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.

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!

That’s right, you heard me correctly. According to CountryHome Magazine’s April issue, and Sperling’s BestPlaces, Corvallis is the greenest city in the country.

Not Seattle. Not Chicago. Corvallis. Then again, Bellingham makes number 3 on the list, with Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton tied (I’m assuming, unless there’s a new city by that name) for second place. In that vein, Seattle-Bellevue-Everett is tied for 13th place, with Eugene-Springfield, OR. and San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, Calif., beating us.

Am I the only one that’s confused here? First, it seems to me that the top 100 cities should be cities… and there should only be 100 of them, rather than a series of cities strung together by hypens. Second, living in Seattle, I’m interested in how it is 100 percent tied with Everett and Bellevue.

If we consider only one measuring stick of the study - the number of green buildings in an area, there are stark differences between Seattle, Bellevue and Everett. According to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Web site, Seattle has 38 LEED certified buildings, Bellevue has 2 and Everett has none. And if we look at LEED registered buildings (or buildings that plan to be LEED certified) the difference is even greater. Bellevue has 7, Everett has 2 and Seattle has 138. Not that LEED is the only indicator of how green a city is, but it is one thing the study considered. To see how many LEED buildings are planned in a city you’re interested in, visit the USGBC’s national registry by pressing here .

Other Washington winners are Wenatchee at 26 (was number 5 last year! Ah Wentachee, how you’ve failed us!), Olympia at 28, Spokane at 37, Mount Vernon-Anacortes at 48 and  Tacoma at 61.  Umm… what’s missing? Yakima, Tri-Cities…. but wait! There was a second page that listed the greenest cities from 101 to 200.

And in THAT list… we’ve got Kennewick-Richland-Pasco at 108 and Yakima at 112. And in the 300’s, there’s Longview at 244. And that’s it for Washington. The list ends at 379 with Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, La. as the end in greenest cities. Somehow no city on the east side other than Bellevue made the cut, even though cities like Kirkland have a self professed commitment to green policies. Neither did Federal Way or Kent, the only two of Washington’s ten largest cities not included in the list.

Then again, this is only one group’s interpretation. In December, The EarthLab Foundation in Kirkland rated Seattle number 8 and Chicago number 1. In February, Popular Science rated Portland number 1 and Seattle number 8. In 2006, National Geographic’s Green Guide said Eugene was number 1 and Seattle was number 24.

Is it all a guessing game? Are these lists arbitrary? And what exactly makes a city “the greenest in the country” if cities are so different?

According to a press release from the city of Corvallis, the CountryHome study looked at 24 data metrics in five major categories including mass transit use, green power policies, number of green-certified buildings, and organic markets among other things. It used information from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Environmental Priotection Agency, and the USGBC among others.

In the race to be the greenest city, do cities forget about what’s best for the people that live in them, work in them and do business in them? Or do these ratings really matter? Have they changed the way you do business? 

From your experience working with green building, is it the same old shtick in Seattle, Everett and Bellevue or are there subtle differences? Tell me what you think! You can even post anonymously…..