Last week, I mentioned Seattle’s new green building task force. Their job is to figure out how to make Seattle’s buildings (both old and new) 20 percent more efficient by 2020. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me (and possibly them) what you want to see.

The team is discussed in an article today in the DJC. The story discusses multiple viewpoints: Ash Awad of McKinstry thinks Seattle is behind New York City and Chicago in some ways in energy efficient programs and incentives, and the task force can help shore up that deficiency. Douglas Howe of Touchstone is concerned about maintaining Seattle’s commercial viability.

But there are 50 people on the task force. Doesn’t that mean there are (honestly) going to be 50 different opinions? Especially when the force is looking at everything from density bonuses and expedited permits to green investment funds and “carbon feebates.”

So how about you, 51st task force member? Does one of these ideas strike you as being better? What would it take to get you to update or upgrade a building or system, and would any of these ideas do it?

For those of who who have already taken the efficiency plunge, don’t look so smug. Mark Frankel, technical director of the New Buildings Institute and task force member, said there isn’t a building in Seattle that couldn’t improve its energy efficiency, even by commisioning alone. Hemmmmm.

In other news, MarketWatch has a story on how the Electrical Contractor Magazine’s 2008 Profile of the Electrical Contractor says almost half of electrical contractors used green or sustainable feature. For more go here.

The New York Time’s Dot Earth covers what Google’s energy czar thinks we should do about energy in America.

EcoMetro Seattle has a post on green fabrics appearing on Project Runway (for any fashion geeks out there).

JetsonGreen has two Puget Sound area stories, including an announcement of a green open house in Mt. Baker tomorrow.

I’ve been on vacation the last week in Chicago/Michigan/Indiana so here’s some news items you might have missed:

Seattle is a walkable city!  According to Walk Score’s listing of the 138 most walkable neighborhoods in the country, Pioneer Square hits number 18, Downtown Seattle (wherever that is) is 33, First Hill is 46, Belltown is 61, Roosevelt is 64, the International District is 83, South Lake Union is 85, University District is 86, Lower Queen Anne is 97 and Wallingford is 133. And overall, Seattle is the 6th most walkable city, following San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. I don’t know that I agree with the ranking, do you? For more opinion on whether Seattle reeeeallly outranks Portland, check out the Seattle Weekly here. For more on urban development visit Seattle MetBlogs here, and  Sightline’s has more here with some pertinent reader comments!

The first meeting of the Green Building Task Force is tomorrow from  3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the downtown library. The goal of the force over the next six months is to figure out how to actually make Seattle the “green building capital,” and help achieve Nickel’s February goal of improving energy efficiency in commercial and residential by at least 20 percent. I wrote about that in the DJC here. They’ll be looking at policy options, financing programs, efficiency incentives and regulatory mandates.

There will be two teams: one will work on existing building stock, the other will work on new. That’s an important point, as many energy efficiency programs or government mandates only look at new projects, and not existing, even though there is by far much more to fix in existing buildings.

I love sources that provide a virtual who’s who of green people and this task force does just that. Members include reps from AIA, AGC, BOMA, Master Builders, Mithun, NBBJ, Touchstone, Seattle Steam… you get the idea. To see the actual list, go here.

In other news, I learned on my trip that US Weekly has a spread in its current edition about green celebrity tips. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but if you (or your kids) want to know what Cameron Diaz does to go green, check it out. I must admit the part comparing carbon emissions from celebrity perks (like personal jets and yachts) to everyday life (coach seating, a little sailboat) was a tad - shall I say - enlightening (or depressing, take your pick). Treehugger covers it here.

How much trash does a “green” event produce? Evidently, a lot if you’re the U.S. Green Building Council’s GreenBuild 2007. The annual conference, held in Chicago last year, created 44 tons of waste.

Granted, 91 percent of it - or 40 tons -  did not end up in the landfill, according to Dan Bulley, chair of the Volunteer Committee for Greenbuild in 2007. Instead 300 college students sorted through the waste.

Of the 40 tons of waste diverted, Bulley said seven tons were food scrap, and six tons were wood from expo displays in the exhibit hall.

What’s 40 tons of waste? For people around Seattle, it’s all the dog droppings left in Snohomish County over two days. For out of towners, it’s 260,000 items that washed up on New Jersey’s beaches over a year. For the U.S., it’s on the low end of the total waste a person produces in a year.

When you rationalize the numbers out, the mass waste makes some sense…. it was a week long conference and expo with an exhibit hall and 25,000 participants, so Bulley says it works out to about 3.5 pounds of waste per person (nevermind most people only stayed three days but we’ll go with it….).

But does mass waste ever make sense? The diversion fact is commendable. And the image of college students rifling through my waste (yes, I was at GreenBuild) is something to ponder. But did that 44 tons of waste need to be created in the first place?

Think about it… thousands of people gathering together to figure out how to save the environment and how to build green. And yet they still can’t not use things. 44 tons of things. Thrown away. Isn’t green building all about the idea that the little things - like 44 tons of waste - matter?

No wonder right wing talk show hosts call greenies hypocrites.

Remembering back, the hefty 187-page program could have been …. digital! Or it could have been easier to compost food scraps, or recycle nametags.  Those participating in the expos could have used less literature or cards that pointed attendees to a Web site.

Or, as a green building consultant said to me the other day, the entire conference could have been virtual. If 44 tons of trash sounds like a lot, imagine the carbon emissions from the millions of miles of air travel. (I for one met people from the U.K, Japan, Canada….)

This is by no means an isolated event, just a high profile one. But it seems to me an example of the kinks, shall we say, in the green building movement. Do I have something here or is it too much to think that people promoting green … could change the way they do things? It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees (that were at least, diverted).

For more, Building Design + C0ntruction runs the full press release here. FrontBurner asks if green trash is still green here. Or in another scenario from Wired Magazine here, Brandon Keim explores a Japanese city that just stopped waste collection. Now there’s an idea. 

Last week I came up with my own “brilliant” idea: create an online forum where people that work in green buildings would record their experiences to create a better understanding of how green buildings really feel.

That post was in response to Weber Thompson’s blog that is doing exactly that. If you missed it, that blog also answered my question on how the team is measuring their building’s performance (see tag below for Weber Thompson).

Now I’m asking you what your brilliant ideas are?

It’s no secret that Seattle (and Chicago, and Portland and New York etc….) are racing to be the greenest city in the country. So if Seattle wants to hold onto that goal, what should it do? Should density be the focus or should it be regulations through things like stricter energy codes?

On a broader scale, is urban planning the answer or is it more incentives?   

For a British perspective on what cities should do, see a BBC story here. For a video on the nature of sustainability and its future from the perspective of Sir Norman Foster, click here. Or you could check out Sustainable Ballard’s Web site here to see what one Seattle neighborhood thinks, or Sustainable Capitol Hill’s site here.

I’ll admit it: I often take Seattle’s environmentally friendliness for granted, even though I know it’s a leader in many areas.

Renewable energy? City buys it. Green building? City does that too. Recycling? Um, duh.

Sometimes, it takes an ice cold swim in reality to remember these things we take for granted, aren’t commonplace. Today that dose of reality came in the form of a quiz from Grist.org. To take it for yourself, click here.

I took the quiz and for most of the questions I couldn’t for the life of me click the obviously negative answers (excepting, of course, the traffic categories). I found myself naively wondering… are there actually places in the U.S. where all of these negative answers are normal? Keep reading to learn about the quiz and what lesser known green cities are doing (more…)

I know I’ve questioned the validity of ratings before but this one is pretty cut and dry: according to the USGBC, Seattle has the most LEED certified buildings of any city in the country.

So what does that mean? Seattle has the most LEED certified buildings, but does that make it the greenest city?

Not according to a whole host of previous green city ratings - I wrote about that topic and Corvallis, Ore., being the greenest city earlier this year (to see it look under topic ratings below).

So Seattle’s got the most LEED certified buildings. Why? Is it the city’s policy of requiring projects that get public funding to be LEED silver (after all 10 of the LEED certified buildings are owned by the city of Seattle including Seattle City Hall). Is it a critical mass of green-oriented architects in the city? Is it incentives? What do you think? Comment and tell me what in Seattle really made LEED take off.

If we take a step back from Seattle, Washington State isn’t doing too bad itself. According to Cascadia’s latest Greenbuilder newsletter (an excellent source of information that I would recommend anyone interested in regional green building sign up for) as of April 3, the regional stats look like this:

Washington has 83 LEED certified projects with another 503 registered, or on the boards. Oregon has 69 certified projects and 315 registered. British Columbia has 32 certified projects and 199 registered. And Alaska has three certified projects and 22 registered.

And check out the other cities that round out the list of top five. They are (in order): Portland, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Grand Rapids, Mich. Pretty much the usual subjects, though some of you might be doing a double take at Grand Rapids. The city is actually quite a green leader and has a lot of new construction going on. For a more localized explanation, though written in 2006, check out the Rapid Growth site at http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/features/sustain16.aspx.

By the way my blogging program is acting up… hopefully tomorrow it will let me do everything it’s supposed to like make links. More on this tomorrow!