Tag: sustainable

Making the Bus Cool

  • Bus lines like Megabus are attracting new riders with cheap rates, direct routes, and perks like free wi-fi. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

Buses are one of the most environmentally friendly ways to travel. But for years, the bus has had an image problem. The Environment Report’s Tamara Keith tells us that could be changing:

Transcript

Buses are one of the most environmentally friendly ways to travel. But for years, the bus has had an image problem. The Environment Report’s Tamara Keith tells us that could be changing:

I swear I’m not a snob, but up until a couple of months ago I wouldn’t have been caught dead on a bus. Come on, the thought of being trapped for hours with potentially smelly strangers on some rundown, grimy bus –well– it’s just not all that appealing.

But, there’s a new genre of motor coach travel out there and it’s making the intercity bus cool again (or maybe cool for the first time).

In a downtown Washington DC parking lot, Lauren Kessler is waiting to board a Bolt Bus to New York City. It’s a shiny black and red bus with a bold lightning bolt on the side.

“I’ve never taken Greyhound. I would take Amtrak or fly but those are both much more expensive.”

What Kessler doesn’t know is this is a Greyhound bus. The company launched the Bolt brand last spring. Giselle Carr doesn’t realize it either, until I point out the fine print on the side of the bus: “operated by Greyhound.”

“I did not know that. Yeah it says right there, operator Greyhound. Oh, so they’re changing their strategy. Interesting.”

It’s not your father’s Greyhound. Gone are bus terminals. Bolt picks up curbside in just a few major east coast cities. Delivering passengers from one happening downtown to another with no stops in between. It’s cheaper than the traditional bus lines and there are some pretty nice amenities too, says Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh.

“We have free wi-fi, extended leg room, power plug ins. It’s a very sleek brand.”

And she says it’s been an incredibly successful brand.

“We actually broke even financially in May 2008, which is just a couple months after launching which was phenomenal and exceeded all our expectations. And every month we see a larger ridership than the month before.”

Bolt isn’t the only one. MegaBus, operated by Coach USA, started in the Midwest in 2006. It now serves 14 cities with its double-decker wi-fi enabled buses. Each bus holds 81 people, and, Coach USA President Dale Moser says, most of them would have driven if not for the bus.

“And I would have told you 3 years ago that it was going to be a challenge to change a culture and get Americans out of their automobile. But we’re finding that there is a large contingency out there that is looking for something like this and it just continues to grow.”

These bus lines can thank regulars like Raphael Fuchs-Simon for their success. If there was a uniform for a hipster, it might just be what he’s wearing: red framed 80s sunglasses, a soccer jersey and one of those Peruvian Alpaca sweaters.

“Sometimes I drive but there’s no point. It’s 22 dollars dude. Get out of here. It’s like a lunchtime meal in Manhattan.”

He’s pretty stoked about the green credentials, that come with his chosen mode of travel. Joe Schwieterman has actually crunched the numbers. He’s a transportation professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

“You can get 200, 300 even more passenger miles per gallon of fuel burned and you just compare to that to a private automobile, it can be a 10-fold increase in fuel efficiency.”

And, Schwieterman says, just in the last couple of years intercity bus transportation has had a remarkable revival.

“The growth has been roughly about 8 percent a year, so the mode is growing much faster than air travel or automobile travel or even rail travel. The bus kind of stands alone for an industry that’s growing in some pretty tough economic times.”

That’s even with gas costing just half what it did last summer. For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Sushi Sustainability Guide

  • blueocean.org has created a guide that ranks sushi on how sustainable it is (Source: Hatago at Wikimedia Commons)

Some ocean conservation groups have
teamed up to make a color-coded guide that
ranks popular sushi. Lester Graham reports
the rankings are based on whether the fish
are caught or raised in sustainable ways:

Transcript

Some ocean conservation groups have
teamed up to make a color-coded guide that
ranks popular sushi. Lester Graham reports
the rankings are based on whether the fish
are caught or raised in sustainable ways:

You can download this sushi guide, print it out and carry it around with you if you
want, but Kate McLaughlin with the Blue Ocean Institute’s Seafood Program says
you could just look at it on your mobile device next time you go to a sushi bar.

“You can download a PDA formatted copy of the guide to your mobile device. Or
text the word ‘fish’ and then the name of the fish in question. Pretty much
immediately you get a response with the ranking.”

And it will tell you things like popular sushi such as bluefin tuna and farmed salmon
are on the “red” list, which means they’re either over-fished or farmed with
aquaculture methods that pollute the ocean.

You can get the guide at blueocean.org.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Eco-Clothes on a Sliding Scale

  • founder of CROW clothing, 'Mamabird' damali ayo (Photo by Pete Spring Photography)

There’s a new eco-friendly clothing
company on the scene that’s shaking things
up. Jessi Ziegler reports one
designer lets you pick the price you want
to pay for her clothes:

Transcript

There’s a new eco-friendly clothing
company on the scene that’s shaking things
up. Jessi Ziegler reports one
designer lets you pick the price you want
to pay for her clothes:

damali ayo is a designer. When she thought of eco-friendly clothes, two
things came to mind.

Ugly and Expensive.

So with her line CROW, she set out to fix both.

She designed some really fresh pieces. But that’s not the innovative part.
The thing is – she sells them on a sliding scale.

You pick the price you want to pay.

You might be thinking – there’s no way that will ever work – right?

Everyone will just pay the cheapest price they can, and the whole thing will
go under.

damali says that’s not the case.

“People will pay the highest price pretty often. And that’s exciting. And the
consumer trend is such that people want their money to go to something
that’s good, that actually benefits people.”

But CROW’s experiment is just starting out. So it’ll be a little while to see if
the idea really works.

For The Environment Report, this is Jessi Ziegler.

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Using Dams to Make Hydrogen

  • The Adirondack Trail. (Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Regional Tourism Council)

Across rural America, there are old dams and
millponds sitting unused. A century ago, they provided
vital hydro-power for local industry. But many of them
were shut down as big power companies offered more and
cheaper power. Now, one community wants to use its
hydro-dam to power a hydrogen making facility. Jacob
Resneck reports:

Transcript

Across rural America, there are old dams and
millponds sitting unused. A century ago, they provided
vital hydro-power for local industry. But many of them
were shut down as big power companies offered more and
cheaper power. Now, one community wants to use its
hydro-dam to power a hydrogen making facility. Jacob
Resneck reports:

(rushing water noise)

We’re standing beside an old dam next to a public area still known as Power Station Park.

“Back in the 1800s, where we’re standing now was a sawmill.”

Mayor Jamie Rogers is the mayor of Lake Placid, New York.

Two dams on this river create Mill Pond.

“As you look to your left, that was the old turbine house. It was one of two
turbines in the community that generated power for the village.”

After the massive hydro development in the late 1950s, Lake Placid’s hydro-electric turbines were
removed in favor of cheaper imported power.

Now the village is working on a project to again harness this local energy source. But this time it won’t
be for conventional electricity.

“We’d be generating power to start electrolyzing water to create hydrogen.”

Electricity from the dam would be used to extract hydrogen from the water. The hydrogen would then
be stored in high pressure tanks. The fuel could be used to operate vehicles without emitting any
greenhouse gases.

The researcher behind the Lake Placid proposal is Richard Greeley. He’s a former professor who’s
worked on other cutting edge energy projects.

“You use air from the atmosphere on one side and hydrogen on the other and they combine on the
electrode and it forms water and electricity.”

Greeley’s founded a company called Aqua Green Electric Energy. He hopes to develop local sources
for powering hydrogen fuel cells.

“This turbine set up I have could fit on any dam. Why you can renew it and generate electric power again from any number of dams, big, small,
little – any size. So, I’m thinking this whole feature can be duplicated once we show everyone that this thing works.”

The project is expected to cost $1.5 million dollars. The Village of Lake Placid won’t spend local tax money,
but plans to try to get state and federal dollars to pay for the project.

It’s expected to take at least 18 months to build. If it is built, it’s believed to be the first of its kind in the
country.

This project won’t be a money maker. The amount of hydrogen that could be produced would be at
most, about 25 kilograms a day – the equivelant of about 25 gallons of gasoline.

Eventually, local production facilities could spring up all over the country. Daniel Sperling is director
of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He says as the sun sets
on the era of cheap oil, the nation and the world will have to start making other arrangements.

“It’s becoming increasingly urgent to reduce the amount of oil we use and to reduce the amount of
greenhouse uses. And in both cases hydrogen has great potential. Many people think that in 30 or 40
years it will be the dominant fuel source for vehicles, and for other uses as well.”

A 1998 survey by the U.S. Department of Energy found 212 untapped sites with significant hydro-
electric potential. That’s in the state of New York alone.

Lake Placid Mayor Jamie Rogers says all that unused power could eventually add up, cutting total
greenhouse emissions.

“If you look at small dams like this across the Northeast, across this state and probably across this
country, there’s a lot of potential to generate hydrogen fuel on sites from existing dams that are already in place.”

And he hopes his town is the first to show that it can be done.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jacob Resneck.

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Interview – Greening the Business World

Some businesses once considered
‘bad actors’ by environmentalists are now being
praised for leading the ‘corporate greening’
movement. Lester Graham spoke with an advisor who
helped some of those companies, John Elkington.
Elkington is the founder of the consulting firm
SustainAbility. He says not all corporations have
realized the importance of becoming more
environmentally-friendly at the same time:

Transcript

Some businesses once considered
‘bad actors’ by environmentalists are now being
praised for leading the ‘corporate greening’
movement. Lester Graham spoke with an advisor who
helped some of those companies, John Elkington.
Elkington is the founder of the consulting firm
SustainAbility. He says not all corporations have
realized the importance of becoming more
environmentally-friendly at the same time:


JE: Around the world, different regions are in very different places
and companies are in different places as a result of that. In the
United States you’ve had a period of, to some degree on issues like
climate change, denial. And that’s beginning to break down, and it’s
breaking down very rapidly. So you see companies, for example in the
financial sector like Goldman-Saks, talking about the environment and
green issues in a very, very different way than they would’ve done a
few years ago.


You see General Electric, which hasn’t been a great ally of
environmental movement, launching it’s Ecomagination initiative. And
initially, people dismissing that very much as greenwash, but when you
look at the numbers, very serious growth going on inside that business
and some of these areas. And then, perhaps to top it all, you see Wal-
Mart, most peoples’ sort of bogey company in a way, announcing some if
its initiatives around renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable
fisheries and so on. And in a sense, it almost doesn’t matter whether
Wal-Mart is serious or genuinely wanting to go green or whatever. This
stuff is starting to cascade through the supply chain. They have 61,000
vendors, these companies around the world. And the work that we do with
companies, they’re saying, whether they’re 3M, or Dupont, or Dow…
they’re saying this company is serious and it’s driving us to do things
we hadn’t previously thought were possible.


LG: Let’s look at consumer level. I think typically, most people are
not spending a lot of time researching which brand of corn flakes is
most carbon-free or sustainable. I think most people make their
decisions on commercials or packaging at the store. How can they make
better choices about sustainable products or companies?


JE: You’re absolutely right. I think most people rely on things like
brands. I mean, they trust a brand or they don’t and they hope a brand
will deal with environmental or fair trade or whatever issues
appropriately. But there are certain moments when things start to speed
up, and this is one of them, and then a different set of actors come
in.


I mean, traditionally, the activist campaigning groups, the NGOs, and
so on, play an incredibly important role in denting brands or building
the credibility of particular brands. And increasingly you get these
standards around environmental and fair trade issues. But I think
actually the key actors at the moment – this is certainly true in
Europe and my own country, the United Kingdom – you’re seeing
supermarkets getting involved again. They did it in the late 80s, early
90s, they played a very important role. That has a huge knock on
impact.


LG: Let’s talk about the energy sector for just a moment. We’ve seen a
lot of renewable energy being built around the world lately. But we
seem to see a lot of power companies, some oil companies still digging
in their heels and fighting tooth and nail to keep things just the way
they are. Are we going to see a sea change in the energy sector like we
are beginning to see in many of the other sectors of the economy?


JE: That’s a very difficult question to answer because I think you’re
going to see several different trends at the same time. You’re going to
see for example, the coal industry, Peabody and people like that,
digging in and saying basically, we’re going to burn a huge amount of
coal. Yes it’s going to have to be clean coal but you’re going to have
that trend. You’re going to have the Exxon Mobiles of this world trying
to look a bit more civilized and say we’ve been misunderstood, we’ve
got to communicate better and so on… But basically still, anti-
climate change is a big issue.


And then you’ve got a bunch of actors. In Europe, you’ve got companies
like Statoil, BP, Shell, who’ve actually gone through that tipping
point quite a number of years back, basically believe climate change is
a reality… Still thing fossil fuels is a very large part of our
energy future, but still starting to explore renewables and energy
efficiency and so on. So I think you’ve got a differentiation and I
don’t think this is an issue of leopards changing their spots. I mean,
some of the companies that are finding this very difficult to deal with
will continue to find it very difficult to deal with even if they
become a bit more sophisticated on the communication front.


HOST TAG: John Elkington is the founder of the consulting firm
SustainAbility. He spoke with the Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

Related Links

Hydrogen Powers Family’s Car and Home

  • Mike Strizki demonstrates how a balloon filled with hydrogen can run a fuel cell and power an electric fan for about 45 minutes.

Many homeowners have reduced their fossil fuel consumption by placing solar panels on their rooftops. But one man has gone to a whole new level. He’s created a homemade power plant that runs on solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Brad Linder reports:

Transcript

Many homeowners have reduced their fossil fuel consumption by placing solar panels on their rooftops. But one man has gone to a whole new level. He’s created a homemade power plant that runs on solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Brad Linder reports:


Mike Strizki’s been tinkering with cars his whole life. Over time the 49-year old engineer became convinced that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were the future of the auto industry. But during his 16 years with the New Jersey Department of Transportation, Strizki saw there was a problem with fuel cell cars: nobody was really building them.


“You had the auto makers and you had government pointing fingers. Well, you know, you build the fuel cell cars first and then we’ll provide the infrastructure. And they said, well you provide the infrastructure, and we’ll build the fuel cell cars. And I got tired of hearing that argument. And I said well, one way to solve the problem is to make your infrastructure your home.”


Five years and half a million dollars later, Strizki’s achieved his dream.


Here’s how it works. Strizki’s garage is covered with solar panels. They provide electricity for his house, and when there’s extra power, it’s routed to a device called an electrolizer, which breaks down water into hydrogen and oxygen.


During the summer, the hydrogen is stored in fuel tanks on Strizki’s property. And in the winter, he runs the hydrogen through a 6 kilowatt fuel cell to make energy. Strizki, his wife, and three children, are the first family in the country to live in a house powered entirely by hydrogen fuel cells and solar power.


And there’s another benefit: Strizki can fuel up his hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at a gas pump near his garage.


(Car accelerating sound on pavement)


“The fuel cells have enough to run the vehicle at about 50mph on fuel cells alone. If you’re going faster than that you’re sipping off the battery pack at a very low rate.”


Strizki helped design this car for Rutgers University 7 years ago. It’s been running ever since. Now that he has a fueling station at his home, he plans to convert his other car, a Toyota Prius, to run on hydrogen as well.


Strizki pulls up to the hydrogen fueling station – a series of converted propane tanks out by his garage. Opening his car’s trunk, Strizki connects a hose from those tanks to a smaller tank in the car.


“That’s how it refuels.”


Strizki’s system runs like a well oiled machine, only without the oil. But it wasn’t always so simple. When he first decided to build his home power plant, Strizki sought government approval from his home town of East Amwell New Jersey.


“I said all right, I’m doing this like anybody else who’s getting a building permit. I walked into the town and I said here, I want to build a solar hydrogen fuel cell home… and well, that… you know, the first place I went was the zoning officer, and he told me it’s an uncustomary use in a residential zone, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I allow this.”


East Amwell Mayor Kurt Hoffman says the zoning officer was known as a stickler. The township had accidentally removed a line in a local zoning law allowing homeowners to use alternative energy.


“So we did an addendum to the zoning ordinance to allow alternative energy usages. These kinds of things, they have to be publicly noticed, you have to have public hearings. That brought out some people’s concern about hydrogen technology and the safety issue.


Hoffman says Strizki brought in a series of experts to testify that his house wasn’t going to blow up. The hydrogen was being stored at a safe pressure in the same type of tank normally used for propane.


Strizki says he’ll probably never make back the half-million dollars it costs to build his system. But he hopes to cut the costs by 90%, by mass producing and selling solar-hydrogen fuel cell systems to other homeowners. He says the future of the planet depends on renewable energy and not fossil fuels that have to be transported halfway across the world.


“At least the fact that I’m using the energy in the same place that I’ve created it, the energy is still zero carbon, and it’s still free, once you’ve paid for the equipment.


The Strizki’s don’t skimp on electricity. They have a big screen TV, a hot tub, and all modern appliances. And Strizki takes great pride in the fact that he can power everything, including his car, using renewable hydrogen power.


“There’s no shelf life, and that’s what powers the sun. When the sun stops shining, we’re all dead. So this is a much better solution than digging big holes in the ground, throwing sulfur up into the air. This is something that’s definitely sustainable. We just have to have the will to do it.”


For the Environment Report, I’m Brad Linder.

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Green Auto Plants Going Main-Stream?

  • GM will build three new crossover SUVs at the Lansing plant. Production will start this fall. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)

A new assembly plant from one of Detroit’s Big Three car companies is getting attention for its “green” qualities. Big Three automakers may not rank at the top of most environmentalists’ list for companies of the year. But some say the new auto plant is a sign that environmentally-sensitive manufacturing has finally gone main-stream. It’s not just because building green plants is the right thing to do. Really, it comes down to a different kind of green. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:

Transcript

A new assembly plant from one of Detroit’s Big Three car companies is getting attention
for its “green” qualities. Big Three automakers may not rank at the top of most
environmentalists’ list for companies of the year. But some say the new auto plant is a
sign that environmentally-sensitive manufacturing has finally gone main-stream. It’s not
just because building green plants is the right thing to do. Really, it comes down to a
different kind of green. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:


The first thing you notice about the smell of General Motors’ newest plant is how much
you don’t notice it. The plant smells like nothing at all. Not paint, grease or even that
new car smell. GM says it specifically selected materials for its new Lansing Delta Township
Plant in Michigan to limit indoor air pollution. And there’s a lot more to not notice about the plant.
Like how much space it doesn’t use.


On a tour with reporters, GM Environmental Engineer Bridget Bernal points out that less
than half of the plant’s 1,100-acre lot has been developed. The rest is left green, including
75 acres for habitat preservation:


“And basically in that 75 acres, we have a couple of pretty large wetlands, along with
some smaller wetlands. We have a rather large wood lot. And we’ve got a significant area
that’s being developed as native prairie.”


GM says it only planted native species on the site. And it planned ditches and culverts to
help filter water as it drains into other areas. A quarter of the materials used to build the
facility was recycled. The plant uses 45 percent less total energy than a traditional plant.
And, on the day GM gave reporter tours, it rained. Even that gets used. The water is
collected in cisterns, and used for flushing. GM says the plant saves a total of more than 4
million gallons of water per year.


Put together, all these elements were enough to win GM a LEED Gold Certification from
the U.S. Green Building Council.


Kimberly Hoskin is director of the council’s new construction program. She says she’d
been traveling a lot for work when one of her colleagues asked if she’d be willing to take
a trip to an event Lansing, Michigan.


“And I said, ‘Well, who’s it for? And she said, well, General Motors.’ General Motors, a
factory, is getting a LEED Gold Certification? Yes, I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. This is really
exciting.”


GM is not the first auto company to use green elements in an auto plant design. Ford’s
Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan was built earlier this decade with a 10-acre “living”
roof that helped manage storm water runoff.


But Hoskin says, out of about 560 buildings in the nation that have been certified by the
Green Building Council, only five are manufacturing facilities, and GM says the Lansing
facility is the first auto assembly plant to get Gold, the agency’s top rating.


But for GM, the green elements of the Lansing Delta Assembly Plant aren’t just about the
environment. They’re about cold, hard cash. The lower energy use alone will save GM a
million dollars a year. That gives people like Hoskin comfort that the plant isn’t just a
public relations move by GM and it increases the chances that we’ll see more green plants
in the future.


Sean McAlinden is Chief Economist with the Center for Automotive Research:


“As we slowly replace our old big 3 plants, many of which are very elderly, they’re all
going to look like this. They’re all going to be green plants. In fact, some of them will
keep getting greener.”


That’s good news for places where there’s a lot of auto manufacturing, but many people
are not ready to absolve GM of all of its environmental sins.


David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says a green plant is nice,
but the real problem is still the product:


“Over eight times the impact on the environment when it comes to global warming is
once that vehicle leaves that plant. That’s the biggest step that we need automakers to
take and to improve the fuel economy of all of their cars and trucks.”


GM, and other automakers, say they are working to make cars cleaner. High gas prices
may force even more changes as sales of big pickups and SUVs drop off. Ultimately, car
makers’ profits could depend on building cleaner cars, just as keeping manufacturing
costs down will depend on having cleaner plants.


That could change the way auto companies think about environmental improvements
because going green will be about more than just doing the right thing, or protecting the
brand image. It will be about protecting the bottom line. What’s sustainable for the
environment will also be sustainable for the business, and both will show a lot more
green.


For the GLRC, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

RECONNECTING FARMERS TO LOCAL MARKETS (Part 2)

  • Many of the crops being grown in the U.S. don't end up in the produce aisle. In fact, they usually aren't even sold to people in neighboring areas. (Photo by Rene Cerney)

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:

Transcript

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans that are subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:


It can be hard to find locally-grown broccoli, milk, or beef in most grocery stores, even in the middle of farm country. In some states, ninety percent of the land is farmed, but ninety-eight percent of food people eat is shipped in from other parts of the nation or other countries.


The local farmers are growing commodities: corn and soybeans harvested for cattle-feed or processed foods, not stuff that winds up in the produce aisle. But ag economist Ken Meter wants to see that change.


“Farmers have doubled their productivity since 1969, and yet, they’re not making more money, they’re actually losing more money after doubling productivity.”


Meter has studied the economics of farm communities. In one area, he found that nearly all of the farm fields there were used to grow corn and soybeans for the commodities market, but farmers were losing money. At the same time, nearly all of the food people bought there was shipped in from other places.


“The economy we’re in right now is extremely efficient at taking any money that you or I earn in our neighborhood or in our daily lives and basically pulling it into a big global network that very efficiently takes that money and helps other people elsewhere make some value from it.”


It hasn’t always been this way. Richard Pirog is food systems researcher at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa. Eighty years ago, he says, most farms grew a lot of different
products and processed them to be sold locally or within the region.


“Iowa back in the 1920’s had fifty-four canneries. We were the canned sweet corn capital of the world in the mid-1920’s. Fast forward to today, there isn’t a single cannery in Iowa. So that infrastructure is gone.”


Pirog says you could tell similar stories in farm areas across the U.S. Back during World War Two, the federal government encouraged farmers to grow commodities, such as corn and soybeans. The government starting paying them subsidies to grow those crops.


These days, Pirog says a lot of farmers wouldn’t even think about risking those subsidies to grow something besides corn and soybeans. Economist Ken Meter says that might be a mistake. He says many farmers don’t realize there’s a growing market for local ag products.


“All of us get focused on whatever we’re paying attention to, and as a farmer you get focused on producing quite well. I’ve spoken with farmers who’ve told me that they really didn’t have any clue that that their neighbors would be looking for different foods, because they just haven’t heard of the tremendous increase in demand we’ve had for things like organic milk or higher quality meats or fresher produce.”


There has been an organic explosion of local farm markets in recent years, because customers want to buy fruit, vegetables, milk, and meat directly from the farmers who produce them. But government policy and farm subsidies mainly still support the commodity production of corn and soybeans.


Richard Pirog hopes that changes, but it’s unclear if growing produce for the new local markets is always economically viable. No one has studied the phenomenon.


“It has to make economic sense for a community and a region. We believe it will, which is why it’s spread so rapidly. But it’s sort of like, the real numbers, the quantification hasn’t caught up with all the growth and explosion and the interest.”


Pirog says he’d like to push the process along. He says it would make more sense for the government to shift subsidies from corn and soybean production to the farms that produce food for their local communities.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Designing a Green Neighborhood

  • "Green" single family homes built by GreenBuilt in the Cleveland EcoVillage. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:

Transcript

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:


(sound of street)


The morning sun is peaking through an overcast sky along a street lined with simple Victorian style homes. In this Cleveland neighborhood, two of these homes are brand new. Unlike their century old neighbors, they’re green buildings… built with the environment in mind.


One, is the home of David and Jen Hovus. It was built to actively conserve resources and to have a low impact on the environment. For example, all of the lights are on timers.


“I had to go out of my way to find timers that would control compact fluorescent lights, so that I wasn’t wasting too much electricity.”


Even the fan venting moist air from the bathroom… is on a timer. The furnace too, is a high-efficiency unit.


(sound of walking)


Hovus’s environmentally friendly surroundings don’t stop at the backyard gate. He lives in a special neighborhood called the Cleveland EcoVillage. And on his way to work, he sees green building principles and sustainable practices all along the way. Like the community garden, where even the tool shed is made of recycled material.


“There was a 120-year-old maple tree that was cut down. Folks brought a portable saw mill and they sawed it into lumber and that’s what they used for the framing. It’s actually a strawbale construction as well.”


The idea to revive a struggling neighborhood with sustainable solutions, started with the city’s environmental planning organization, EcoCity Cleveland. Back in 1997, they investigated dozens of the cities neighborhoods. And choose the west side neighborhood where Hovus lives, because it was close to transit, had a strong Community Development organization and had support of the local councilman.


David Beach is EcoCity Cleveland’s Executive Director. He says besides environmentally sound buildings, the neighborhood gives the option of a car-free life.


“Where everything you need is with in walking distance. So you’re living space, your work place, and some of your shopping can be right in that one neighborhood. And then you hop on that rapid transit and in five minutes your downtown or you’re at the airport.”


Everything within a half-mile radius of the transit station is in the EcoVillage.
Resident David Hovus stands at the entrance, with fierce wind coming off of Lake Erie.


“This used to be… there was literally a set of stairs leading down to the platform. There was essentially a bus shelter on the platform and that was it. And if you didn’t actually know where the entrances were, you’d never know there was a train station here.”


So EcoCity Cleveland and the neighborhood convinced Cleveland’s Transit Authority to spend nearly $4 and a half million dollars on a new station, based on environmentally sound principles. It’s the only Green Transit Station in Ohio.


“And now we’d got a nice warm building that uses passive solar heating and a lot of green building features.”


Mandy Metcalf is the EcoVillage Project Director. She continues our tour of the neighborhood down a walking path.
Four blocks later, twenty new green-built town homes come into view. In the same simple Victorian style of the neighborhood, they blend right in. They’re also very energy efficient.


“One resident said that his January bill was only forty dollars for gas, which is pretty impressive.”


But, the majority of the homes in the EcoVillage are more than a century old and very energy inefficient. While they’re considered “affordable housing,” a mortgage payment on top of a heating bill of more than $300 dollars makes them difficult to afford. So Metcalf’s organization helped homeowners discover where their energy was being wasted.


“What the best things, the most cost effective things that they could do to retrofit their houses. And now we’re going to match them up with loan programs and encourage them to go through with it.”


While older homes are being updated, the Ecovillage is making plans to improve the green space surrounding the local rec center. And within two years, they hope to entice a green building grocery store to the area.


For the GLRC, this is Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

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Crafting a House From Scrap Lumber

  • Kelvin Potter on the third floor of the house he's building with scrap lumber. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally friendly house. The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods
and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally-friendly house.
The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw
away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


Four men are raising a timber frame house on an old farm
in central Michigan. Several feet up in the air, they’re piecing together
some beams, 12 feet long and 12 inches thick with some help from a small
crane.


(Sound of engine)


“Cable it! Cable it! Cable it? Yes!”


(Sound of tool dropping)


The framing is like assembling giant Lincoln Log toys. Neighbor Nick
Van Frankenhuyzen is holding a rope attached to some beams.


“Look at that. Look at how far that is extended. We lifted one of
those beams yesterday by hand and they’re not light. Now this wall has to
come back. This has to pop out again to make that one fit and I don’t
know how that’s gonna happen.”


Facing these kinds of challenges is what people in the green building
movement seem to relish. Kelvin Potter owns this farm. He’s using materials
that most builders overlook.


Potter: “Yeah we saved all these timbers, developers were burning all these.
So. These were all going up in smoke. And some of these logs came off my
neighbor’s property. They had died and were standing. We dragged ’em over here. He planted them. He’s
standing right there.”


Van Frankenhuyzen: “Yeah we’re standing on them. And then Kelvin
said I sure could use them. Because they’re the right size. Go get ’em. So he did. And here they are. Can’t believe it. Much better than firewood.”


Kelvin Potter’s home is one example of a growing trend in green building.
The U.S. Green Building Council includes 4000 member organizations. It’s
created standards for protecting the environment. The standards include
reusing material when it’s possible, using solar and wind energy, renewable
resources, and non-traditional materials. Sometimes from surprising
places.


(Sound of truck)


A city truck dumps wood chips onto a municipal lot. On other days it
dumps logs like sugar maple, oak and pine. The trees came from routine
maintenance of parks, cemeteries and streets.
Kelvin Potter is also here, checking for any fresh deliveries. While other
guys come here to cut the logs with chainsaws for firewood, Potter says he
makes better use of it as flooring or trim. Even saw mills don’t take advantage of this kind of wood. That’s because
trees cut down in backyards often mean trouble for the mills.


“Sawmills typically aren’t interested in this material because there is
hardware, nuts, bolts, nails, clothes lines, all sorts of different things
people have pounded into them by their houses. ”


Potter says sawmills use big machines with expensive blades that get
destroyed. So THEY throw the logs away. Potter instead keeps the logs and
throws away his blades. He uses cheap ones, making it worth the risk.
When it’s finished, Kelvin Potter will have an environmentally friendly
house, even if it doesn’t meet all the criteria to be certified as a “green
building.”


Maggie Fields works for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
She says there are many ways to build green. Anything that helps the
environment is a big improvement on the status quo.


“Every material that we reuse is a material that doesn’t have to be cut
from the woods, if that’s where it’s coming from, or remanufactured. And that means that the pollution that’s associated with that material getting
to that use state isn’t having to be created. So, it doesn’t matter if they
get the green seal. If they’re taking steps along that that’s great.”


(Sound of climbing ladder)


Kelvin Potter is climbing a ladder to the belfry of his new house. He
shows off his shiny steel roof, the kind now covering barns. He compares it
to asphalt shingles.


“It lasts 100 years versus 15, 20 years. We actually fill a lot of landfills with shingles. They don’t compress. They don’t decompose. Steel will
go right back into making more roofing or cars or what not. It’s a win-win
situation. It’s a lot cheaper all around and I can’t see why it’s not a lot
more popular.”


The point Potter and other green builders are trying to make is, good
building material isn’t just the stuff marketed at lumberyards. They say, “Look around. You might be surprised what you can use.”


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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