As I mentioned in my past post, I’ve been on a series of vacations over the past couple of weeks. And during my series of nine flights, I had a lot of time to read magazines, catalogues and view countless adds on nameless airport walls. And do you know what I discovered? Green is really, really hip! Before you scoff and say in your head ‘hello Katie, where have you been?’ let me explain:

Over the past two years, even with a recession, sustainability and green promotion has become more than just a tactic. It has become necessary. Flipping through the Crate and Barrel catalogue, furniture

good-news

is advertised as being “sustainably harvested and sustainably engineered.” In that same magazine, Calphalon advertises a new recycling program where they promise to responsibly recycle your old cookware, while simultaneously advertising a new green nonstick finish for pots and pans. The message is pretty clear: Crate and Barrel cares about sustainability (hence you should buy their stuff, which I am in no way supportive of or not supportive of, by the way).

At my stay at the Omni Parker Hotel in Boston, it advertised green alternatives like most other hotels nowadays. But unlike many other hotels, it connected those green services to its premium Select Guest program, thereby making sustainability (and not washing your sheets) special.

Starbuck’s has upped the content of recycled fiber in its cups (now 10 percent, not sure when they did that) and touts its eco-consciousness on the side of current cups.

Heck, even Clorox has its Greenworks natural green cleaners label. It just never ceases to amaze me.

Do you agree? Are you constantly amazed?

Anyway, back to the news.Kevin Daniels of Daniels Development is currently in New Orleans where he is repairing homes that are still damaged from Hurricane Katrina. He’s there with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is blogging about the effort. To read the blog, click here. To learn more about the effort in general, click here. We also wrote about the trip here.

While I was gone, the DJC Green Building Blog was named to two “best of” lists. We were named number 71 on a list of  ”100 Innovative Blogs for Architecture Students.” We’re under the category “Eco-friendly architecture.” The list is compiled by a site called onlineclasses.org that is “dedicated to bringing you the absolute best resources and online educational tools.”

We were also named number 21 (but first under the “Green Construction” category) on a list called “Top 50 Construction Blogs.” This list is compiled by The Construction Paper.

The format of both sites look suspiciously similar though I’m not positive they are related. Hmmm. Either way, they both present a comprehensive list of great blogs, many of which I read on a daily basis to keep informed. It’s a good resource to see viewpoints from around the country and world on construction and architecture.

Incidentally, on one of my many flights, a gentleman I met who owned a construction company in rural Georgia said green building techniques are not used in every project, but are becoming much more common, especially in the major cities and in office projects. He said he’s taking classes on it and suspects they are moving slower than we are on the West Coast, though the south is still moving in that direction.

It never fails. August ends, September begins and the green building community GOES CRAZY WITH EVENTS! It’s like the green people fall asleep sometime in mid-July and wake up after Labor Day energetic and raring to go.

Anyway. As I will be out of the office for the next week, I figured I would make a short list of what’s going

Stop sleeping green people! It\'s September!

on. Here are some (not all) of the many green things to fill your September with:

On Sept. 8 the Master Builders Association hosts an introduction to Built Green at the MBA Housing Center from 8 to 10 a.m. It costs $30. More info here.

On Sept. 9, the Univeristy of Washington Professional and Continuing Education hosts a webinar on its new certificate in low impact development. The free Webinar runs from 5 to 6 p.m. For more information, click here.

On Sept. 10, the Cascadia Region Green Building Council is hosting a workshop on zero net water buildings and super low impact development. It will be at the Wyckoff Auditorium at Seattle University from 4 to 6:3- p.m. and costs $10. More info here. (P.S. last time I went to a talk in this series it was awesome. I’m sad I can’t go to this one….)

On Sept. 15, Carol Sanford will speak about attracting, incubating and holding business and sustainability at REI. Tickets are $18. More info here.

On Sept. 17, Sustainable Industries hosts its annual Economic Forum. Paul Hawken will speak. A panel of local business leaders will also discuss the economy. The morning event runs from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. It costs $75. More info here.

On Sept. 17, the AIA hosts its latest Regeneration lecture at the Seattle Art Museum on “the architectural challenge of 2030.” Amanda Sturgeon of Perkins + Will is speaking. Tickets run from $10 to $25. More info here.

On Sept. 23, the Urban Land Institute is hosting a morning presentation on the future of the Puget Sound region and challenges in urban development. Former governor Dan Evans will speak. Tickets are $15 at the door. More info here.

On Sept. 23, SMPS is hosting a lunch panel as part of Kirkland’s Sustainable September Initiative on sustainabiity and the state of the economy. The talk is called “After the recession - where is the work, what will it look like and are you ready?” It will run from 11:30 to 1:30 at the Bellevue Athletic Club. Tickets range from $40 to $55. For more information, go here.

On Sept. 25 the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild is hosting its annual 10×10x10 green building slam at the downtown Seattle Public Library. It costs $20. More info here.

If I missed your event, feel free to post it below in the comment section. Enjoy!

Teams install the solar panels

In June, the Seattle Aquarium installed its first solar hot water demonstration system. The system preheats water used in the second flood cafe by way of five solar panels that are located on the building’s south facing wall.

A press release from A&R Solar Corp., the company that installed the system, says the solar system isn’t just doing well. It says the solar collectors are offsetting almost double their expected amount. Reeves Clippard, president and co-founder of the company, said if solar works this well in Seattle, “the rest of the country has no excuse not to act now.”

Honestly, I don’t really know what to make of this. It’s a good thing that the system is performing so well. But a system that produces double what the models said it would makes me wonder what exactly that baseline was. Then again, we have had an amazingly hot, bright and sunny summer.

The system has a monitoring device that will eventually allow visitors to see how it is performing in real time. It uses Heliodyne Gobi flat-plate solar hot water collectors.

An outside view of the solar and the aquarium

Looking up at the panels

BigBelly trash compactors that is. What’s that you say? You don’t know what a BigBelly is, other than the thing that seems to sit on your father in law’s middle? Well friends, a BigBelly is a trash compactor that holds five times the trash of a normal can. And Seattle - which had three in March of 2008 - is about to be getting 20 more.

First, some history. I wrote about the BigBelly in March of 2008 here in the DJC after meeting

James Poss at the Globe 2008 conference, photo by Katie Zemtseff

its inventor, James Poss, at the Globe Conference in Vancouver, B.C. The BigBelly uses a solar panel to create energy, which it then uses to compact the trash inside it. This means waste haulers have to pick them up less often, which means the people paying haulers save money.

In 2008, Poss said the cans cost between $3,000 and $4,000 but pay for themselves quickly. Poss also said Seattle is a great climate for these things, because they work on ambient light, which exists when it is cloudy or rainy.

In Seattle, the 20 BigBellys will be placed along Third Avenue between Stewart and University streets by the Metropolitan Improvement District and Seattle Public Utilities. There will supposedly be a celebration at the first installation tomorrow (Saturday) from 10:30 to 11 a.m. at the west side of Third Avenue near the Stewart Street intersection.

Now, 20 BigBellys (which at $3,000 a pop totals $60,000) may seem like a big deal. But it’s not. Not when you compare it to Philadelphia, that is, which has replaced 700 downtown garbage cans with 500 BigBellys, according to the AP story which ran in the DJC last week. The story says the cans cost between $3,195 and $3,995 each (do the math, even at the lower end, it cost Philly about $1.6 million) but should save $875,000 per year, basically paying for itself in two years and then continuing to save money after. A press release for the MID says Philly plans to save $13 million over the next 10 years from the compactors

The BigBelly in action

and recycling containers that will go next to them.

The story says the cans in Philly will be emptied five times a week as opposed to 19 times for a regular trash can. The cans also have a wireless monitoring system to tell the city when they are full.

But here’s the interesting part: how many cans has Seattle been testing for over a year now? Three. How many cans did Philly test for a year before ordering 700? Three. I’m sure part of that difference has to do with the fact that Philly got some sort of a grant (the story doesn’t say what) for installations. But I think it still underscores how cautious Seattle is about making big decisions. Is Seattle too cautious here or is it smart not to jump into something like this too quick? (If you want to read the negative perspective of BigBelly, check out EcoMetro here.)

The AP story says Philly’s not the only one with BigBelly fever. Boston has 160, says they aren’t concentrated enough and wants more. Entities in New York are using 100. Chicago has 60, and they are being used in parts of Australia, Israel and France.

Seems like somebody at least thinks they’re a good concept.

And even if if weren’t a good concept, the BigBelly sure inspires some great quotes. When I spoke with Poss for the 2008 article, he described BigBelly as “carpooling for trash.”

And the AP story says Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter inititially asked, “What? Who’s got a big belly?” when he was introduced to the devices.

What do you think? Is there enough of a payoff for Seattle to invest in more of these or is our system just fine the way it is?

This may seem strange but I basically grew up in a Starbucks store. Not literally, of course. But it’s been a fixture in my life from childhood to teenagerdom to adulthood.

Sarbucks' older design at Green Lake

My earliest memory of the now-global-chain is awaiting my cherry Danish pastry (sadly, no longer the same amazing recipe) at a Northgate location on special treat days before school when I was somewhere around age six. Mom would get a vanilla latte and I’d feel like the luckiest kid in the classroom.

Then, as a teenager, I liked to visit local coffee houses (many of which are now defunct) to study or socialize. But whenever I didn’t feel like driving to Capitol Hill for Bauhaus, Charlie’s or Cafe Septieme, I ended up in one place near my home: the University Village Starbucks.

On a cool summer evening, there was nothing better. Back in the good ol’ days, it was open until midnight and you could while the hour’s away over one venti latte. Since then, my relationship with the chain has varied. But needless to say, I knew the old Starbucks store well.

Starbucks\' new store design at the University Village

I say the old Starbucks store because Starbucks recently unveiled the new store. And man, are things different!

In place of standard walls and windows are movable glass walls that allow air to naturally ventilate the space and daylight to come in. In place of the blocky displays in the middle of the space and separated cafe area, is one big place with community tables, dark nooks and barista bars.

It’s funny but sometimes, a place has to change before you realize how outdated it was. When I visited the original store, it was just the store. But now, it seems to have been a very 1990s incarnation of the coffee house. Passing by the Green Lake location yesterday, I found myself comparing the store to the new location and imagining how much nicer it would be if the walls peeled back to allow total views of the lake. 

The interior of the new store

The new University Village store is sleek. It’s kind of sexy. It’s modern. And it’s got sustainable features. It’s got LED and CFL lighting, energy efficient hand driers, and water efficient features like dual flush toilets that will save 1,000 gallons of water per day. During construction, teams diverted 80 percent of construction waste from the landfill.

(Of course that still means 20 percent of construction material ended up in the landfill. Is a new design really worth the waste?)

The community table was repurposed from a fallen ash tree in Wallingford

The store’s biggest sustainability focus is in sourcing, reusing and recycling local materials. These materials in the store include slate from Garfield High School, redwood siding from hop vine poles in Eastern Washington, merbau wood from existing buildings, scrap leather from car and shoe factories, burlap coffee bags from a Starbucks roasting plant, Douglas fir from school bleachers and metal from old espresso machines.

It’s all part of the company’s goal to make Starbucks relevant to its community, and to turn it into a customer’s “third place” (if you just said third what? click here). Will it work? Will it be enough to lure you in? Should Starbucks be doing more or is this a good start? Did the space need to be redesigned in the first place or would it have been greener to have just stuck with what was there? Feel free to share your opinion, comments or personal memories below. I’d love to hear if you, like me, grew up in a Starbucks or if you didn’t hear about it until you were 45.

The design is only one element of what Starbucks is trying to do as part of its Shared Planet Strategy. For more information on that, go here.

For more information on Starbucks’ new design concept or the sustainability features of the store, read the story in the DJC.

An interior bar at UV that is dedicated to showcasing small batch coffee, and its stories

The Stranger reports that The Schuster Group is laying off staff and trying to sell its double-LEED-certified headquarters building in lower Queen Anne for $4 million.

An interior view of The Schuster Group\'s headquarters building

Dominic Holden’s post quotes Scott Bevan, senior development manager of Schuster, saying, “The building is actually owned by one of our investment groups and part of our responsibility is to return money to our investors … In order to return in that investment, we have got to sell the property.”

In addition to Mosler Lofts, this building has been a very significant feather in the green developer’s cap. It represented the company’s commitment to green building, and was often cited as an example of what could be done in green development. 

Last June, I reported on the double LEED certification for existing buildings and interiors here. The building’s improvements included daylighting 90 percent of the office space, installing daylight sensors control lighting, using rainwater barrels and a reflective roof.

In that story, Mark Schuster, founder and CEO of The Schuster Group, said, “We didn’t just want to create an environmentally savvy building, we wanted to create an environmentally friendly atmosphere in which every tenant and employee has an active role in using green practices every day.”

Schuster also spoke at a forum in February on how green development would be affected by the economy.  At that event, he said people in the green movement are going to have to be committed to jumpstarting green building once the economy comes back in a couple of years. To read the story, see the DJC here.

According to a report by nonprofit Organic Exchange, global retail sales of organic cotton apparel and home textile products grew 63 percent from its 2007 number of $1.9 billion. In 2008, the report says, it reached $3.2 billion.

Organic cotton

The top ten brands that use and sell organic cotton might surprise  you.  They are Wal-Mart, C&A (out of Belgium), Nike, H&M (out of the UK), Zara (out of Spain), Anvil, Coop Switzerland, Pottery Barn, Greensource and Hess Naur (out of Germany). 

A press release says the report says the brands plan to expand their use of organic cotton to result in an estimated $4 billion market in 2009 and a $5.3 billion market in 2010. To learn more, visit Organic Exchange’s Web site. But beware, it looks like they want to charge you (and me) $400 for the full report!

Being a reporter, I get hundreds of e-mails a week. A good chunk of them are about eco-friendly products that are new, nifty and will “save the worrrllllldddd!” A couple of them are kind of nifty. But the majority of them aren’t… and are obviously motivated by business interests and the desire to make more green.

So when I received an e-mail this week about two entrepreneurs who founded an

Is greed good?

educational campaign promoting tap water, and then just happened to sell over 400,000 BPA-free, reusable water bottles from their Web site, it piqued my interest, precisely because it was addressing the money issue.

These two people - Eric Yaverbaum and Mark DiMassimo - are asking the public in a poll whether they are “greedy entrepreneurs,” “selfless environmentalists,” or both.

Now, both of these guys work in advertising or marketing, so this survey could very well be - and likely is - a marketing ploy. But even so, it’s interesting because it touches on the nebulous and often contentious connection between money and the environment.

The environmental movement isn’t completely comfortable with the notion that people make money off of things that are eco-friendly, especially because not everything that says it’s green really is (this is called ”greenwashing”). But really, the only way to get practices accepted on a large scale will be if someone, somewhere turns a profit in some way.

These two guys are making money but in the process they’re also getting their message - that buying bottled water is bad - out there to a broader audience. So is greed ok if it has a point?

What do you think - are they greedy or selfless? To answer the poll or to see results, click here.

The Seattlepi.com is reporting that Michael McGinn, creator of the Seattle Great City Initiative, is running for mayor against incumbent Greg Nickels.

Michael McGinn

McGinn, a visible voice in Seattle’s environmental scene, champions parks, open space, transit and making Seattle as livable as possible. Seattlepi.com says he would concentrate on schools, improving the technology infrastructure by buildng fiber optic networking to every home and business and local transportation issues.

To read the story, click here. The Seattle Times also has it here.

P.S. The Stranger’s Dan Savage also says he is running for mayor, but that he would resign if elected in order to allow the Seattle City Council to elect someone else.

This morning, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. keynoted the BuiltGreen Conference 2009 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. It was not your typical green conference keynote.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Most talks focus on one topic and explore it. At green events, that talk is usually centered around a project, a theory or a problem that we need to fix. This talk was mostly political and discussed everything from the benefits of “true free market capitalism” (many), to how the Bush administration tore down environmental rules and tenets (disastrously), to who was who in Washington, D.C. politics (lobbyists), to how much mercury human beings have in their bodies (a lot), to how the press has covered these issues (very poorly).

Honestly, he spoke about so many different things I don’t really know what to tell you, dear reader. So I’ll start with energy.

Kennedy spoke a lot about the energy grid. The largest technical problem in weaning ourselves off oil, he said, is that we don’t have a grid that can handle new sources of energy like wind or solar. Developing a system that would reach every American home would cost $1 million per mile, he said, or $150 billion. It’s a one-time expenditure, he said, and would benefit national security. He said we’ve done it before with computers and the Internet; all we have to do is make the commitment.

He also said we need to change the way the energy business works. Utilities today, he said, benefit by creating and selling more energy. We need to redevelop it to focus on conservation. “We have to change that incentivized system,” he said, “So that they can make the same money by getting people to conserve, not consume.”

He also spoke a lot about a business he is a part of called Better Place. Better Place is a venture-backed company that seeks to build an electric car network based on today’s technology. Kennedy said the company is beginning with Israel, where it hopes to transform the market over the next three years. The company will give electric cars away for free - made by Renault and Nissan - to anyone who signs a contract with the company. Under the contract, the person owns the car while Better Place owns the car battery (which costs $20,000). The company pays itself back by charging a premium on the power the car needs to run, outlined in the contract. He said the company has similar contracts with Denmark, Australia, Hawaii and north California, and would love for all of North America to follow suit.

“The electric car is the way this country is going to go,” he said.

Kennedy also took a hit at the mainstream media, calling it “negligent” in reporting important stories over the past decade. Instead, he said the media has become entertainment rather than information, which appeals to the prurient interests in the reptilian parts of our brains. Ouch.

Were you there? If so, what did you think was the most interesting thing he said and how would you rate his speech?

P.S. The information Kennedy shared about his personal levels of mercury (if he were a woman, he said a doctor told him his children would have cognitive impairment) was pretty frightening. If you want to test your mercury levels, visit the Waterkeeper Alliance, another organization Kennedy is affiliated with, here.