Young Hawks in the City

I found these immature red-tailed hawks at a school near the Habitat Build in the JeffVanderLou Neighborhood about a mile north of the Fox. Some parks, some open fields and empty lots will give these birds a hunting territory.

EF Schumacher

I first read Schumacher in high school in the 70s and he has stayed with me ever since. Check out this video on 'Buddhist Economics' from the 70s. It seems very fresh indeed.

Ecological Intelligence

This is the mainstreaming of concepts such as 'Externalized Costs' that appear in 'The Story of Stuff' on youTube, this blog and other places as well. It is a call to mindfulness and well worth studying and considering.

Ecological Intelligence Written on May 2, 2009 – 9:50 am by Daniel Goleman
Originally published at Huffingtonpost.com

There’s a new kind of math for the environmentally concerned, one that answers those everyday eco-conundrums like, Which is better: a reusable stainless steel water bottle, or those throwaway plastic ones?
The answers come from life cycle assessment (or LCA), the method used by industrial ecologists — a discipline that blends industrial engineering and chemistry with environmental science and biology — to assess how man-made systems impact natural ones. LCAs tells us that buying food in one store that’s been shipped in bulk leaves a smaller carbon footprint than driving around town to the local bakery, farmer’s market, and dairy. Or that the better wine choice for those living east of Columbus, Ohio, is a French Bordeaux, and for those to the west it’s the Napa Valley.
Those are simple problems in ecological accounting, which is designed to evaluate any manufactured thing — your iPhone, Cheerios, lip gloss — on its entire range of impacts on the environment, human health, and the people who labored to make it. An LCA lays bare the hidden impacts of our stuff from the moment its ingredients are extracted or concocted, through manufacture, transportation, retail, use and disposal. A simple glass bottle requires 1,959 discrete steps from birth to disposal, each of which can be analyzed for dozens of impacts, from particles emitted to air, water and soil, to energy footprint or impact on the incidence of cancer.
Gregory Norris, the industrial ecologist who walked me through these ecological calculations, is putting LCAs to good use in Earthster, an open source website designed to help the folks who manage supply chains identify the impacts of their products and find less harmful upgrades.
And the more we all apply this new math, the greater our collective ecological intelligence. So here’s the lowdown on a very practical question: is it more ecologically correct to tote a stainless steel bottle you refill with water, or to use water in throwaway plastic bottles? As it turns out, it all depends.
Off the bat, making stainless steel has a worse impact profile than knocking out plastic bottles. Food-grade stainless is an alloy of chromium, nickel, and pig iron. The chromium comes from minds in places like Kazakstan and India, where workers have a heightened risk of cancer from exposure to the raw ore. Melting the metals requires heating them to thousands of degrees. All these processes release hundreds of pollutants into air, water and soil — including green house gases like methane and lung-clogging particulates. Then once you have your steel bottle, if you wash it in a dishwasher that uses a half-liter of electrically heated water, somewhere between 50 and a hundred washes result in the same amount of pollution caused by making the bottle in the first place.
Putting aside the question of plastics ridden with BPA, the chemical suspected of being a carcinogen and endocrine disrupter, the overall ecological impacts of a stainless bottle, compared to plastic, are more worrisome pretty much across the board.
So does it pay to use plastic bottles rather than stainless? Yes — but.
You’ve got to use the stainless bottle enough times to offset a great number of the plastic ones. At just five plastic bottles replaced by the stainless, the math starts to tip toward stainless; 25 uses brings you to the tipping point where most of the ecological negatives of the plastic bottles are outweighed by your using stainless steel. And at 500 replaced plastic bottles you pass the last marker — freshwater eco-toxicity — so you’re benefiting the planet every time you sip from your stainless.

USGBC Headquarters, LEED Fine Print, and Negotiating a Green Lease

Q&A: Sally Wilson on the USGBC Headquarters, LEED Fine Print, and Negotiating a Green Lease Click on this link for Green Lease Info

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Interesting book & project

Architecture for Humanity Saint Louis

Congrats to all involved on a nice event for AFH at the Tap Room on Tuesday evening. We got the word out and met some new folks who are interested in moving forward with us as we grow into year 2 on the local scene. Lindsay, Holly & Tara did a great job organizing and promoting the event and Mikey did fine work explaing our mission and local projects to the party goers. Click on the image to enlarge. Reach the local AFH site here.

Stormwater Now!

The image on the top was taken yesterday at 10:00AM on Page looking west towards Ferguson. The picture on the bottom was shot at 8:00AM today. One can easily see the effects of extensive impervious surfaces on drainage in many parts of our region. Pervious paving, rain gardens and any means which help manage stormwater by slowing down it's release into the MSD system can have a positive effect on our streams and rivers. When our wastewater treatment plants are overburdened during storms the untreated or partially treated volumes of waste and stormwater are discharged into the river. We see unsustainable practices and infrastructure around us. Be mindful and act at your own home and in your own business.

San Simeon/Hearst Castle

On the right side of the blog is a new slide show featuring a few images from my tour of San Simeon. Apparently Hearst hated this being referred to as a 'castle' as he had a 'real' castle in Wales. This was his small ranch at 250,000 acres while his larger ranch was over a million acres. This is the inspiration for Citizen Kane and one of the greatest examples of excess I have seen. Still, there is something about a nice library...

Tanzania Update

Click on the image to enlarge. Father Setonga, on the left, is seen here at Cal Poly reviewing the Tanzania project with the D/B Team. On the right is a presentation on the wastewater management system. With some luck and hard work ground may be broken in 12-18 months.

Architecture for Humanity Event

Click on the invite below and mark your calendars!

A Map

This is a map I made a while ago. I triangulated points between home, my office and locations for most of my projects. I was thinking of using this as a personal kind of transportation audit. The idea is to identify the range/area in which one has to travel frequently and then find appropriate services, shops, etc. within the triangle in order to minimize travel and, hence, CO2 emissions. Just a thought.

Ed Ricketts & Pacific Biological Laboratories

While in Cali last week I was lucky enough to complete a bit of a literary pilgrimage in Salinas and Monterey by touring the Steinbeck Museum and paying homage to Ed Ricketts by stopping by his old lab site at 800 Cannery Row. The neighborhood is a tourist trap now but some really great stuff took place there back in the day. Some of Ricketts' philosophy is folded into Steinbeck's The Log of the Sea of Cortez in the Easter section and there is another book called The Renaissance Man of Cannery Row edited by K. Rodger worth reading that is a biographical sketch and a collection of letters. The character of 'Doc' in Cannery Row is based on Ricketts and the following is a favorite quote:

"It has always seemed strange to me, said Doc. The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." — John Steinbeck Cannery Row

Images from Cal Poly

I had a great exchange with 4th year students at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. The school is very 'hands-on' in CM, architecture and engineering and aside from a beautiful campus a few miles from the ocean, the students and faculty are all very dedicated to teaching, learning and building. Remember: those of us in this industry, in some sense, make the world we live in. Let's do it as a smart, hardworking team.

Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

I am flying out in the morning for a few days work on the Tanzania Project and as a guest lecturer on low cost, sustainable housing. I will report back while on the road if I get a chance.

2009 Habitat Build In Progress!

Art Stauder, the architect of these remarkable homes is seen here along with volunteers and homebuyers as this year's blitz gets under way.

an email to Peter Senge

Peter Senge did a great job leading a conference at SLU this past Thursday. It was sponsored by St. Louis Learns and Leads and Sustainable St. Louis. It was followed by a luncheon in Dubourg Hall. Although I have no reason to expect a response I sent the following to Peter as a follow up of the day's discussions.

I think most of what he espouses will lead to good work but I also think it is important to identify the general goals of a project or process and to communicate this openly.

Peter,

Thanks again for coming to St. Louis today. I especially like your call to reinstate our ‘elders.’ I am 50 years old but some of my most valued relationships are with a retired philosophy professor and a 70 year old designer. They take delight in the activities of folks younger than them and they provide a great perspective for proper moderation and the value of patience.

I raised the question, in the workshop today, about the moral neutrality of systems thinking. I don’t want to diminish the power and value of something that has been a part of my life since I can remember but I get concerned when there is little discussion of how such tools might be applied. I had a conversation with a recent graduate of Washington University’s EMBA program about leadership. He talked about the value of leadership, the leadership gap and how most folks don’t want to be leaders. It seemed to be that leadership was seen as a goal, an end, a telos of some sort and that, to me, is quite scary. Certainly we can distinguish between the manipulation of a Hitler and the liberating work of a Gandhi but both involve leadership.

Finally, I think there is something wonderfully subversive in The Necessary Revolution. The sense of “the real reality” which lies outside the bubble reminds me of Buddhist teachings on human nature and addiction. Jaworski and his work on “servant leadership” strikes me the same way.

Regards,

Richard Reilly, LEED AP

Van Jones

http://fora.tv/2009/02/02/Van_Jones_The_Green_New_Deal#chapter_01 Check out this link for an hour with Van Jones and a fine intro to his work fostering a green collar economy.

Tanzania Update

Click on the image to enlarge it and see what's going on in the Same region. Cal Poly students are doing survey work for the Polytechnic d/b project. We are grateful to be working in support of this impressive project.

Growing Green Awards

The St. Louis Chapter of the USGBC had an awards ceremony Tuesday night and Habitat won the Residential Award and I won in the "Quietly Green" category. A very humbling experience because so many people and so many groups make such a thing possible. Boa Construction, Habitat, Focus St. Louis, Architecture for Humanity, The USGBC, Cal State Poly and my family have all done so much to support and encourage these activities. To them I give my thanks. Click on the image above to see all the winners and the image below for a bit more info!

Canto III of Dante's Inferno

Click on the image to enlarge. There is much to learn about the modern condition in Dante. TS Eliot new it almost 100 years ago and anyone who takes the time will find out more about the workings of human nature in 100 Cantos then can be found in any university and this only requires a library card! In this image a typescript of Eliot's The Wasteland (in which he does a straight lift from the 3rd Canto) is laid over a collage of illustrations running the gamut from a medieval illustration of Dante's 3rd Canto, postage stamps and other clues to the connections between 14th Century Italy and 21st Century America. Collage is a type of construction or assemblage of images and other detritus. It is my aim to show connections between the past and present in both art and literature. At its simplest it is like Zippy: "Wherever you go, there you are!" In another sense we can learn from a deep study, what motivates and drives people and perhaps learn how to navigate the middle of this realm of addiction and aversion with a steady gait.

certification confirmed

We helped Habitat step up to LEED in 2008 and we want to congratulate all involved because the USGBC just confirmed that all 27 homes have been certified Platinum. This almost doubles the number of LEED certified structures in St. Louis.

Bissell Point Treatment Plant

Yesterday I toured a waste water treatment plant just North of Downtown. It is one of seven such facilities in the St. Louis region. I recommend a tour to anyone who doubts the positive value of impervious surfaces, cisterns and rain gardens in site development. Slowing down stormwater doesn't have the same level of attraction to a homebuyer as a geothermal HVAC system which would save a lot of money. But, if one thinks a bit bigger it is easy to see the value to our community of doing a better job managing storm water.

This image is taken from the catwalk of the trickle down filter tank towards the arch. The thinner stacks house bio filters that take the stink out. You may click on the image to enlarge.

Monk's Mound

from the St. Louis Business Journal (click on image to see the profile)