http://sustaindane.org/blog en Copyright 2012 2012-02-13T19:09:50+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/is-americas-love-affair-with-oil-a-heartbreaker http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/is-americas-love-affair-with-oil-a-heartbreaker#When:19:09:50Z Leave the chocolate and lacy at home, and spend Valentine Day learning about our nation’s crush on oil Perhaps not the most romantic way to spend V-Day with matters of the head, not necessarily the heart, but on Tuesday, two heavyweights square off for a debate about regional and national energy policy. “World Oil Supply: Looming Crisis or New Abundance?” has former Shell Oil President John Hofmeister, who believes aggressive measures can strongly increase U.S. oil extraction rates, facing off against University of Texas-Austin Chair of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering Dr. Tadeusz Patzek, who is pessimistic about future increases.  Union South, Varsity Hall II (second floor), 1308 W. Dayton Street, doors at 5:30 pm, debate at 6 pm, free 2012-02-13T19:09:50+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/from-toilet-to-tap http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/from-toilet-to-tap#When:18:43:02Z As water shortages increase and intensify environmental and economic concerns, more municipalities turn to the sewer for solutions A decade ago, the fresh water-deprived San Diego turned to an unlikely source for its drinking water:  The sewer pipes.  Even though technology has proven its effectiveness to turn waste to pure drinking water, the concept still had more than one councilmember and a sizable portion of the population retching.  But, a deacde later, as water supplies continue to deplete, this solution has continued to find successful case-studies -- and a wider audience.  The most successful such processing plant is a $500 million purifier in Orange County, California, which opened four years ago and reportedly processing 700 million gallons daily.  Smaller-scale operations have popped up in other water-parched regions, like the ironically named Big Springs, Texas.  Point being:  We have serious environmental problems and limited resources; increasingly so, populations in America continue to migrate to sunny and arid locations like southern California and Arizona.  To manage these problems require swift and creative solutions, and yes, perhaps by turning our waste into water.  2012-02-10T18:43:02+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/biking-to-work-in-winter http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/biking-to-work-in-winter#When:16:03:11Z If you’ve sworn off “winter” biking (yes winter is purposefully in quotes), next week is the week to give it a try. 24 and sunny with NO ice - the perfect day to begin the occasional “winter” bike to work. Even though I don’t bike to work daily, I still consider myself a bike commuter (fair-weather bike commuter that is). I swore off winter biking 5 years ago, after falling on the ice, but I woke up today to blue skies and chirping birds and I just couldn’t hide behind this excuse anymore. Plus, I was feeling guilty; at least one Sustain Dane staff has walked into the office with their right pant leg rolled up every day since the last snow. Peer pressure really works. And the result is great, I’ve gotten 30 minutes of exercise, maybe even some vitamin D, and a great mood to start the day off. If you’ve sworn off “winter” biking (yes winter is purposefully in quotes), next week is the week to give it a try! Bike Winter is hosting 7 days of events in Madison starting this Sunday with a “How to” demonstration. You'll find free, warm, bike path coffee throughout the week too. All the events are listed on Facebook and the Isthmus guide. Hope to see you on the path! 2012-02-09T16:03:11+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/more-than-just-wacky-weather http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/more-than-just-wacky-weather#When:21:17:03Z According to NOAA, the contiguous US experienced its 4rth warmest January on record. This morning as I strapped on my helmet and prepared for a chilly ride to work, I had to remind myself that 14 degrees on a February morning is not actually especially cold. Any normal winter, I would be used to rinding in even colder temperatures. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the contiguous US experienced its 4rth warmest January on record. The winter period of December 2011 to January 2012 was also the4rth warmest in the 117-year record. And it will be no surprise to those of you in Madison, the average US snow extent during January was the 3rd smallest January snow cover extent in the 46-year period of record (as reported by Jeff Masters on his WonderBlog). According to Masters "in isolation, the strange winter weather of 2011-2012 could be a natural rare occurance, but there have been way too many strange atmospheric events in the past 2 years for them all to be simply an unusually long run of natural extremes. Something is definitely up with the weather, and it is clear to me that over the past two years, the climate has shifted to a new state capable of delivering rare and uprecedented weather events. Human emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are the most likely cause of such a shift in the climate..." The evidence that the climate is changing is all around us. We just need to accept it and translate that knowledge into action. Even among the informed, I observe a general lack of urgency in the American citizenry around climate change mitigation and adaptation. The time for action is now. As Masters states, it is easier to deflect a boulder rolling downhill early in its course, before it gains too much momentum. Need a reason to act? Check out Climate Wisconsin: Stories from a State of Change for evidence of Wisconsin's changing climate and a look at how it will impact the activities we love and depend on. ~Julie Uncategorized, 2012-02-08T21:17:03+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/the-patriots-and-giants-are-green-with-.-.-.-wel-sustainability http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/the-patriots-and-giants-are-green-with-.-.-.-wel-sustainability#When:16:02:33Z Yesterday’s Super Bowl follows an important trend in professional sports:  Going green! Massive gathering, like yesterday's Super Bowl, are hardly exercises in sustainability.  They are temporary events that consume massive amounts of energy for lights and jumbo-trons, require thousands of miles of air and car travel, and don't create long-term stable jobs.  Yet, bellyache that jocks just don't get it, and you'd be wrong:  Perhaps more than any industry, professional sports are making massive changes in their protocols - and, across the board, with hockey, baseball, soccer, football and basketball teams all on board.  Yes, it is a team effort.  Yes, they are giving 110%.  It is truly remarkable to see what owners and managers are doing for stadium construction - with wind turbines on Philadelphia Eagle's staidum and a LEED certified stadium in Minneapolis for the Twins.  And, daily operations are changing, with almost zero-waste streams at some stadiums (you go, Seattle Mariners).  Yesterday's Super Bowl followed that trend with major off-sets.  2012-02-06T16:02:33+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/two-sides-of-the-wind-turbine http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/two-sides-of-the-wind-turbine#When:17:44:59Z A new documentary raises important questions about wind energy To fully support an idea, it is important to understand as many arguments as possible.  Yes, wind energy is renewable and an environmentally clean and important option to coal.  However, a new documentary, Windfall, present some valid concerns about wind turbines.  In a well-paced documentary, director Laura Isarel studies an unfolding drama in an economically strained county in upstate New York.  The film is receiving solid and thoughtful reviews in the New York Times and on All Things Considered.  Several years ago, a wind turbine company pushed forward a plan for planting wind turbines around the traditionally ag-based land.  Power brokers in the town strong-armed the concept past wide-based community concerns about noise and sight disturbances, questions about bird migrations and other questions.  The film is not anti-alternative energy, but an important consideration about how community support for an idea can cool from tepid support to steely disgust.  The movie opens in New York today, and it may be some time before the movie reaches local Sundance Theater, but keep your eyes open.  2012-02-03T17:44:59+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/management-system-models-standards-provide-road-maps-to-sustainability http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/management-system-models-standards-provide-road-maps-to-sustainability#When:16:19:05Z Guest blogger and Sustainable Business Network member, Kevin Lehner (President, ECSI Assurance, LLC) shares his insights and recommendations around using international models/standards, such as ISO 50001, for businesses to improve their sustainability practices. We hear a lot about why sustainability is important and about what businesses have already accomplished, through the many impressive case studies.  But what we rarely hear about are the specific processes these businesses use to achieve and maintain these gains.   Figuring out how to start down the path of sustainability can be a little like being lost in a dense forest at night without a flashlight to illuminate the path forward.   Ideas like “The Natural Step”, “The Triple Bottom Line” and " The Global Reporting Initiative" are helpful in informing us of the sustainability attributes we should measure; however, these are really only tools to be used in a larger sustainability management system designed to help businesses to continually improve their sustainability performance.   Over 50 years ago, Edward Deming developed a process that he called “Total Quality Management (TQM),” which helped businesses to improve their ability to manufacture quality products and delight their customers.  Deming is credited with propelling Japan’s auto manufacturing industry into a position of world leadership.  Later, businesses like GE and Toyota would develop powerful TQM tools like “Six Sigma” and “Lean Manufacturing,” which would help businesses to dramatically reduce product defects and unnecessary waste. In the 1980s and 90s, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed a standard called “ISO 9001,” which businesses could use as a model for a TQM  system.  Businesses around the world have embraced this model and have achieved astonishing results in improving product quality and financial performance.  Most of them would never even consider reverting to the old ways of doing things. In the mid-1990s, businesses like IBM began to recognize that TQM principles could also be applied to other areas of organizational performance.  This recognition resulted in international standards like “ISO 14001 - Environmental Management Systems” and “OHSAS 18001 - Employee Health and Safety.”  Recently, a new standard has arrived on the scene, known as “ISO 50001 - Energy Management Systems.”  These standards or models have proved to be effective in helping businesses to establish the infrastructure that enables improvement in these important performance areas.  Businesses considering establishing processes to improve their sustainability performance should study these standards/models and borrow from them liberally.   ISO 14001 helps by creating a comprehensive list of a business’s environmental impacts and lets the business decide which are important to their specific organization.  Businesses can choose to control some of the impacts and improve others at their own pace.  OHSAS 18001 helps by creating a list of the hazards that employees are exposed to and the risks these hazards present to employee health and safety.  Businesses get to choose which controls are needed to ensure minimal risk to their employees.  The energy management system standard, ISO 50001, helps businesses to perform an energy inventory and then prioritize the areas in which investments can be made to reduce energy use.  None of the standards/models expect businesses to undertake efforts that go beyond what is required by law or to invest in things that do not provide an acceptable return on investment. Embracing these standards/models may be a lot easier than you think or easier than you have been led to believe, especially if they can be integrated with other existing management systems.  This ease stems from the fact that these management systems have been crafted such that they share many common core elements, like management review, monitoring and measurement, internal audits, corrective actions, and more. The models’ power lies in their capability to aid businesses in adopting a systematic approach to their sustainability efforts. Businesses endeavoring to improve their sustainability performance should learn more about these standards/models to see if they are the right fit for them.  Ample resources are available to aid businesses in assessing the value of these standards/models and to provide guidance on how to proceed.   Overlooking   them as vehicles to improve sustainability performance could unnecessarily delay sustainability benefits and put a business at a disadvantage in the competitive marketplace.  2012-02-02T16:19:05+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/dive-the-film-review http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/dive-the-film-review#When:16:00:17Z If a great documentary is one that has you googling about the topic while the credits are rolling than Dive! wins a gold medal.  If a great documentary is one that has you googling about the topic while the credits are rolling than Dive! wins a gold medal. Some of those winning points come from the length - it’s less than 60 minutes (come on, that’s only one episode of Say Yes to the Dress & one Parks & Recreation). Dive! is about dumpster diving for food. Pretty quickly you move to the irony between hunger in America and how our food system wastes about HALF of all food grown and produced. The majority of the hour is focused on the waste created at the grocery store stop in our food system, and how if there were more food rescue programs all the hungry in cities (like LA where Dive! takes place) could easily be fed three times over. My googling confirmed that YES Dane County has a Food Recovery program! Community Action Coalition has the “Gleaners Program”. Started in 1992 and originally known as Wisconsin Harvest, Gleaners has safely recovered perfectly good food from grocers, restaurants, bakeries, and caterers. This food would have otherwise gone to waste in landfills. CAC Gleaners distributes collected food to people in need through shelters, community centers, food pantries, senior centers, soup kitchens, and low-income apartment complexes at no cost. Dive! also highlights the slice of the food waste pie happening at home and catered events. At home, composting and smart meal planning (many classes are offered at Willy Street) can dramatically reduce waste at this stop in the food system. Ironically enough, earlier in the evening I engaged in the every-few-months job of cleaning the fridge. I am embarassed to report throwing out one tupperware (only one!) of leftovers gone bad. Anytime you have an event catered, don’t let those leftovers feed the garbage – places like the Salvation Army’s Warming House and food pantries are always welcoming to goodies. Go ahead, watch the trailer and then watch the movie on Netflix instant. Even better, catch a special screening with Q & A from Director Jeremy Seifert on February 28th here in Madison at the Redamtè Coffee House! After you watch, let us know if you start volunteering or start diving yourself. Lifestyle, Movie & Book Reviews, 2012-02-02T16:00:17+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/observations-on-climate-change http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/observations-on-climate-change#When:18:45:42Z It was 6 degrees below the record high of 56 degrees yesterday the last day of January. It was 6 degrees below the  record high of 56 degrees yesterday the last day of January.   The same day I learned about the new plant hardiness map.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with that map it is used by gardeners all over the country to identify what plants they can safely grow in their yard based on a plant’s tolerance for cold.  What this updated map shows is that warmers zones are shifting north.   The current weather and the publication of this map led to a brief conversation in our office about climate change and science literacy in the United States.  We wondered whether people really understood the scientific method; the idea that we make observations about a phenomenon and from those observations make a hypothesis to explain what is happening.  With hypothesis in hand, or I guess I should say mind, we then engage in experimentation to test that hypothesis. The results of our experiments can support or oppose a theory. Science does not prove a theory, it gains evidence supporting or opposing it. After years of increasing global temperatures and melting glaciers, ice caps and permafrost, scientists have been making additional observations, conducting experiments, and collecting data to test the hypothesis that climate change is happening and is human caused.  There is a great deal of evidene in support of this theory.  In fact the Union of Concerned Scientists state that there is now an overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is happening and it is human caused.  Does this mean that we can say beyond a doubt that human caused climate change is happening?  No.  But can we say this hypothesis is false?  No.  We wondered how our National conversation about climate change would be different if American’s truly understood and respected scientific method.   Would people stop writing off any odd occurrence in weather as "just the weather" and instead recognize it as another observation that contributes to the existing hypothesis that climate change is happening and is human caused?  Would spokesmen from the USDA place the warming trend now documented in the plant hardiness map in this context instead of saying that the map "is simply not a good instrument to demonstrate climate change because it is based on just the coldest days of the year"?  The reality is that none of these events can be seen in isolation -- from our strangely warm winter to satellite images of melting glaciers -- not even this map.   All of these things add to the overall picture about what is happening with our climate and can not and should not be rationalized away.     Uncategorized, 2012-02-01T18:45:42+00:00 http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/baby-its-cold-outside http://sustaindane.org/http://sustaindane.org/blog/post/baby-its-cold-outside#When:16:46:53Z Warm Up With Wind Power With cold temperatures and our furnances cranking out heat, what better time to switch from coal-based power to wind-generated power.  MGE makes it easy.  Take 30 seconds, and change now.  There is really no debate that coal is not a cleaning source of energy - it is dirty with emissions; it is ugly with the labor required to extract it; leaves communities devasted, with documented high cancer rates.  Yet, reportedly, MGE customoers have yet to tap out MGE's capacity for providing alternative sources.  That is, not enough customors in the region are requesting to switch their energy source to sustainable sources.  And, if MGE doesn't sell out their capacity for wind power, they have no reason to build capacity for more.  It would be like a storeowner continuing to stock shoes that his customers don't buy.  Yes, demand-side economics.  Let's all play a part! https://www.mge.com/my_mge/ServiceForms/WindPowerRes.htm 2012-01-30T16:46:53+00:00