Eating in your Courtyard?

I just read a highly amusing article: “The ultimate ethical meal: a grey squirrel.” I’ve always joked with my dad (who grew up on a farm) about eating squirrels country-style, but never really thought about it as a sustainable food source. Granted, a lot of this comes with the fact that I’m a softie for animals and have a hard time thinking about cute fluffy creatures being ground into food!

Regardless, this article talks about the upswing in the popularity of squirrel meat in England. Squirrel has some good eco-advantages as a meal: It’s free-range, it doesn’t generate a lot of methane, and it’s locally available and quite abundant! Of course, there are plenty of downsides, too (health of the squirrels available, destruction of ecosystems and populations, etc.)

I’m not sure I’m going to try these recipes or recommend them for the corporate cafeteria, but it’s definitely ‘food’ for thought.

Sustainable Mail

I came across this organization and thought it was something to share, because I know everyone is as annoyed as I am with Junk Mail..

http://www.41pounds.org/ stops your junk mail and catalogs — protecting the environment. Junk mail wastes an incredible amount of natural resources and contributes to global warming.

Time — No credit card offers to shred or unwanted catalogs.

Trees — Keep 100+ million trees in forests, cooling the planet.

Water — Protect 28 billion gallons of clean water.

Climate — Junk mail produces more C02 than 2.8 million cars.

Planet — We donate to your favorite charity when you sign up.

Go Check it Out..

Greenville, USA

Green technology is everywhere! A new virtual town "Greenville, USA" was created recently to demonstrate power of technology and energy efficiency.

The tool was created by the Technology CEO Council, a lobbying group made up of CEOs Michael Dell (Dell), Mark Hurd (HP), Samuel Palmisano (IBM), Paul Otellini (Intel), Joe Tucci (EMC), Mike Splinter (Applied Materials), and others.

The graphics are fairy simple, but there are several good nuggets of ways to leverage technology in your home or business. Some interesting tidbits:

• Use thin client - less heat is created by centralized hard drives
• No left hand turns with truck deliveries - minimizes time on the road and carbon emissions
• Consider the new ultra mobile PCs requiring 1/10 power required from first gen PCs
• Real time energy pricing
• Watt meter that measures all electrical devices in the home
• Use cell phone waiting lots at the airport - don't keep driving in circles!

Lots of good intel. We have the technology - now it's time to use it!

Social Responsibility and the Blogosphere

I found a fantastic article called Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in the Blogosphere recently. Required reading for all green bloggers and written by Edelman and First&42nd, it dives into the many issues important to bloggers in general and how social issues fit into the big picture. They came to a number of conclusions, all of which are listed here:

• The majority of CSR and sustainability blog conversations focus on the environment.


• NGOs and companies alike have shown little interest in engaging the blogosphere on CSR issues.


• Traditional NGO campaigns addressing CSR topics do not register among blogs.


• The main CSR influencers in the blogosphere are individuals, not institutions.


• Bloggers are commenting on CSR and sustainability topics – they are not reporting new information.


• The main source of CSR and sustainability information for bloggers is the mainstream media (MSM).


• The blogosphere is open to any institutional voice ready to engage.
  

Fascinating. What caught my attention most was the fact that green blogs (as a whole) tend to take information and comment about it (similar to many political blogs) rather than report real news. Some of the best blogs are really taking on the reporter role: interviewing building owners, sharing new technologies via video and "taking on" companies that appear to be green washing or flashing green bling with no larger green strategy in mind.

The other interesting tidbit was the fact that companies and NGOs have not caught on to the power of these thousands of individual reporters and their networked relationship to each other. In some ways, having bloggers separate from companies makes their reporting more credible / third-party, but individual bloggers need really deep pockets to investigate issues that companies and NGOs are more easily able to address.

I can't tell exactly, but it looks like this article was written in late 2006. I feel confident that some of what they suggest has changed, but it's good intel regardless.

Green Buildings Pay

I was recently introduced to a CoStar report that got me very excited. http://www.costar.com/partners/costar-green-study.pdf It compares LEED certified and Energy Star buildings against those that are not across the US real estate market. The results of the study are astounding... they show that green buildings achieve higher rents, higher occupancy, have lower operating costs and achieve higer prices per square foot. Now what developer or building owner in their right might would choose anything but a green building!

That said, it turns out that one of my esteemed colleagues used this study in a recent presentation to pension real estate leaders and they were not so happy with the methodology used. They felt the analysis was not consistent in grouping unlike buildings together and the conclusions should not be drawn across all regions.

They did provide her with a bunch of additional articles that had similar findings. Here's a excerpt from a UBS study, How Will Green Construction Affect REITs?, they liked.

According to a survey done by McGraw-Hill, there is a 2% higher initial cost to go green, but over the long run, the benefits will outweigh the initial higher construction costs. These benefits include:

Operating costs: Average expected decrease of operating costs between 8% and 9% across the industry.

Building values: Average increase in values expected around 7.5%.

Return on investment (ROI): Average ROI expected to improve 6.6%.

Occupancy ratio: Occupancy rate expected to increase by 3.5%.

Rent ratio: On average, rents expected to increase by 3%.

Please comment and share other good studies you've found.

Showering.....to save the planet

One of the benefits of working at an architecture firm is occasionally getting to try out some new products to see if they are something that we might recommend to a client.  Whether it is carpet tile, wall finish material, or furniture, it is always fun and makes you think really critically about the products and their application.  Just this week, I had a chance to try out something really exciting.....a new shower head.  I'm not kidding, I was actually really excited.  I had an old shower head that used to just spit water out at an alarming rate....so fast in fact, that I would always run out of hot water in about 2 minutes.  In the midst of studying hard for my LEED exam, I realized that 340 billion gallons of water are withdrawn everyday for our use.  My new Oxygenics shower head is quite an improvement in many ways.  I've found that my water pressure has increased, I have a much better looking shower, the oxygen content in the water has increased drastically (better for your skin), and I have been saving a ton of water! 

It only uses a maximum of 1.9 gallons per minute.  (Just for clarification, I have no relationship with Oxygenics).  There are a lot of manufacturers that make great water efficient fixtures.  While they may be a slightly higher initial investment, the payback is typically very quick. Check the calculator on the Oxygenics website ( http://www.oxygenics.com/).   So if you are considering putting some new showers in your home or office consider one of these low flow fixtures.           

Climate Counts is Cool

I heard about this tool from a fellow tree-hugger: Climate Counts is a nonprofit organization that ranks companies based on their environmental track record. It’s a very cool site – I’ve been playing around on it this morning and found out that some of my favorite companies are doing really well and others could use some improvement.

For more information, check out their press release:

Climate Counting More with Consumer Companies
84% of Companies Show Improvement in 2nd Climate Counts Company Scorecard
Transparency is Critical to Consumers
(May 7th, 2008) Climate Counts' second annual Company Scorecard shows scored companies making climate improvements across most industry sectors. 84 percent of the scored companies —among them some of the world's largest -- made improvements in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and to make information about those actions actions easily accessible to consumers. The Scorecard, first released in June 2007, scores 56 major corporations in well-known consumer sectors – from apparel to electronics to fast food – on their commitment to reversing climate change.

"Business is being pushed by consumers to do their part to solve the climate crisis," said Gary Hirshberg, chair of Climate Counts and CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm. "The Scorecard allows consumers to make good climate decisions in their everyday purchases,and it's having an impact."

Google, Anheuser-Busch and Levi Strauss had the largest score improvement among those scores, each jumping over 20 points. Improvement was broad however, with the average company score improving 22 percent over last year. Nike passed last year's high scorer, Canon, to as the top scored company.
"Company transparency is critical to allowing consumers to make good decisions," said Wood Turner, Project Director. "The time for companies to just say 'trust us, we're good on climate' has passed, consumers want to see the proof behind the green claims. They want to know it's not just marketing talk, but real substantive action."

It wasn't all good climate news. Five companies scored one or zero points: Jones Apparel Group; and four companies from the Food Services sector, Burger King, Darden Restaurants (which owns popular restaurants Red Lobster and Olive Garden), Yum! Brands (parent to Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) and Wendy's. The Food Services sector has the lowest average (11.5 out of 100) of any of the eight sectors measured with smallest overall improvement. There were a total of ten companies – down from 18 last year – scoring in the lowest tier of companies, or under 12 points overall.

"We're excited by the level of interest in the Scorecard by both consumers and business," said Turner. "In order to expand our reach and applicability, we'll be expanding the number of companies we monitor later this year."

The companies were scored on a scale from one to 100, based on 22 criteria that fall within four benchmarks: whether they measure their carbon footprint; what efforts they have made to reduce their own climate impact; whether they support or oppose global-warming legislation; and what they disclose to the public about their work to address climate change. Consumers can review all the company scores and download a pocket-sized shopping guide at http://www.climatecounts.org/. Consumers will also be able to look up companies' rankings by texting "cc company name" (for example, "cc Nike") to 30644 from their cell phones so they can make climate-friendly consumer decisions while they shop. An expansion of Climate Counts' mobile phone activism program is planned for later this summer.

Give Yourself a Lift

Many of you may live or work in a building that has an elevator…or at least you’ve ridden in one at least once in your lifetime. This is particularly true if you live in a dense urban environment….which is great – yay density! That said, as you might suspect, elevators take energy to function, thereby increasing a building’s carbon footprint.

Many elevator manufacturers are developing energy efficient elevators and technologies to retrofit existing elevators. Instead of even attempting to pretend I am an elevator expert, here are a few links to articles about “green” elevators:

• Green Building Insider
• Archi-Tech
• Buildings.com
• McGraw Hill Construction

In the case that your building has an older energy hog elevator (or even if it has a new, energy-efficient model), here are a few things you can do to help reduce its impact:

• Group your trips – instead of going up and down multiple times per day, try to consolidate your trips into just a few (get coffee and go to the bank on the same trip) – it will save both time and energy.
• Hold the door for the person running toward you – it will only cost you a few seconds, make that person very happy, and may save an elevator trip.
• Take the stairs – it's good for your glutes as well as the environment.

Image source: Flickr

Demographics and Sustainability

One of the most interesting sessions I attended at the APA Conference was “America at One Billion” – given by Robert Lang and Arthur C. Nelson (“Chris”) from Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute.

This presentation discussed the possibility/probability of America reaching a population of one billion. The presenters agreed that it is quite likely that we will reach 1/2 billion by mid-century (America rolled 300 million in October 2006), and that one billion is not an unreasonable guesstimate for the turn of the century. According to the speakers, this gives the US a growth rate of 1 to 1.5% per year, and faster growth in sheer numbers than any country other than India or Pakistan.

The growth will come from a high birth rate (the speakers estimate approximately 2.12 children per woman of childbearing age), longevity (average lifespan of 79 years) and high rates of legal immigration (nearly ¾ of which is relatives of existing legal residents).

So what does this mean for the environment? Will our carbon footprint increase in direct proportion to population growth? The speakers argued no: The US is very well prepared and trends are pointing toward greater use of sustainable principles. Lang suggested that innovation will get us out of the ‘oil age’: “The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.”

One of the many suggestions of the presentation was to think about redevelopment of existing sites rather than continued expansion into greenfields. Mr. Lang suggested that existing parking lots presented a tremendous redevelopment opportunity: they are large, flat and drained; there is infrastructure already in place, they are already zoned and used for non-residential purposes; they are accessible; and, many are transit-ready.

To view the presentations, check out the MI website (they are not up yet, but there are a number of other interesting presentations available): http://www.mi.vt.edu/web/page/957/sectionid/569/pagelevel/2/interior.asp

Image source: PeopleJam

Green Cleaning Products (from BGTV)