The new Bay Area BOMA Innovative EARTH Awards contest drew more than two dozen commercial building entries, and five winners were announced during BOMA's monthly luncheon at the City Club on Thursday. Here, Levi Strauss' world HQ uses recycled denim (what else?) in walls and ceilings for thermal insulation. Kilroy's 201 3rd sponsored an Earth Week Twitter contest for its tenants to tweet their earth-friendly activities. Another winner was Shorenstein's Russ Building at 235 Montgomery, which provided tenants Modlets to monitor and help reduce energy use (an incentive to do so was free pizza).

Here, the Orrick Building at 405 Howard won for its minimized solar loads by having their janitorial staffs close window shades during the weekends. In addition, Hines' Pleasanton Corporate Commons installed EV charging stations and developed an online tenant cooperation program. There's clearly a need for more stations: between April and this February, the number of plug-in cars in the Bay Area jumped from about 8,900 to 17,000. (That's almost exactly double. Should we be worried that these cars have become sentient and are cloning themselves?)