A community artist and a South Providence neighborhood will help raise awareness about a health hazard in the community while designing a series of informational signs through a partnership between three state agencies.
Warwick, Rhode Island-based artist Holly Ewald has been commissioned by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to create a series of informational signs warning residents of the South Providence neighborhood near Mashapaug Pond off Adelaide Ave. about the dangers of swimming and fishing in the pond. The pond has contained unsafe levels of dioxins and PCBs for years—the State Arts Council is working in collaboration with the Rhode Island Departments of Health and Environmental Management on this project to help educate community members and youth of the danger.

I have to ask—wouldn’t the money be better spent on cleaning up the pond? Community awareness about health hazards is definitely a positive step, and I am glad to see that a South Providence neighborhood is getting attention from state agencies and artists, but I think this needs to be taken a step further.

A recent press release gave details of the project. According to Randall Rosenbaum, Executive Director of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the challenge was to design informational signs for such a diverse community, where many people may not read English proficiently. “Commissioning an artist to design signs that non-readers would understand made perfect sense,” said Rosenbaum. “And using an artist like Holly Ewald, who works in ways that involve community members in the design process made this into an exciting project for the people of this area.”
As part of Ewald’s process she invited residents from the neighborhoods surrounding the pond to create images. Students in a Graphic Design Class at Adelaide High School and a sixth grade class at Charles Fortes Elementary School heard a presentation by DEM and Health Department representatives about the health of the pond. They made silkscreen posters with artists Andrew Oesch and Ewald to share their reflections about the pond. They will carry these posters in a procession along side children in fish costumes made with artists Jennifer Rice and Ewald in workshops held at Wat Thormikaram, the Buddhist Temple in South Providence.
Ewald plans to generate community interest in a number of creative ways, including staging a procession through the South Providence neighborhood. “After attending public meetings about the environmental issues effecting Mashapaug Pond I realized we needed to do something interactive on the street to reach the groups who were reluctant to come to meetings,” said Ewald. “A festive procession would be a good way to get information to more people.”

The community procession is scheduled to take place on Saturday June 7^th at 9:00am, with a rain date on Sunday, June 8^th at 9:00am. The procession will begin at Wat Thormikarma, the southeast asian Buddhist Temple at 177-179 Hanover Street in South Providence, and will head south on Bucklin Street to Charles Fortes Elementary School 234 Daboll St., to Adelaide High School 375 Adelaide Ave., along the east side of Mashapaug Pond and end at the Mashapaug Pond Community Boating Center behind the Joblot on Resevoir Ave.

Participating in the procession will be the Adelaide High School Graphic Design Class, Charles Fortes Elementary School 6, and Holly Ewald, community artist.

The public is invited to participate. For more information contact artist Holly Ewald at hewald@cox.net.

Photo Credits: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

The place is called Greenward. It’s popular. So popular that it made the Boston Magazine 2008 Best of Boston Home! list. Not bad for a new business in a major metropolitan area. The shop didn’t just make the cut to fill the token green business spot, either. It walks the walk.

It can be hard to find products with a conscience, and Greenward knows that. That’s part of the reason that they carry nearly anything you can conceive of that has gone green. If you need books, jewelry, bike accessories, stationery, homewares or magazines, Greenward’s got it. If you want clothes, notebooks, tables, candles or speakers…Greenward’s got it.

Greenward not only carries eco-friendly products, they create an eco-friendly environment and shopping experience. The displays are all hand built using eco-responsible woods, the flooring is cork, overhead lighting is energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs, and the walls were painted using low-VOC paint. Many of the products they distribute are popular eco-friendly brands such as Pear Tree Studio, K Studio, and Pangea Organics, to name a few.

The upbeat atmosphere, the environmentally responsible materials, and the eco-friendly goods make this a must-see Boston area store for anyone looking to green up their life. It’s a great place to just find ideas about what and how you can be more mindful about the products you consume.

Images courtesy of Greenward.

Hours:
Monday - Saturday: 11am-6pm
Thursday: 11am-8pm
Sunday: 12pm-5pm

The voluntary REC purchases from UPC Wind will put Bowdoin at an impressive 100% green power usage level—well above the the requirements of Maine’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS).

“Our primary focus has been and will continue to be switching to lower carbon fuels and increased energy efficiency, but as we seek to become carbon neutral, purchasing offsets are a necessity,” explains S. Catherine Longley, Bowdoin’s Sr. V.P. for Finance and Administration & Treasurer and chair of the College’s climate commitment group. “We are excited that the Mars Hill wind project allows us to procure wind RECs locally.”

Of course, this isn’t Bowdoin’s first step toward a more ecologically responsible approach to the world. In 2006 the college signed the Maine Governor’s Carbon Challenge agreeing to reduce emissions to 11 percent below 2002 levels by 2010. They easily surpassed that goal in 2007.
Bowdoin also joined the EPA Green Power Partner Program in 2006, and the recent move to 100% green power ensures that they will remain in the EPA Program through 2010.

President Barry Mills has even signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment to achieve carbon neutrality.

“Bowdoin has taken an important step toward ‘carbon neutrality’ and we’re happy to help them achieve that goal,” said Paul Gaynor, president and CEO of UPC Wind. “Maine is quickly becoming the leading source for renewable energy in New England, and we’re pleased to be able to deliver clean, renewable power to the region.”

Photo courtesy of UPC Wind.

Quotes from Bowdoin’s Campus News archive.

When the Internet extended its wiry tentacles to the small town that I grew up in, I had no idea what it was. I pictured it being a room full of wires and lights, like a super computer android version of a phone operator.

As I matured, I realized it wasn’t that at all, but a more mystic existence of floating pockets of digital information in constant flux, existing in digital clouds that were suspended just above the atmosphere.

Of course, neither of those images is or was correct. But as it turns out, I was closer to the target with my first guess. Massive server rooms take up space and energy all over the world, storing the information and websites we web junkies feed on for survival. Luckily, they are starting to go green.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a technology real estate company, has taken a bold step into the green world by renovating a 90-year-old printing facility in Chicago. They have turned the plant into the world’s first LEED gold-certified data center. Not only is this a paradigm shift for future data centers—it may change the way LEED building companies approach renovations.

“This project shatters the myth that LEED certification can only be achieved within newer facilities,” says Jim Smith, vice president of engineering at Digital Realty.

LEED Certification is a rating system created by the U.S. Green Building Council. The system provides a whole-building approach to sustainability by considering the qualities of water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality, among others.

The Digital Realty Trust project transformed a portion of the 1917 R.R. Donnelly & Sons Co. printing plant into 20,000 square feet of of floor space with 4,000kW of available IT load.

One of the things that, I think, makes this project such a powerful one is the use of special tools the space uses for measuring energy consumption.

“These are not expensive, but they provide critical data that let you understand what is happening in the data center. Every data center should have this, particularly since it is such a small investment and provides such valuable information,” Smith said. “Step 1 for energy-efficient operations is always to have a way to measure.”

I hope this catches on. It would be a relief to know that while I’m blogging about building green, the IT resources my blog requires are helping the cause.

Photography: worldofstock.com

Students in a horticultural technology class at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School for Applied Science completed a final project for last week’s Earth Day celebration that brings learning outside of the conventional classroom.

Associate professor Dana Sansom’s grounds management course installed sustainable landscaping around the university’s Putnam Hall, designed to provide low-maintenance beauty throughout the year. Additionally, the landscaped area will be used as a living classroom for the school’s future horticulture students.

Thompson School student Jim Lynn, who designed the landscape with students Henry Hess and Katie Leipold worked with nine other students over the course of the past year to develop and implement the project. The site, which had been largely neglected for a decade, was overgrown and unkempt.

The sustainable landscaping project began by removing aggressive and overgrown pachysandra and yews, and testing and preparing the soil with compost made from food waste from the UNH dining halls.

The class applied the principles of sustainable landscaping and focused on “right plant, right place,” choosing plants that would thrive in the New Hampshire climate. Although the garden is considered sustainable, not all of its plants are native.

“There’s some debate in sustainability as to whether plants have to be native to be sustainable,” said Lynn – but none are invasive.

“They all live in harmony with native plants,” Hess explained. Each plant was chosen for its ability to attract wildlife by providing food or habitat, the idea being that wildlife help to sustain the landscape by providing pollination and returning organic matter to the soil.

Creating a sustainable landscape area cuts down on maintenance costs, water usage and irrigation, and upkeep time, but the students aren’t worried about putting themselves out of jobs. There is a great need for massive sustainable landscaping across the country, they said. “And there’s plenty of earth to be rejuvenated,” said Hess.

Photo and quotes courtesy of UNH.

Recycled cell phones as art.

Boston, Mass.—In yesterday’s Boston Globe, I came across an article in the Lifestyle/Green Living section that really caught my eye…and my ear. An art student from Allston, Mass. has an installation in Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) that consists entirely of discarded cellular phones.

Rob Pettit, 26, has been spending months collecting, sorting and arranging old cell phones, even using their ring tones and camera shots in some of his pieces.

“It’s just interesting to see what an explosion of products [this is], and realizing that every time you get one, it’s on the verge of being replaced by another,” Pettit told the Boston Globe. “There’s an estimated half a billion cellphones just sitting in people’s desk drawers.”

Pettit wanted to kick-start his career after college by doing an immersive work. Already interested in cell phones, he started collecting old ones from his friends and family. He eventually began ordering them by the pallet-load from cellphone recycling companies. He has amassed more than 5,500 discarded phones, most of which are on display in the form of large sculptures at the SMFA.
“Whenever a student takes something slated for a landfill and turns it into art they get an A-plus as far as I’m concerned,” said SFMA visiting artist Jason Middlebrook. Pettit is a former student of Middlebrook, and now works with him as a teaching assistant. “All my students are making this kind of recycled art,” Middlebrook told the Boston Globe, “but now it’s an environmental statement, whereas before it was more out of necessity.”

Mike Newman, vice president of ReCelluar Inc., a Michigan-based cell phone recycling company that sent Pettit pallets of phones, explains that only about 30 percent of phones are now recycled or donated to charity, either for reuse or to be mined for metals.

I’ll be going to the SMFA later this week to check out the installment.

Image source: The Boston Globe

If it looks green, smells green and feels green, it must be green. Right? The answer, it turns out, is more of a maybe. It is common knowledge that green technology has large positive environmental impacts: large-scale energy savings, run-off reduction and heat reduction among their chief assets. But as green builders continue to define the standards and guidelines for sustainable construction practices, different levels of earth friendly products continue to circulate the market. Green roofs in particular are taking a harder look at the sustainability of their component materials.

Make it last
Brad Budde of Conwed Plastics, Minneapolis, Minn., believes the future development of sustainable green roof products lies in the hands of builders. He suggests that as companies continue to understand the commercial concerns regarding the application of sustainable and earth friendly products that the market as a whole will become more educated about their applications, benefits and uses.

His company is a leader of earth friendly, compostible packaging materials as an alternative to traditional plastic bags, as well as biodegradable plastics that don’t leave the harmful, long lasting resins of other industry plastics. “It’s a really great product that solves some of the disposal concerns for traditional plastic products,” he says.
One of Conwed’s most earth friendly products is its erosion control blanket netting. While not typically used in green roof applications, it is nonetheless a big step toward creating holistically green products.
“The temporary rolled erosion control products are meant to stabilize the ground until vegetation comes in and provides natural stabilization,” Budde says.

Jeff Stillman of ZinCo USA, Newton, Mass., says one of the keys to his company’s sustainable green roofing products is the use of non-rotting, recycled polypropylene. The substance’s long lasting capabilities and recycled nature make it a shoe-in for sustainable building material.
“It’s the fabric that we use for our protection mat and filter sheets,” Stillman says. “The mat is needle punched and usually made with a fleece backing composed of recycled polypropylene fibers.”

Top of the heap
Sustainable materials aren’t confined to the base level of green building projects. When it comes to the greenery on a green roof, plants come into play. Ed Snodgrass of Emory Knoll Farms, Maryland has provided plants for 268 roof projects, providing more than 2 million square feet of green roofing in the U.S. Snodgrass’s farm is in collaboration with several university research programs. The effort is producing a fund of knowledge about soil depths and plant types that create healthy, lasting and sustainable green roofing projects.

The Emory Knoll farm employs photovoltaic panels, bio-diesel engines and composting toilets all to save and create sustainable energy. All of the farm’s plants are chemical free.
“We try to produce as much energy as we can,” says Snodgrass. “So as we can afford to make capital improvements, we want part of that capital to go to energy production of some kind.”

Urban greens is a food cooperative on Providence’s West Side with a mission to provide simple, direct access to affordable, local, natural products and to offer a community-based alternative to corporate supermarkets. The cooperative is guided by its values of equal access, local agriculture, local economy, co-operative principles, community partnerships and social entrepreneurship.

An even higher level of awesomeness dawns when you find out that it’s all held together by a volunteer-run buying club that currently provides a full range of groceries through biweekly orders. Currently, they process orders and display their wares online at www.urbangreens.com. Rumor has it that in the interest of making the cooperative buying model more accessible to the entire community they are working on opening a cooperative market to replace the online buying club and to give a storefront face to this community of online organic food geeks.