Welcome to the Sustainable Valley, a weekly feature by Kelsey Flynn about the programs and the people who are pursuing sustainability all across the Pioneer Valley. Know someone trying to live off the grid? Is your neighbor harvesting her own produce? If you have an idea for a story, shoot Kelsey an E-mail at kelsey@wrsi.com.
In the olden days of 2008 and prior, living green was the goal, reducing, reusing, recycling. But now the shift seems to be towards the word "sustainability". What does that mean exactly? And how does it differ from "living green"? Is it a marketing trend or an actual shift in our everyday experience of how we make choices?
Catherine Miller and Karen Ribeiro of the Pioneer Valley Sustainability Network explain the concept, its origins, and what it means for us in the Valley.
Here are the links to the resources and reports referenced by Catherine and Karen:
Marlboro College Graduate Center's MBA in Sustainability is the only one of its kind in the country, an MBA that integrates the core elements of business administration with the principles of sustainability. I went to Marlboro's Brattleboro campus to meet with some recent graduates of the program who had completed their Capstone Projects. The Capstone is a thesis of sorts that must be sponsored by a company or organization and also must solve a real world problem for that group.
It was very exciting to meet with people who had created solutions or at least the beginnings of them to issues such as cultivating local wheat in Vermont or more public farmers markets in urban settings. Here are some audio snapshots of those students and their projects.
Cheryl Eaton came from a background in film and branding. She created a tool to help the individual free up his "humanness" in order to create a sustainable future from an individual basis.
Brian Schwartz created his own company, Restorative Offsets, intially before turning to story change as the key to driving sustainability in an organization.
Jim Bride partnered with to bring a public market to Providence four-days a week.
Nicole Hade works at a large corporation in Connecticut and had already started pursuing sustainability within its various systems. The company where she works sponsored her Capstone which was how to initiate sustainable practices within a corporation.
Will Robb worked to pursue the reality of local wheat cultivation and milling in Vermont and how to do that without going into commodity production.
Sustainable Energy = Sustainable Jobs
At least, that's the hope for community groups Co-op Power and Nuestras Reicas as they join together to form Roots Up Green Jobs, a job training program in Holyoke for green industry. Low-income students just finishing their GED programs are paid to go to school to learn about energy conservation, energy efficiency, and how to install solar hot water systems.
Listen to this week's interview with Co-op Power manager Lynn Benander and some of the students in the Roots Up Green Jobs program.
As part of a larger Holyoke/Springfield grant, Pathways Out of Poverty, the program has received funds to expand the work to include youth from the Springfield area. The program particularly targets youth who have little education or work experience, and few options for getting onto a successful career ladder.
This Sustainable Valley segment is a little bit different in that despite it being about the importance of local agriculture and shopping local, it's about an entity that is going away, the Food Bank Farm Thanksgiving Store. The two-day store is having its big finale Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 24th and 25th from 10am to 5pm.
Listen to Michael Docter, creator of the Food Bank Farm and its Thanksgiving Store give a run-down of this year's store plus a sneak peek at what's to come at "The Barn Next Door."
As we mention in the interview, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts had decided to close the CSA portion of the farm. The farm will still be used to grow about 100,000 pounds of fresh produce for the Food Bank, but will not offer shares to the public. The background on their decision is here.
The pint-sized students at Jackson Street School in Northampton are pioneers. Jackson Street is the site for a pilot program that is working to reduce the waste stream for that school through composting. It's a project that started with the school's GREEN team.
I spent a few moments in their cafeteria recently to capture an audio snapshot which included interviews with the intiator of the project Micki Darling, GREENnorthampton's David Starr and Karen Bouquillon of the Department of Public Works.
John Grossman is manager of Springfield's ReStore. It's your go-to home reno D-I-Y stop for absolute steals on building materials including clawfoot tubs, framing lumber, lighting, cabinets, and on and on and on. ReStore removes building materials out of the waste stream by taking them from contractors and homeowners working on renovations or retail stores with overstock. LIsten as John explains the process including how they get some of their inventory, Deconstructing houses by hand piece by piece.
Josh Stoeffel only graduated from UMass/Amherst last year, but he's already the Sustainability Coordinator for the entire campus. It's a part-time job he hopes will become fulltime sooner than later given the expanse of work to do connecting the vast network of people and systems around the central issue of sustainability.
Listen to my interview with Josh where he shares a little bit of his responsibilities plus one way the campus is lessening their waste stream.
Josh describes the Energy Conservation Project the university has underway that is saving them over $6 million a year.
Josh describes the power plant on the campus which just may be the cleanest in the Commonwealth.
Turners Falls resident Tina Clark is so committed to energy efficiency, she built it into her retirement plan in the form of her LEED certified home. According to her calculations, by the time she's ready for retirement, the only money she'll owe on the house will be property taxes and water. Listen to the tour of her house which includes a solar array on the roof along with hot water panels and a secret design she included that allows her to generate her own heat.
Tina offers monthly tours of her home. The next is October 15th at 6pm. Call or E-mail carpenter Bick Corsa for the details of where to show up: 413-585-0791, bickcorsa@yahoo.com.
MassSave.com is the site for information about energy audits and zero percent loans on installing high efficiency heating systems.
350.org is the site for the Global Day of Climate Action, Oct. 24th. Tina is a consultant to the event in which people around the world will attempt to bring awareness to the the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (350 parts per million).
Sure you've been there as a tourist to check out their Round Barn, but did you know the Hancock Shaker Village is also a living example of sustainable layout, design and architecture? UMass does and that's why they're starting a new certificate program in their graduate design degree, the graduate design degree in historic preservation at Hancock Shaker Village.
Dorrie Brooks is the project assistant for the new program that begins Fall 2010. Here's our interview about the program and what made those Shakers so innovative.
For more information about the Shakers, Hancock Shaker Village and sustainable building, check these out:
Montserrat Archbald is your everyday Peer Tutoring Program Staff Assistant by day and a SUSTAINABLE SUPERHERO by night, or rather, her spare time. Along with some of her peers at GCC five years ago, she helped form the Green Campus Committee at Greenfield Community College. The group is committed to promoting environmental awareness on campus, pursuing sustainable energy and energy saving measures and advocating for green curricula.
In my interview with Monty, as she's known on campus, she takes me on a tour of some of the initiatives that the committee has helped bring about on campus:
Monty is also responsible for making the Green River Festival even more green by starting and now heading up the recycling program at the show. Listen as she drops some of her observations backstage at the show as she goes around collecting empties:
Here, Lorenzo talks about the advantages of composting on the corporate level and the possibility of city landfills taking on the job of composting.
Listen to Lorenzo describe how one major national chain is taking on waste management in their new local franchise on King Street in Northampton.
The Hungry Ghost is a Northampton-based artisan bakery run by Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffei. In that tiny brick building across from Serio's Market, they bake up dozens of loaves of bread, crackers and sometimes cookies but they're tired of using road-weary flour for their baking. Thus the Little Red Hen project - an effort started by Jonathan and Cheryl to restore wheat to the fields of the Pioneer Valley where it once was grown and milled.
Listen to some participants to the project who are growing wheat in the front yard of their Ryan Road home, Jonathan explain what happened to our local wheat, and then get up close and personal with the mill inside the Hungry Ghost.
Laura Douglass is a proud grease car driver now and has figured out a way to easily convert used grease into reuseable grease fuel. Listen to the step-by-step process below.
Greasecar in Holyoke is the place that converted Laura's vehicle. They sell kits for you to do-it-yourself or will convert your diesel car, truck or van for you. They also sell converted vehicles now too.
This VW Beetle now runs vegetarian now and is up for sale in Holyoke.
What's the fuel efficiency of a grease car? How does it run compared to its diesel-powered counterparts? Will it run in the winter? All these questions and more answered here on the Greasecar's handy FAQ.
In view of the Mac trucks hurtling down I-91 is a nine-acre CSA farm called Town Farm. Listen in to farmer / owners Oona Coy and Ben James describe how they work their soil sustainably using their livestock as opposed to commercial fertilizers.
Jeff Brown is the director and organizer behind RideBuzz, the Valley's year-old ridesharing program.
See how much money you can save by ridesharing with this handy rideshare calculator.
Dan Finn heads up the volunteer organization Pioneer Valley Local First. Its goal is to educate and encourage Valley folks to think locally first when it comes to shopping with and investing their dollars.
Dan explains why it makes more sense to patronize the shops owned locally as opposed to the big box retailers.
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