Greenversations

Last year, I got a call from Dr. Kim Cochran, EPA’s construction and demolition expert in DC. She was going to a Demolition Convention in Las Vegas and wanted to set up a tour with Evergreen Recycling. As the Regional EPA recycling contact, I’d been working with the great folks at Evergreen for many moons.
After the tour, she called me in awe — she’d seen a lot of recycling facilities — but they’d never seen anything like Evergreen, and said “Their facility is probably the most exciting recycling facility I have ever seen! I was really impressed with the numbers and types of materials they are able to recycle.”
Evergreen Recycling was an EPA Pacific Southwest award winner for transforming recycling efforts in Nevada with their state-of-the-art recycling facility.

They partnered with MGM MIRAGE, one of the world’s leading development companies, to divert 50,000 tons or 94.7% of the CityCenter project’s construction debris from landfill disposal in 2008. CityCenter, an 18-million-square-foot multi-use LEED registered project, will be one of the world’s largest sustainable urban communities.

Evergreen’s 85 employees have recycled over 200,000 tons of resources. Evergreen also developed a local market for drywall that removes the paper and makes it back into new drywall. Now that’s real closed-loop recycling — drywall in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas!

Evergreen’s founder and President, Rob Dorinson, has been invaluable in supporting Nevada’s green building movement and helping Nevada’s recycling rate more than double in the past ten years. Luckily, I was able to tour Evergreen Recycling last year while I was on vacation, and it was the highlight of my visit. Of course, enjoying the Vegas buffets with family and friends was great too! Take a virtual tour and tell me what you think!

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team for 10 years and is Co-Chair of EPA’s Green Building Workgroup.

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I’m always on the lookout for healthy and green products, but it’s tough to get unbiased information on a product’s real impacts. Now that green is hot, greenwashing - the deceptive use of green marketing - is definitely on the rise.

EPA’s Pacific Southwest Region selected the Pharos Project from the Healthy Building Network as an environmental award winner.  Their mission is to transform the market for building materials – more than three billion tons per year – to advance best environmental, health and social practices. In 2008, Pharos — a revolutionary on-line tool for evaluating and comparing the impacts of building materials in a comprehensive and transparent way — was developed.

The Pharos Project is re-defining green labeling practices to develop a consumer-driven vision of truly green materials using a 16-attribute visual lens and label. This offers more information than any other green label on the market, including the ability to compare actual ingredients. Together, the lens and label will allow the public and the building community to buy products with the attributes most important to them.

The Healthy Building Network has also worked to -

• Advance adoption of the Precautionary Principle
• Develop the Green Guide for Health Care
• Support the California’s stringent restrictions on formaldehyde emissions from particleboard, and
• Research San Francisco’s dioxin-free procurement policy.

As I look through the Pharos lens, everything seems important, but I’d have to say that my Pharos-pie-piece priorities are High Hazard Toxics, Indoor Air Quality, Global Warming, Fairness and Equity, Habitat, and Renewable Materials.
What are yours?

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team for 10 years and is Co-Chair of EPA’s Green Building Workgroup.

Back in the day, when I thought about green plumbers, the famed video game character, an Italian plumber named Luigi, came to mind. But while his hat and suspenders may have been green in color, he fought fanged mushrooms and evil turtles, not inefficient water use and global climate change—and that, it turns out, is what real green plumbers do.

Though they lack super mushrooms inducing gigantism, flowery fireballs, and bouncing stars granting temporary invincibility, GreenPlumbers® have an impressive arsenal:

- They conduct water audits in homes, identifying how much water is used and how much can be saved.
- They replace water-guzzling, leaky toilets, wasteful faucets, and shabby irrigation equipment with high efficiency models.
- They install and maintain water efficient systems like rainwater catchment and greywater systems.

For all their hard work, GreenPlumbers® recently received a 2009 EPA Pacific Southwest Environmental Award.

In the Pacific Southwest, extracting, conveying, treating, distributing, and using water, and then collecting and treating wastewater uses a lot of energy. In California, for example, 20% of the State’s electricity use and 30% of their natural gas use is attributed to water use. EPA estimates 3% of national energy consumption– equivalent to approximately 56 billion kilowatt hours (kWh)–is used for drinking water and wastewater services. Assuming the average mix of energy sources in the country, this adds about 45 million tons of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.

By reducing water use, green plumbers reduce the amount of water flowing through our inefficient water infrastructure to directly reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

My perception of plumbers has been transformed, thanks to these amazing, award-winning Green Plumbers. You can join me in finding certified GreenPlumbers® and learning about their national training and accreditation program at www.greenplumbersusa.com/.

About the author: Charlotte Ely spent two years jumping from office to office through the Environmental Intern Program. She landed in EPA’s Pacific Southwest Sustainable Water Infrastructure and Climate Change program in the fall of 2008, and plans to stay put for a while.

I was enjoying my early morning quiet office when the phone rang. The man at the other end, Jason, uttered a polite good morning, asked if I worked on air quality issues, and then started firing questions on emissions and idling rules for his 15 year old truck. Did I know about how the federal regulations differed from California’s or Nevada’s? Would he incur fines if he did not comply this year, or was it just starting next year? Was it true that some states had grant programs for upgrading? How about tax incentives? How could he tell which new technologies would work? I was speechless and trust me when I say, I am rarely speechless. I mumbled a response and promised to call him back. Did we really expect every trucker to figure all that out?

I set out on what I thought would be a long day of tracking down answers. The answer came quickly and definitively when I asked a colleague who is an expert on partnerships aimed at reducing diesel pollution. She said, “Have him call Cascade Sierra Solutions”. Could it be that simple? Apparently so!

Everyone knows that diesel powered trucks carry most of our freight and that they last 25-30 years while exhaling a lot of harmful pollutants. Truckers want to/ need to clean up the legacy fleets - but how?

Help has come to many in the form of Cascade Sierra Solutions (CSS), one of our Environmental Award Winners. At CSS, they remove barriers to awareness, capital cost and regulatory information. They know how busy truckers can be and how hard it is for them to find answers about the rules of the road. By forming a unique partnership with public agencies and clean diesel equipment suppliers, they’ve managed to educate truckers through outreach centers at popular truck stops. CSS is helping truckers receive grants, tax incentives, and low interest financing to stay in compliance and reduce fuel expenses. In the past three years, this non-profit has placed upgrades on over 1800 trucks and facilitated over 300 truck replacements which have all accounted for over 5.5 million gallons of fuel savings. More importantly, they’ve reduced over 57,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, 475 metric tons of nitrogen oxide and over 11 metric tons of particulate matter – the deadliest outdoor air pollutant in the US.

Thanks to CSS, Jason will keep on truckin’.

About the author: Niloufar Glosson is currently on assignment to the Office of Regional Administrator as a special assistant. Until recently she worked in the Air Program, where she learned how critical it is to reducing diesel pollution.

On September 23, 2008 I was touring the Upper Santa Cruz River with Amy McCoy of the Sonoran Institute as my watershed tour guide. The trip was awesome; I never knew that the southeast corner of Arizona was so beautiful.

Towards the end of our day trip Amy was anxious to get back to Tucson to attend an important City Council meeting, I didn’t know it until later that it was the vote on the Grey Water Ordinance that Amy was trying to make it to. The Sonoran Institute, using EPA Targeted Watershed Grant funds, helped to put together the ordinances for the City Council vote.

Because there’s so little surface water in the Tucson area, the city’s major water source has always been groundwater. The Grey Water Ordinance is aimed at reducing the use of scarce drinking water to irrigate desert landscapes. The city estimates that 45 percent of water use is for landscaping, and using rainwater and gray water would greatly reduce this.

The ordinance requires rainwater harvesting plans and capturing systems for any new commercial building built after June 1, 2010. The Ordinance requires that new homes built after that date be plumbed for gray water irrigation systems. This means having a drain for sinks, showers, bathtubs, and washing machines separate from drains for all other plumbing, to allow for future installation of a gray water system.

A key factor contributing to the success of this ordinance was the involvement from the entire community, from plumbers and landscapers to the Friends of the Santa Cruz River, they all added their support for the ordinances success. In addition to the community support, an EPA grant helped finance some of the work towards creating the ordinance language.

The City of Tucson was selected for a Pacific Southwest Regional Environmental Award and on the day of the awards ceremony, I had no idea who was coming to accept the award, but had heard that Councilman Rodney Glassman was coming. He was the driving force behind the ordinances, but I had no idea what he looked like. Well, Rodney is about 6’8”, and super energetic, really hard to miss. Once we connected it was great to sit and chat with him, he is very passionate about the ordinances, Tucson, and Arizona. Way to go Councilman Rodney Glassman and the City of Tucson!

About the author: Jared Vollmer works in the Watersheds Office at the EPA, Region 9 office. His work is primarily with the State of Arizona, Department of Environmental Quality, on reducing nonpoint source pollution in Arizona’s impaired watersheds. In addition, Jared works directly with the Sonoran Institute, a recipient of EPA’s Targeted Watershed Grant, located in Tucson in the Santa Cruz Watershed.

Sometimes I wonder what impact a single person or even a small group can have on preserving the environment. How much am I really contributing to environmental protection by taking public transportation to work, carrying around my own coffee mug, and taking advantage of the great composting and recycling programs we have in San Francisco? While struggling with my own impact on environmental protection, I met Ignacio Cabrera and Angelo Villagomez, representing Friends of the Monument at the EPA Pacific Southwest Regional environmental awards ceremony.

These two men from Saipan described their organization’s goal of preserving and protecting the Marianas Trench in the waters around three islands of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Marianas Trench is the deepest ocean trench with some of the greatest biological diversity in the world. The Friends of the Monument engaged in activities to help educate the community–distributing leaflets, conducting meetings, participating in television and radio public service announcements, and coordinating with teachers for classroom presentations. They took advantage of Web 2.0 and developed a blog, Myspace and Facebook groups, and even have their own YouTube Channel.

Students turning over some of their over 500 letters to President Bush to the rangers at American Memorial National Park.

The Friends of the Monument gathered several thousand signatures in support of the designation of the Monument, including over 500 from school children, and traveled over 8,000 miles to Washington D.C. to meet with White House officials.

The designation of the monument was not politically popular on the islands and at times, the members of the Friends of the Monument were singled out for criticism and targeted by opponents in letters and press releases. The organization helped keep support strong by unity, with strength in numbers, and a positive focus on its goal.

Friends of the Monument’s Ignacio Cabrera, Angelo Villagomez, and Agnes McPhetres pose with Sylvia Earl and Jean Michel Cousteau at the signing of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument.

As a direct result of the Friends of the Monument’s grassroots efforts, in early 2009, the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument was created. Within the first year after the organization was born, this small group of people were key in creating the largest marine monument and they became leaders in worldwide oceanic protection in the process. I am inspired! Now I know what a monumental impact a few motivated people can have on environmental protection.

I’d love to hear more stories of how the efforts of a few individuals have snowballed into significant environmental progress. Stories like these help spark my imagination about the possibilities to personally impact environmental change.

Sara Jacobs usually can be found in the EPA Region 9 Drinking Water Office. However, she is currently on a detail to the Navajo Nation EPA Superfund Program where she spends much of her time out in the field helping to identify contaminated structures which are a legacy of uranium mining.

I’ve been to a lot of “environmental” conferences over the years, and I’ve seen a lot of not-so-environmental practices. Some convention centers even throw away the floor coverings they use after every trade show. SMG’s giant Moscone Center, in San Francisco, is just one block away from my office, and this bright green convention center was recognized at EPA’s recent Pacific Southwest Environmental Awards Ceremony.

The two million square foot Moscone Center has one of the nation’s largest municipally-owned solar installations. Their 60,000 sq. ft. solar system generates enough energy to power nearly 400 homes and displaces more than 300 tons of carbon dioxide annually! They also did a major lighting retrofit. You can follow their lead by looking for ENERGY STAR lighting fixtures at home and at work.

SMG pioneered a recycling program at the Moscone Center ten years ago and recently added food composting. They now transform kitchen-based food scraps and corn-based serveware and utensils from large catered functions into compost to grow new food. The catering truck is even fueled with biodiesel. SMG also reduces waste by working with vendors to take back bread trays and pastry boxes.
The facility started using Green Seal certified cleaning products in 2008 and buys environmental products like post-consumer recycled paper, janitorial supplies and garbage bags.

SMG really focuses on improving indoor air quality. The Moscone Center takes the following step to achieve this:

• Has a full-time air quality technician who regularly monitors and tests conditions ;
• Requires forklifts to use a propane additive to reduce carbon monoxide emissions ;
• Reduces diesel emissions by requiring trucks operated by service contractors to use filters;
• Minimizes idling by drivers, and
• Strictly enforces the no smoking ordinance.

They’re also improving air quality outside. The Moscone Center is close to nearly 20,000 hotel rooms, making it easy to avoid driving. SMG also promotes the use of public transit in telephone recordings and on the website, as well as encouraging employee participation in the Commuter Check program. The center’s van runs on compressed natural gas and bike racks are installed in front of the facility.

The list of green features at Moscone Center goes on and on, but you get the idea — Moscone Center is truly a model green convention center!

Please share your green conference and convention center information with us.

To learn more about other U.S. EPA Pacific Southwest Environmental Award winners, visit http://www.epa.gov/region09/awards.

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team for 10 years and is Co-Chair of EPA’s Green Building Workgroup.

About the author: Sara Jacobs recently celebrated her 10th year working at EPA Region 9. She has spent most of her years in the Drinking Water Office, but is currently on a detail to the Superfund Division, working with the Navajo EPA.

My two-bedroom flat in San Francisco was built in 1926 and I don’t think much has happened to the kitchen since. We still have no dishwasher or disposal and no flooring other than the sub floor since we ripped up the old stained and cracked vinyl. As we dream of some day being able to take on a kitchen remodel, we wonder how we could minimize the environmental impact of our project. Yet, we still need to stay on budget, maintain product quality, and still display our own unique style. Is this even possible?

We know that using recycled, locally manufactured, non-toxic materials are all good ideas, but where do we find these products? There is so much information to dig through on the web and as a busy, full-time working mother of two, I am just overwhelmed by the task. That’s why I was so excited when I read that one of the Pacific Southwest Environmental Award winners, Vetrazzo, takes glasses that are not recyclable elsewhere and turns them into beautiful countertops. (I can say beautiful because I saw the samples!)

Vetrazzo uses old glass from traffic lights, windshields, plate glass windows, dinnerware, stemware, laboratory glass, stained glass, and beverage bottles and transforms them into a superior green building material. In 2008, Vetrazzo transformed 650 tons of recycled glass into countertops, table tops, bar tops, fireplace hearths, shower surrounds and flooring.

Vetrazzo is made from glass processed directly from the recycler without melting. Since 2007, creation of 11,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide has been avoided by transforming recycled glass into Vetrazzo instead of new bottles or fiberglass. That is the same amount of energy saved by removing 2,125 passenger vehicles from the road for an entire year.

“Being recognized by the U.S. EPA is a tremendous honor for us,” said James Sheppard, CEO and Co-Founder of Vetrazzo, LLC. “Our product creates a focal point for green building by boldly and visually demonstrating the value of recycling. When an average kitchen counter can contain as many as 1,000 bottles, the impact of using a sustainable surfacing material is undeniable. It gets people talking.”

So now I have a solution for my counter tops. Does anyone have a suggestion for flooring?

Photo credits: ©2008 Joel Puliatti for Vetrazzo

Gary Riley is an environmental engineer at EPA’s Pacific Southwest Regional Office, Superfund Division. He works to investigate and clean up sites on EPA’s National Priorities List of abandoned hazardous waste sites.

Many of us (myself included) see a lot of pavement and very few trees as we commute to work and go about our lives. When I was a kid, heading into the woods and exploring the trails was pretty much my favorite thing to do. That’s not so easy to do for those of us living in cities; we just don’t see very many trees. But trees also do many things that are much less visible: they cool our neighborhoods, clean the air, and reduce stormwater runoff.

That’s why I was excited to hear about Million Trees Los Angeles, one of this year’s Environmental Awards winners chosen by EPA’s Pacific Southwest Regional Office to recognize individuals and groups outside of the EPA who are working to protect public health and the environment. Let’s face it: when I think about Los Angeles, the first things in my mind are the airport, Sunset Boulevard, and the skyline; not a lush cover of green. Million Trees has an ambitious goal to plant one million trees throughout the city and use this to leverage even greater environmental change in the future.

In 2008, Million Trees increased tree planting in Los Angles tenfold, and one of the most important ways it’s doing this is by encouraging children to learn about the benefits of a healthy urban forest. Last year’s “Get Your Green On” Environmental Youth Conference attracted over 5,000 youth participants and their parents, teachers, and others. Anyone can join tree planting efforts in neighborhoods around the city. Lisa Sarno, Executive Director of Million Trees LA, tells me kids might not even notice the trees in their urban environment until they’ve planted one themselves, but then suddenly feel a connection from this simple act.

EPA’s job is to protect human health and the environment, but it’s everyone helping out in their own communities that can really create change. It can even be something as easy as planting a tree! Learn more about planting trees in your community at the Arbor Day Foundation.

About the author: Sara Jacobs recently celebrated her 10th year working at EPA Region 9. She has spent most of her years in the Drinking Water Office, but is currently on a detail to the Superfund Division, working with the Navajo EPA.

When I saw that Lenore Lamb had been chosen as one of the EPA Pacific Southwest Environmental Award Winners, I was thrilled since I know first hand of Lenore’s accomplishments as the Environmental Director for the Pala Band of Mission Indians. I met Lenore in 2001 and three wells, three kids (two were mine), and eight years later, I have seen Lenore grow from a one woman show to managing a staff of 12. She’s gone from a young, eager environmental learner to an expert and leader in her field. Her efficiency and energy amazes me and I get the impression that she does the work of three people. (She tells me it’s due to large quantities of caffeine.)

Here are just some of her contributions:

• Providing safe drinking water and wastewater disposal for both the Pala Band as well as a tribal community in Mexico by securing funding and overseeing infrastructure projects.
• Developing a “Green Team,” with representatives from the Pala Casino Resort and Spa, that has implemented energy and water efficiency programs and diverted 170 tons of solid waste since implementation of their program last year.
• Active involvement in the Upper San Luis Rey Resource Conservation District. Lenore has been instrumental in the clean up of illegal dumpsites along the creek beds within the reservation boundaries.
• Supporting education and outreach programs through annual earth day events, tribal publications, exercises for the Pala Boys and Girls Science Club, and by developing a “Creating and Managing Tribal Transfer Stations” course.
• Securing tribal funding and overseeing design and construction of a transfer station. The facility is open to the public, includes electronic waste collection, a green waste and composting program, a secured hazardous waste collection location, a state certified buy back center for recyclables, and a used oil collection program.

From my own experience working with tribes, I know that tribal environmental managers face enormous challenges. I’m even more impressed by Lenore since her accomplishments are more forward thinking than many non-tribal governments, even in a state like California, which is often on the cutting edge. Lenore has not only made significant contributions to improving the environment at Pala, she has contributed to improving environmental conditions throughout Indian Country.

To learn more about the Pala Band’s environmental programs, go to http://www.palatribe.com/programs/environment/. Look for additional environmental tribal leaders in future posts.