Greenversations

How much do you know about the environment of where you live? That’s right, not the rain forest, not the polar icecaps, but your neighborhood. Lots of us take our environment for granted. Water comes out of spigots and waste gets carted or flushed away. Unless there’s an environmental problem nearby, like a polluting factory, most folks don’t give it a second thought. Our environment just is.

But environmental protection starts at home, and it is important to understand how one thing affects another, so here’s the challenge (actually a great project for a class to do) – find out and then write up a report so others can understand your local environment too.

I did this a few years ago for the town in which I live, Narberth, Pa. I looked into:

How our electricity is produced.

• Where the oil that runs my heater came from.
• Where the natural gas that runs my stove came from.
• The origin of my drinking water.
• Where my waste water goes.
• What happens to the recyclables (plastics, paper, glass) that are collected.
• What happens to our yard waste that’s picked up.
• Where my household waste/trash goes.
• The quality of the air I breathe.The levels of radon from the ground.
• What happens to our rainwater after it goes down the storm drains.
• The name of our watershed and the location of our streams.
• Our climate and planting zone.
• Where our gasoline comes from.
• What mass transit is available.
• Our topography and geography.
• How our town is zoned.
• The location of our historic buildings.

In the process I discovered some interesting things. Some streams had been piped underground and weren’t on the surface anymore. Our household waste goes to an incinerator where it is burned to produce electricity. Our rainwater goes directly into streams; it’s not treated first. The oldest intact structure in Narberth is a Swedish log cabin. But since it has had many additions, it just looks like a normal house now.

My report is on the web.  Feel free to use it as a model for yours. Go out and discover your local environment!

About the Author: Nancy Grundahl has worked for the Philadelphia office of EPA since the mid-80’s. She currently manages the web for the Environmental Assessment and Innovation Division. Before getting involved with the web, she worked as an environmental scientist. Nancy believes in looking at environmental problems in a holistic, multi-media way and is a strong advocate of preventing pollution instead of dealing with it after it has been created.

I first heard about Paula Allen and the Potawot Health Village in 2008, during a Regional Tribal Operations Committee meeting on green buildings. Paula’s name came up when people began discussing cultural values and a “sense of place” as a guide for sustainable building and land use practices.

These are certainly not new ideas in Indian Country.  However, the notion of local, cultural knowledge is not a major focus of today’s green building movement, so I was curious to learn more about Paula.  From what I’ve learned, she is truly deserving of her recognition as an EPA Southwest Pacific Region Environmental Award winner.

Paula is the traditional resource specialist for United Indian Health Services, Inc (UIHS),  a private, Indian owned, non-profit organization that provides out-patient health care for 15,000 Native Americans and their families in Arcata, CA.

The Potawot Health Village was completed in 2001. Paula ensured that the building and site reflected the cultural values of the local Native communities.  Potawot is located near several historic tribal villages that had been used for hunting, fishing and gathering traditional foods and medicines.  As Paula says, “Not understanding our history or being in connection with our spirituality is where a lot of our sickness comes from. It is rooted in those things.”

The design of Potawot also embodies the culture and values of the communities it serves.  From the outside, the facility looks like the traditional redwood plank houses of coastal tribes. Reclaimed redwood was creatively used on interior walls and regional native art and basketry are featured throughout the building. Restored wetlands and native grasses now grow on the site, along with gardens that provide traditional foods and medicinal herbs.

Stormwater from rooftops and parking surfaces serve as a supplemental water source for the project’s wetlands. Potawot planned their building locations to support and facilitate an optimal array of solar panels. The ultimate goal is to have the entire energy demand supplied by solar energy. The current size of the solar energy system is 42 Kilowatts and the current savings is allocated towards community outreach and educational programs.

Paula’s work is truly a unique and inspiring example of how traditional Native American culture and values can inform sustainable building design and land use decisions.  Her commitment to cultural values and wisdom, and her own sense of place have inspired many people - including me - to recognize cultural knowledge as an invaluable sustainable design resource.

About the Author: Michelle Baker works as the Tribal Green Building Coordinator in EPA’s Pacific Southwest Office. She works with the Tribal Solid Waste Team in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Solid Waste. Michelle primarily works with tribes in northern California on waste and materials management issues.

Last year, I got a call from Dr. Kim Cochran, EPA’s construction and demolition expert in DC. She was going to a Demolition Convention in Las Vegas and wanted to set up a tour with Evergreen Recycling. As the Regional EPA recycling contact, I’d been working with the great folks at Evergreen for many moons.
After the tour, she called me in awe — she’d seen a lot of recycling facilities — but they’d never seen anything like Evergreen, and said “Their facility is probably the most exciting recycling facility I have ever seen! I was really impressed with the numbers and types of materials they are able to recycle.”
Evergreen Recycling was an EPA Pacific Southwest award winner for transforming recycling efforts in Nevada with their state-of-the-art recycling facility.

They partnered with MGM MIRAGE, one of the world’s leading development companies, to divert 50,000 tons or 94.7% of the CityCenter project’s construction debris from landfill disposal in 2008. CityCenter, an 18-million-square-foot multi-use LEED registered project, will be one of the world’s largest sustainable urban communities.

Evergreen’s 85 employees have recycled over 200,000 tons of resources. Evergreen also developed a local market for drywall that removes the paper and makes it back into new drywall. Now that’s real closed-loop recycling — drywall in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas!

Evergreen’s founder and President, Rob Dorinson, has been invaluable in supporting Nevada’s green building movement and helping Nevada’s recycling rate more than double in the past ten years. Luckily, I was able to tour Evergreen Recycling last year while I was on vacation, and it was the highlight of my visit. Of course, enjoying the Vegas buffets with family and friends was great too! Take a virtual tour and tell me what you think!

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team for 10 years and is Co-Chair of EPA’s Green Building Workgroup.

One of the great things about being an intern at EPA is that I have plenty of opportunities to get away from my desk. Sure, a trip to the Montgomery County (Maryland) Recycling Center – which happened earlier this month – isn’t the most exotic destination I could possibly imagine, but it’s still nice to get a break from staring at a computer screen. And, as it turns out, recycling centers are more interesting than you might think!

Everything about the Montgomery County Recycling Center – the bright colors, the pictures on the wall, and even our tour guide – exude enthusiasm about recycling. “We have a goal of 50 percent recycling for Montgomery County,” our guide told us (they’re currently at 44 percent). The Center is all about helping residents learn what they can do to recycle more; they try to make recycling as efficient and convenient as possible, and they even sort residents’ glass, cans, and plastic bottles (no need for residents to do it themselves!). That’s probably one of the reasons that Montgomery County is inching closer to a 50 percent recycling rate (the national average municipal solid waste recycling rate was 33.4 percent in 2007).

The Center receives about 200 tons of paper a year. Nationwide, 54.5 percent of paper products were recycled in 2007. I ran the numbers and figured that, if Montgomery County is consistent with the national average, then for every 200 tons of paper that come into the Center annually, there are about 167 tons of paper that are go into the trash. That’s not surprising – paper is the single biggest type of trash that we generate.

Right next to the Center is a solid waste transfer station, which accepts materials that the Recycling Center doesn’t, such as oil, point, dirt, electronics, batteries, propane, helium (who has excess helium? Clowns?) tires, scrap metal, and building materials. Just about anything that can be manufactured can be recycled.

In my program, the Industrial Materials Reuse Program, we deal with recycling every day. It was interesting to see where recycled materials actually go, and it was enlightening to look at the tons of materials in the Center – pile after pile of glass, metals, paper, and plastic – and realize that if they hadn’t ended up there, they would have ended up in a landfill.

About the author: Ayende Thomas is an undergraduate Civil Engineering major at Howard University with an interest in environmental engineering. She is currently a summer intern in EPA’s Industrial Materials Reuse Program.

For years we have heard about recycling our plastics, aluminum cans, paper and used electronics – but what else can we recycle? I recently found out that my old running shoes can be recycled and remanufactured to make athletic surfaces. During the manufacturing process, my old shoes are cut into three slices which are then fed through a grinder and then purified. The purified material is then used to produce many different types of surfaces such as playground surfaces, tennis courts and outdoor tracks. Check out this recycling process! I don’t know of any other programs like it, but hopefully it will catch on. It is a cool process that will save energy and resources. And, like many other recycling processes – we also help the environment by reducing excess waste when we recycle our old shoes. Instead of piling our old shoes on top of a local landfill, we can put them to use in our parks and athletic centers. What other products in our home can we recycle? Let’s help prevent waste and conserve resources and energy through recycling in our homes and communities. Be sure to let us know what great ideas you have.

About the author: Michelle Gugger graduated from Rutgers University in 2008. She is currently spending a year of service at EPA’s Region 3 Office in Philadelphia, PA as an AmeriCorps VISTA.

How much do you know about the environment of where you live? That’s right, not the rain forest, not the polar icecaps, but your neighborhood. Lots of us take our environment for granted. Water comes out of spigots and waste gets carted or flushed away. Unless there’s an environmental problem nearby, like a polluting factory, most folks don’t give it a second thought. Our environment just is.

But environmental protection starts at home, and it is important to understand how one thing affects another, so here’s the challenge (actually a great project for a class to do) – find out and then write up a report so others can understand your local environment too.

I did this a few years ago for the town in which I live, Narberth, Pa. I looked into:

• How our electricity is produced.
• Where the oil that runs my heater came from.
• Where the natural gas that runs my stove came from.
• The origin of my drinking water.
• Where my wastewater goes.
• What happens to the recyclables (plastics, paper, glass) that are collected.
• What happens to our yard waste that’s picked up.
• Where my household waste/trash goes.
• The quality of the air I breathe.
• The levels of radon from the ground.
• What happens to our rainwater after it goes down the storm drains.
• The name of our watershed and the location of our streams.
• Our climate and planting zone.
• Where our gasoline comes from.
• What mass transit is available.
• Our topography and geography.
• How our town is zoned.
• The location of our historic buildings.

In the process I discovered some interesting things. Some streams had been piped underground and weren’t on the surface anymore. Our household waste goes to an incinerator where it is burned to produce electricity. Our rainwater goes directly into streams; it’s not treated first. The oldest intact structure in Narberth is a Swedish log cabin. But since it has had many additions, it just looks like a normal house now.

My report is on the web at: http://www.narberthpa.org/environment.htm. Feel free to use it as a model for yours. Go out and discover your local environment!

Editor’s note: you can get started learning what EPA knows about your area with MyEnvironment.  Try it out or read the Greenversations post about it.

About the Author: Nancy Grundahl has worked for the Philadelphia office of EPA since the mid-80’s. She currently manages the web for the Environmental Assessment and Innovation Division. Before getting involved with the web, she worked as an environmental scientist. Nancy believes in looking at environmental problems in a holistic, multi-media way and is a strong advocate of preventing pollution instead of dealing with it after it has been created.

About the author: Lina Younes has been working for EPA since 2002 and chairs EPA’s Multilingual Communications Task Force. Prior to joining EPA, she was the Washington bureau chief for two Puerto Rican newspapers and she has worked for several government agencies.

In our everyday day lives, we pride ourselves in doing everything faster, better, and more efficiently. However what has become convenient has also resulted in some unforeseen costs. In this case, I’m thinking about fast food and, especially, fast food packaging.

Whether at work or play, we encourage everyone to eat their food in reusable utensils and if possible aim for a waste free lunch. However, the truth is having a sit down meal at home is not always possible. When it comes to eating, frequently we just look for the nearest fast food restaurant, carryout or drive thru. And then we dispose of the waste in the nearest trash can. While I can see using our reusable mugs at the local coffee shop, taking reusable plates to a drive thru may not be practical for most people.

Some might have noticed that not so long ago, most of the common fast food chains used polystyrene foam (AKA Styrofoam) and non-environmentally friendly packaging to serve and wrap food and beverages. In recent years, responding to popular pressure, some companies are adopting waste reduction measures and using biodegradable packaging. More and more companies are actively engaged in the redesign of sustainable packaging. In fact, EPA is a founding member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a group of industry professionals formed in 2004. This broad coalition goes beyond the food packing industry. It provides a framework for collaborating on various sustainable packaging issues in order to reduce the environmental footprint of packaging. Bear in mind that the environmental impacts of packaging go beyond what enters the waste stream. There are energy impacts and associated greenhouse gas emissions at each stage of the life cycle of each product from extraction and acquisition of raw materials, manufacturing of raw materials into products, the actual product used by consumers and ultimately, product disposal.

EPA’s WasteWise partnership program also highlights success stories in the areas of food processing and packaging as well as the beverage industry.

So, if you’re seeking more information on the environmental sustainability techniques used by your favorite restaurant or nearest fast food establishment, you can visit Earth911.com for a Restaurant Report Card. Above all—get involved. You can make a difference in encouraging many industries and the general public to become more environmentally sustainable.

Sobre la autor: Lina M. F. Younes ha trabajado en la EPA desde el 2002 y está a cargo del Grupo de Trabajo sobre Comunicaciones Multilingües. Como periodista, dirigió la oficina en Washington de dos periódicos puertorriqueños y ha laborado en varias agencias gubernamentales.

Recientemente, cuando regresé a la casa al final de la jornada laboral, encontré el buzón lleno de sobres, revistas, folletos, anuncios y papeles—la mayoría era correspondencia que yo no había solicitado. Lo que más me molesta es que con demasiada frecuencia, los artículos realmente importantes (facturas, cartas, suscripciones) podrían perderse entre la estiba de correspondencia no deseada. Cuando uno lo piensa realmente, podríamos prescindir de dicha correspondencia basura que no hemos solicitado. Me puse a pensar, cuánto papel se utiliza para producir esa correspondencia no solicitada? ¿Cuántos árboles han tenido que morir para producir esta correspondencia? ¿Cuáles son algunos de los impactos ambientales? ¿Cuánta agua se utiliza para procesar el papel? ¿Cuánto dióxido de carbono se ha emitido al aire para transportar los artículos no deseados? ¿Después de enviado, cuánto termina en los vertederos municipales?

Las estadísticas son alarmantes. Más de cuatro millón de toneladas de correspondencia basura son producidas anualmente. Más del cincuenta por ciento de esta correspondencia no solicitada llena los rellenos sanitarios anualmente. Mientras que la cantidad de desechos de papel parece abrumadora, hay medidas que podemos tomar para frenar la entrega de estos artículos. Por ejemplo, existen varios sitios Web donde usted se puede registrar a fin de no recibir esta correspondencia publicitaria no solicitada y prevenir que los anunciantes compartan su nombre y dirección con compañías similares.

Asimismo, hay otros pasos a seguir para reducir el consumo de artículos de papel y costos económicos de los envíos en volumen. ¿Por qué no recurrir a la tecnología? Navegue en el Internet para ver los anuncios publicitarios de las compañías electrónicamente. Marque esas páginas como sus sitios favoritos en lugar de imprimir los anuncios. Puede usar algunos de estos papeles como borrador o para apuntes. Si los esfuerzos por reducir los desechos en la fuente puntual de origen fallan, entonces recíclelos. Para más consejos útiles en inglés o español visite nuestra página Web.

About the author: Ashley Sims, a senior at Indiana University, is a fall intern with EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection and Environmental Education through the Washington Leadership Program.

Think about all the paper we use for school. We constantly take notes during class, use paper for homework assignments, tests, and print sheets related to school work. There’s no way to get around it. Or is there? We need paper on a daily basis since school has to be our number one priority. So how can we be environmentally conscious while making sure we keep up with our daily obligations to school?

Here is a suggestion. Why not use paper to its fullest potential to minimize waste? The process of making, distributing, and using paper releases greenhouse gas emissions into our environment. At EPA we promote Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Reducing the amount of paper we use, as well as reusing and recycling paper can help address global climate change. Reducing paper usage decreases waste and its associated costs. Reusing paper can stop or delay its entry into the waste stream. Recycling turns paper that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources. So why not get involved and help save our environment. Our small efforts to reduce the amount of paper we use can truly make a huge impact on our planet.

Here are some helpful tips to try for school:
-Always print double-sided and write on both sides of paper
-Cut up old blank paper for notes instead of buying new notepads or sticky-notes
-Use old comics from the newspaper to wrap presents or textbooks for school
-Donate old books to a used-book store or secondhand shop
-Recycle old books, magazines and papers
-Buy recycled paper products such as notebooks, computer paper, cards, etc whenever possible

Please tell us how you conserve paper while completing your homework assignments. If you haven’t tried any of the above suggestions, still let us know what you think. I can’t wait to hear your ideas about how we can conserve paper and get good grades too! Your small changes can make a big difference.

For more information about waste please visit http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/index.htm

About the author: Viccy Salazar joined EPA in 1995. She works in our Seattle office on waste reduction, resource conservation and stewardship issues.

Everyday, I try to teach my kids not to waste, to share, to do unto others, to pick up after themselves, to take only what they really need… you get the picture. The great thing about kids is that they really want to do those things and they want to be nice and fair about how they interact with their friends. As I was thinking on Earth Day, I was thinking how these are the exact same lessons that we need for environmental protection. We can protect the earth if we just obey the basic rules we all learned when we were 3 years old. Here are the rules as I see them:

Share. We need to share the resources and not hoard for ourselves. The resources available to us need to be allocated among many communities and species. I think, in particular, of water and food distribution where some have so much and others have so little. We don’t have a choice but to share the earth so we must learn to share the earth’s resources so all of us can survive together.

Don’t waste. Don’t waste means to make the best use of the resources we have. It obviously relates to things like recycling and turning off lights but was I was thinking about it, I realized it also means don’t use resources if you don’t have to. Take a bus, buy a smaller house, have a high gas mileage car, don’t buy things you don’t need, borrow instead of buy. I find I need to remind myself of this lesson a lot.

Pick up after yourself. To me this mean don’t pollute. When we pollute, we are leaving our mess for someone else. Our environmental laws like RCRA, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act are all basically trying to say, if you make the mess, clean it up or only make a little mess. Then I think, but if all of us make just a little mess, it turns into a really big mess which isn’t sustainable. So, we are looking into new solutions like Product Stewardship. Product Stewardship requires companies taking responsibility for the end-of-life management of the products they make and sell. The same lesson we teach our children, you are responsible for your own messes. Don’t put it on anyone else. We still have a long way to go.

I know there are a few more rules but I need to go and practice the rules at home. I’ll check back next week. While I’m gone, let’s all think about how the rules apply to us and our daily activities.

I invite you to leave a comment with your own rules and share them with others in your life to spread the environmental word.