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DRAFT value of design options are assessed as investments. LCA is an inclusive approach to costing a program, facility, or group of facilities that encompasses planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance over the useful life of a facility as well as any decommissioning or disassembly costs. The goal of LCA is to achieve the highest, most cost-effective environmental performance possible over the life of the project. When integrated design and life cycle assessment are combined, better and more affordable development strategies emerge. The LEED Green Building Rating SystemTM The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. Members of the U.S. Green Building Council representing all segments of the building industry developed LEED and continue to contribute to its evolution. The City of Eugene has been an active member of the USGBC since 2000. LEEDTM is an independent, third-party certification system created to: · define "green building" by establishing a common standard of measurement · promote integrated, whole-building design practices · recognize environmental leadership in the building industry · stimulate green competition · raise consumer awareness of green building benefits · transform the building market LEED provides a complete framework for assessing building performance and meeting sustainability goals. Based on well-founded scientific standards, LEED emphasizes state of the art strategies for sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality. (www.usgbc.org/LEED) For issues beyond or outside the scope of LEED, The Natural Step (TNS) Framework provides a broad philosophical framework for understanding and implementing sustainable practices. TNS is a scientific and systems-based approach to organizational planning for sustainability that outlines a set of four fundamental principles-called system conditions-defining a sustainable society. The TNS Framework "...helps individuals and organizations address key environmental issues from a systems perspective, reduce the use of natural resources, develop new technologies, and facilitate better communications among employees and members. It gives people a common language and guiding principles to help change existing practices and decrease their impact on the environment. The system conditions have been used as a shared mental model for problem solving, for the development of consensus documents . . . , to structure institutional scientific work at universities, in course curricula for the teaching of students, and by businesses, municipalities, and other organizations as an instrument for strategic planning towards sustainability." (~vw. naturalstep, org) The Natural Step Framework asserts that, in the sustainable society: 1. Nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth's crust. In other words, waste must not systematically accumulate. In practical terms, this means substituting certain minerals that are scarce in nature with others that are more abundant, using all mined materials efficiently, and systematically reducing dependence on fossil fuels. 2. Nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances produced by DRAFT