2015 March-April

Turning Adversity into Opportunity: Ghettos and Slums as Hotbeds of Green Innovation

2015 March-April, LEED ON

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="19144" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="1/4"][vc_single_image image="19142" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] ANTWI A. AKOM Professor at San Francisco State University and co-founder of (I-SEEED) [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="3/4"][vc_column_text] [dropcaps type='normal' color='' background_color='' border_color='']I[/dropcaps] recently gave a TEDx talk on Mastering TAO. Not TAOism in terms of Eastern philosophy—although, in some ways, yin and yang are a part of it—but in this case TAO stands for Turning Adversity into Opportunity. I call the people, places, and policies that have mastered the art of Turning Adversity into Opportunity “Hope Dealers.” Hope Dealers ask questions like: What kinds of public and private investments in green infrastructure can help us innovate our way out of poverty? How are our ghettos, slums, and barrios hotbeds of green innovation? What is the role of so-called “slum dwellers” in the future of green cities and in building the green economy? And how can we change the negative narrative of “slum dwellers” so that they can be seen for who and what they are—everyday people and community members—not slums, but neighborhoods with families living, working, playing, praying, loving, living, eating, drinking, walking, biking, and taking their kids to and from school. These are important questions because the...

Will Work for Education

2015 March-April, COMMUNITY

[vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="center"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] Will Work for Education [/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] Starbucks takes the lead in social responsibility at home with a college program for its workforce. By Judith Nemes [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="25" padding_bottom="25"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_single_image image="19288" alignment="center" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=".vc_custom_1424119896533{margin-top: 25px !important;}" row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="15"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text][dropcaps type='normal' color='' background_color='' border_color='']S[/dropcaps]tarbucks is often touted as one of the more enlightened corporations in the U.S. that’s working hard at shrinking its carbon footprint and pursuing global social responsibility initiatives. Those goals are achieved through innovative green building programs, sustainable operating practices, and sourcing fair trade coffees to improve the lives of coffee growers (and their workers) around the world. [caption id="attachment_19294" align="alignright" width="500"] Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University.[/caption] It should come as no surprise that Starbucks’ leaders recently expanded their efforts in social responsibility—only this time a lot closer to home. Last summer, the Seattle-based company established a college education program in a unique partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) that encourages its own employees to finish college. The carrot for that nudge to go back to school is tuition reimbursement so individuals who start out at Starbucks can aspire to even greater opportunities and achieve improvements in...

Product Innovation

2015 March-April, production innovation

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="18627" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=".vc_custom_1424122673580{padding: 30px !important;}" row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="50" padding_bottom="50"][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_single_image image="19326" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] Aquicore Aquicore is a real-time energy management software, which allows companies to use energy data from multiple facilities to optimize their energy consumption, automate processes, and improve predictability and accountability on one centralized platform. Specializing in commercial real estate and industrial facilities, Aquicore provides complete transparency into energy consumption so portfolio owners, facility managers, and engineers can make data-driven decisions to continuously improve their facilities operations. Aquicore www.aquicore.com [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=".vc_custom_1424122673580{padding: 30px !important;}" row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="50" padding_bottom="50"][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_column_text] CarbonCure Ready Mixed Concrete The CarbonCure Ready Mixed Concrete Technology recycles waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into concrete. The technology is used by concrete producers to make greener and stronger concrete. CO2 is collected from industrial emitters, and injected into concrete during mixing. The CO2 becomes permanently embedded within the concrete, thereby becoming “sequestered” within the concrete as a mineral. The benefits of incorporating CO2 into concrete are two-fold: (1) CO2 is chemically captured in the concrete, thereby reducing greenhouse gases, and (2) the addition of CO2 can result in improved material properties of the concrete such as enhanced compressive strength. CarbonCure www.carboncure.com [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_single_image...

Q&A with Bryna Dunn

2015 March-April, local pulse

[vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="50"][vc_column width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="19334" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="20"][vc_single_image image="19335" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1428423242454{margin-top: 20px !important;}"]As the firm’s director of sustainability planning, Bryna is able to exclusively focus on advancing the implementation and effectiveness of sustainable and energy-saving design strategies. Admired for her passion to protect the natural environment while improving the built environment, she has become one of the region’s foremost experts on integrating green concepts into facility designs. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Q.How and why did you get into green building and LEED? I have always been concerned, from a young age, about the disconnect between our built environment and our natural environment. I grew up in a military family and moved around a lot as a child, and so I saw a lot of different development patterns and rates of natural destruction. It took me until graduate school to realize that I wanted to work with the folks who design our built environment—these folks have such an amazing ability to see and shape the future. I wanted to be the part of that conversation that asked about the trees, and the water, and the energy demands, and the human health impacts. I decided the best way for me,...

Skill Builders

2015 March-April, COMMUNITY

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="18094" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="19151" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] By Jeff Harder For almost 40 years, YouthBuild has guided underprivileged young adults into constructive careers and lives. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2" css=".vc_custom_1424103118408{margin-top: 15px !important;margin-bottom: 15px !important;}"][vc_single_image image="19154" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1428344810127{margin-top: 10px !important;}"]Amir Mans found a new career weatherizing houses through YouthBuild.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="25"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text] Four years ago, Amir Mans was a son without a future. The father with whom he shared a Section 8 apartment in upstate New York had passed away. Mans was 20 years old, he had dropped out of high school years before, and he had no job, no money, and no direction. “At that point in time, my back was against the wall, and I had nothing else to lose,” he says. Then his girlfriend told him about YouthBuild Schenectady. For the next nine months, Mans woke up early each day to study all the subjects he had sidestepped and learn the intricacies of weatherizing homes. He found counselors who helped him get his GED—and helped him get through the weeks when there was no food in his cupboards. He earned an alphabet’s worth of certifications (BPI, Lead Safe Worker Practices Certification, and...

Powerful Brains, Peaceful Minds

2015 March-April, human health

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="18059" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="19181" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_column_text] By Calvin Hennick At Harvard University—an institution synonymous with supercharged intellects—employees are learning to ease stress and feel more productive through mindfulness meditation. Leave it to Harvard University to make meditation more efficient. “To listen to a three-minute body-focused guided meditation, press 2,” a soothing female voice instructs callers to the school’s guided meditation hotline. “To listen to a four-minute breath-focused guided meditation, press 3.” Callers who choose the second option are told to imagine their breath flowing gently in and out of their bodies. “When thoughts arise,” the voice says, “notice them without judging them or following them, and then gently escort your mind back to your breath.” The hotline is one of several ways the university supports its mindfulness meditation program, which in turn is just one of many programs designed to promote employee health and well-being—one of the pillars of the school’s sustainability plan, which was released last year. The plan calls for a reduction[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2" css=".vc_custom_1424103118408{margin-top: 15px !important;margin-bottom: 15px !important;}"][vc_single_image image="19184" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1428347123566{margin-top: 10px !important;}"]Nancy Costikyan Harvard’s director of Work/Life and Jeanne Mahon director of the university’s Center for Wellness began a...

In The Zone

2015 March-April, ecosystems

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="16705" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="19223" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text]By Kiley Jacques Article 89 gives Boston a new lease on urban agriculture. [/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="19228" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text]Boston neighborhood planner Marie Mercurio visits a greenhouse in Roxbury run by the Food Project. Photo: Eric Roth[/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] [dropcaps type='normal' color='' background_color='' border_color='']T[/dropcaps]he list of favorable things former Mayor Menino did for Boston could very well run the length of Washington Street. Among the items on that list is Article 89, which permits and regulates urban agriculture as a by-right land use. No other city has anything like it. The seed that would become Article 89 began germinating five years ago, when a farmer wished to put vacant city lots to use for food production, but couldn’t secure a permit to do so. So he went to the Mayor’s Office. That farmer was Glynn Lloyd—founder and CEO of City Fresh Foods, City Growers, and the Urban Farming Institute—and he is greatly responsible for getting the article off the ground and into the garden. // It wasn’t long before the idea gained support from all corners of the city. By 2010, a community-based effort to draft Article 89...

Sustainable Shopping

2015 March-April, green economy

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="17498" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="19254" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] By Jeff Harder Shopping center developer, owner, and operator Regency becomes a pioneer in the United States’ green bond movement. More than seven years ago, when Regency Centers first announced a new emphasis on sustainability at its hundreds of shopping centers around the country, the publically traded real estate investment trust became an industry sustainability leader. Last spring, after living up to its early promises to go green, the 52-year-old company proved that it could be [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2" css=".vc_custom_1424103118408{margin-top: 15px !important;margin-bottom: 15px !important;}"][vc_single_image image="19256" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1428414268964{margin-top: 10px !important;}"]The 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods store, located in the Regency LEED Silver shopping center, Market at Colonnade, in North Raleigh, met rigorous building and energy efficiency standards during construction and received the company’s sixth LEED Gold certification in the United States.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text] a pioneer once again by becoming just the second institution in the United States to issue $250 million in so-called green bonds, an investment vehicle that’s helping carry out projects at Regency’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design LEED-certified shopping centers. And along the way, Regency has proved something else: Its pledge to go green is as firm as...

Made in the City

2015 March-April, Sustainable Sites

[vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left"][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] Made in the City [/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] How a new factory became a part of one of our oldest manufacturing towns. By Nicolette Mueller [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][dropcaps type='normal' color='' background_color='' border_color='']I[/dropcaps]n February 2015, President Obama designated the Pullman Factory District, a neighborhood in Chicago’s South Side, as the Windy City’s first national park. Established in the 1880s as a manufacturing center and company town for the Pullman Palace Car Company, the neighborhood has a rich history in the labor rights and civil rights movements. It’s also home to the new manufacturing facility for Method, the company known for its products that are as “kind to the planet as they are tough on dirt.” Designed by McDonough + Partners, the factory is located on 22 acres of space in the heart of the Pullman neighborhood, and will likely soon become the first LEED Platinum manufacturing facility in the consumer packaged goods industry and one of only a dozen LEED-certified manufacturing facilities worldwide. Like the luxury Pullman cars of the halcyon days of rail travel, this facility, too, is beautiful, complete with its onsite renewable energy from wind and solar, plans for the world’s largest rooftop farm, dedicated acres for native plants...

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