McCarty, for example. He’s served on a team from West Michigan that’s helped Italian companies set up its own green building council, mirrored off the LEED rating system. Similar requests for expertise have led him to Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Croatia. “They like the LEED standard of our system. It has that cachet to it. And they’ve heard about Grand Rapids as a Mecca of green building. We’re making friends and developing relationships. It’s an opportunity to meet people and we want to keep that going.” An interior designer by training, McCarty believes the LEED system will eventually wind up influencing building codes the world over. “Governments can be slow to pick up on a trend, but we’re not going to wait for government to tell us how to do it. The industry will push it.”
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