With a lot of attention being paid to potential global effects of climate change – from the Paris Agreement to the proposed Green New Deal in the US – what comes to mind are polluted cities, record-breaking temperatures, water scarcity and more. The issues sound big, scary and often – unsolvable.
But what if we take a moment to zone in on the micro-environments we are exposed to every day; for example… buildings.
That’s right – the everyday building is a battlefront for a greener planet. So says Harvard Professor Joseph Allen, addressing the crowd at the 2019 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit. Outdoor air pollution penetrates indoors and in reality, the majority of our exposure to outdoor air pollution can actually occur when we are inside a building. Allen explained that we spend 90% of our time indoors which means if we live until we are 80, we’ll have spent 72 years living indoors! That being said, the person who manages your building essentially has a bigger impact on your health than your doctor.
Did you know? An early version of a Harvard Business School study even reveals that an optimized indoor environment positively affects our decision-making abilities.
Udi Meirav, the CEO of a leading company in this space, enVerid, shared at the 2019 Summit that to solve the issue of indoor pollution, typically people would replace the indoor air with outdoor air through air conditioning systems. However, outside air is humid, which is counterproductive to cooling off a building, not to mention the fact that it has outdoor pollutants. His company enVerid creatively rethinks this issue, offering a solution which eliminates the need for outdoor air as a way to maintain indoor air quality. Their product saves 20-40% of the total energy an air conditioner would use, downsizes the air conditioner, as well as provides better air quality. This game-changing technology presents a shift in the way we have been using air conditioning until now.
The company has won “Product of the Year” at the 2019 AHR Expo and continues to make revolutionary advancements in this field. Check out the video below for the full “Ecosphere in Crisis” segment from the 2019 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit.
Dr. Udi Meirav is CEO and Founder of Boston-based enVerid Systems, a technology leader in Air Care, which has developed and commercialized groundbreaking HVAC Load Reduction (HLR®) technology – modular, intelligent scrubbers for indoor air that enable dramatic reduction in HVAC energy consumption and improved indoor air quality in commercial buildings. He founded the company in 2010.
Dr. Joseph G. Allen is an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He began his career conducting forensic health investigations of sick buildings in several hundred buildings across a diverse range of industries, including healthcare, biotechnology, education, commercial office real estate and manufacturing. At Harvard, Dr. Allen directs the Healthy Buildings program where he created ‘The 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building’. He works with Fortune 100 companies on implementing Healthy Building strategies and technologies in their global portfolios and presents internationally on the topic of Healthy Buildings.
