By Linda F. Jarrett
Being green and environmentally conscious is no longer an option in today’s world, and the St. Louis RCGA wants St. Louis to be in the lead with sustainability initiatives.
The St. Louis Climate Prosperity Project, one of four initiatives approved by the RCGA Board of Directors for the strategic plan, has as its goal for St. Louis to be nationally recognized as a “Top Ten Green Region” in the next five years. St. Louis is one of 8 pilot regions participating in the Climate Prosperity Project, supported by the Rockefeller Brother Foundation.
This regional economic development strategy advances the idea that innovation, efficiency, conservation in the use and reuse of resources are the best ways to increase jobs, incomes, productivity and competitiveness of a region. The three pillars of the Project are “green savings, green opportunities, and green talent,” and the RCGA is developing specific strategies and goals for those areas.
St. Louis already has many regional businesses and governments who have begun their own green initiatives in this area.
BUSINESS GOING GREEN
Steve Poplawski, attorney at Bryan Cave LLP, led his firm’s sustainability initiative to reduce paper usage and consumer waste.
“We rolled out the program in 2008,” he says. “The key parts were the preferred policy of two-sided copying. This has basically
cut our paper copying usage in half. We
are in the process of installing two-sided
printers as the leases expire. The other component was making sure all of the paper had at least 30 percent post-consumer content.”
Poplawski says that Bryan Cave “has always been and will continue to be the largest supplier of recycled paper in downtown St. Louis.”
The goal is to eventually eliminate most of the copying and do as much as possible electronically, he says.
Other initiatives include recycling of consumer products with recycling bins in the “wet centers,” where beverages are served. The dining room vendor uses “green” biodegradable products, and when the firm holds conferences at hotels, pitchers of water are provided instead of bottled water.
“Sustainability is everyone’s buzz word,” Poplawski says. “More and more people are realizing we have a paradigm shift going on so that we either have to do sustainability or we’re in trouble. We have to set up our economy so we’re not burdening the future by our use of resources today.”
Engineering firm Burns & McDonnell, based in Kansas City, will be working with the RCGA this spring in using a carbon calculator, then performing energy audits for some members who wish to take advantage of this service.
Candace Derks-Wood, sustainability specialist with Burns & McDonnell, says that the carbon calculator does a greenhouse gas inventory and determines the emissions that companies have, and the greenhouse gasses generated by them. These gasses come from three different sources, she says.
“Scope I emissions are any greenhouse gas emissions generated on site, such as the production of electricity, or natural gas consumption. Scope II is purchased electricity, and Scope III involves employee business travel and employees traveling to and from work.”
Energy audits, which come after the greenhouse gas inventory, help companies determine their biggest source of emissions.
“We go in and do an audit on the different equipment they have that uses electricity,” Derks-Wood says, “Then we can go into what specific pieces of the facility need to be retrofitted or upgraded to gain the efficiency of the builder. That can be boilers, HVAC systems, or sometimes retrofitting or changing out the light bulbs.”
Participating RCGA members can determine how far they want to go with the audit.
In October 2008, after completing an
$8 million renovation, Cannon Design moved into the Powerhouse Building, located at the corner of 11th and Clark, adjacent to the Cupples Warehouse District. The 82-year old building had been vacant many years, and now is on track for LEED certification, according to Vice President Punit Jain.
“We were committed to Downtown,” Jain says. “We took this building, renovated it and made it much more energy efficient. We converted asphalt into green space, and are collecting rainwater to irrigate it. This also reduces storm water runoff.
“We installed insulated windows which let in light, but keep out heat, and we don’t have a lot of artificial light with these big tall windows,” he says.
Much of the construction waste was diverted from landfills and recycled, and the site, which was a Brownfield site, was remediated. Bicycle storage and showers are provided for employees, and the offices are close to public transportation, all of which earn LEED points.
“We specified that the materials used be regionally or locally manufactured which, again, supports local economy and prevents the use of virgin materials” Jain says. “We use low VOC (volatile organic compound) paint, adhesives and carpet systems.
“We have implemented a green cleaning program, so all cleaning agents are sustainable and don’t contain harmful compounds,” Jain says. “There’s no point installing green products if you come back and clean them with chemicals.”
Cannon has committed that every time they renovate or build a new office, they will make it a LEED-certified project.
UTILITY COMPANIES
AmerenUE, Laclede Gas Company and the Metropolitan Sewer District have all begun sustainability programs for their customers.
Pat Justis, senior program manager for the AmerenUE Business Energy Efficiency Program says that two years ago, they identified energy efficiency as a key resource to meet customers’ rising demand for electric energy.
“As of February 11, we launched a business program with a standard and custom incentive,” he says. “What this means is we’re helping to make energy efficiency improvement at our business customers’ facilities. If they’re more cost effective, we give cash incentives for them to upgrade lighting or motors or refrigeration, cooling systems, anything they can think of that cost effectively saves energy, and we would help them invest in it.”
AmerenUE’s Pure Power program enables residential and commercial customers to purchase renewable energy credits (RECs) in an amount equal to the actual energy that they use. This helps support wind and other renewable resources here in the Midwest.
Bill Barbieri, Ameren’s Manager, Renewables, says, “In comparison to traditional fossil generation, renewable generation in our service territory is still more expensive, primarily due to the intermittency in generation; the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. But programs like Pure Power help developers offset those price differentials providing the added revenues that allow renewable generation facilities to compete in the market.”
Laclede Gas Company has two rebate programs for its commercial and residential customers. Ted Reinhart, director of utility market analysis and development, says both programs began last November. “The resident program is designed for space heating requirements with furnaces, boilers and ENERGY STAR appliances. The idea is to try to encourage people to put in high efficiency furnaces so that it becomes the standard.”
He says that after the customer installs the equipment, he or she sends in an application with the required documentation and Laclede will send them a rebate check.
“The commercial and industrial program is similar to the residential one in that there are specific pieces of equipment that, if the customer buys, they can get pre-approved for a rebate,” Reinhart says.
In March, the Southern Gas Association named Laclede Gas as the winner of SGA’s 2009 Marketing Best Practices Award in their “Green Marketing” category. Laclede’s submission, “GREENING the EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION” detailed the company’s participation in the planning and execution of the episode of the popular ABC television show filmed in St. Louis last fall.
To encourage water conservation and lessen stormwater runoff, the Metropolitan Sewer District began selling rain barrels to customers, so they can collect and store rainwater from a home or building’s roof. This prevents the water from flowing through the downspout and eventually into a storm drain. The program, which ran from March 2 to April 3, was part of their $2 billion campaign to clean up local streams by reducing storm water and sewage overflows.
Bruce Litzinger, manager of environmental compliance, says that using the rain barrels reduces the amount of pollution in the natural water environment or the amount of water that MSD is required to treat which costs energy.
“You can use this to water plants, lawns or gardens,” he says. “The idea is that you’re not using purchased processed chlorinated water either. You’re using it onsite and the water is much healthier for the gardens.”
Litzinger said that no firm plans had been made about offering the program again.“ I suspect we’ll see how things went, evaluate and go from there.”
GOVERNMENTS GOING ON BOARD
Last year, the National Association of Counties awarded a Conservation Leadership Award to Madison County, Ill.
Frank Miles, director of the planning and development department, says Madison County has several programs to manage the environment, and the department works year around promoting green initiatives, creative community programs, and sustainable solid waste management.
“The programs also deal with land use planning issues and planning and zoning issues,” he says. “We manage a curbside recycling program for all of Madison County, and a school recycling program for all of Madison County,” he says. “Since 1996, all residents in single and two-family homes are required to recycle.”
He says the county has won awards from Focus St. Louis and the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council for their environmental programs “above and beyond our recycling. We have a top notch school recycling program. Each school has a recycling coordinator and last year they recycled about 3,000 tons of paper, and 48 tons of clothes, much of which goes to third world countries. We also recycled about 44,000 pounds of cardboard.”
The East-West Gateway Award came from the county’s efforts in managing wetlands and working with the Confluence Greenway resulting in over 100 miles of biking and hiking trails that connect most of the county’s communities.
“We’re also working with the Corps of Engineers with an ecological restoration project,” Miles says. “We’re trying to buy wetlands in the bottom and protect them and restore a natural drainage that will help alleviate flooding.”
The City of St. Louis has formed a Sustainability Task Force with an eye to forwarding sustainability objectives throughout this governmental entity.
Chairman Marjorie Melton says that their initial object was to define what sustainability meant to the City and how they would deal with this problem.
“Over the last two years, we have developed a climate protection plan which is a set of goals to reduce our carbon footprint and, ultimately, conserve energy both from electricity and gas,” she says.
Some of the other objectives include an energy savings investment program whereby money saved from energy conservation is used to fund additional projects, and a program to reduce fuel consumption by studying routes taken by city-owned vehicles then finding a more efficient way to reduce the miles traveled.
“We’re also looking at a program in San Francisco where they convert fry oil to biodiesel, and vehicles can take up to 20 percent of this biodiesel without any modification,” Melton says.
“We’re hiring a consultant to look at our buildings one by one and develop an energy master plan to make these buildings as energy efficient as possible. Some of these buildings range from 30 to 150 years old,” she adds.
Another goal is to divert 25 percent of the solid waste from city government operations by 2015 and 40 percent of city residents’ waste by 2015.
“We also have double-sided copying.” Melton says. “We hope to stop copying all together and do communications online.”
NEXT STEPS
The RCGA engaged Doug Henton, Chairman and CEO of Collaborative Economics of Mountain View, California, to refine the strategy for the St. Louis Climate Prosperity Project. Henton is the author of the “Silicon Valley Greenprint,” a regional strategy to improve the supply and demand of clean technology and investment in the Valley. He will bring his expertise in regional economic development strategy and identify a specific approach for St. Louis.
The RCGA Energy and Environmental Council, chaired by Steve Poplawski, meets throughout this year to work on the St. Louis Climate Prosperity Project and to share best practices on sustainability. The Council has discussed goals to improve the regions’ air and water quality, reduce fossil-fuel energy, encourage transit, and better educate and promote green building. If you would like to participate in the RCGA Energy and Environment Council, please contact Eric Schneider at eschneider@stlrcga.org or at (314) 444-1148.
Gardens You Don’t Have to Water
By Linda F. Jarrett
With “sustainability,” “ecology,” and “environmental” finally working their way into everyday language, many people are wondering what they can do to make a difference.
Why not try a rain garden, a concept that has gained more interest over the last several years? Water flowing over impervious surfaces such as concrete, asphalt, and rooftops carries pollutants and as it gains speed, causes erosion, usually in places where erosion could be a major problem.
A rain garden is a shallow depression in the ground and lined with a mix of light gravel, peat, or other organic matter. The depression is then filled with plants that thrive in moist environments. Runoff water flows naturally to these depressions and has a chance to “settle out,” says Jennifer Lewis, District Manager of the St. Louis County Soil and Water Conservation District.
“It’s a garden in a bowl,” she says. “Rain gardens allow infiltration, allow pollutants and sediment to settle out and they have a positive impact on the environment.”
Plus, it makes a beautiful addition to a yard, while helping solve an environmental problem.
Rain gardens are suited for most any locations besides homes, any place where rainwater could be directed. They are most beneficial when situated between the source of the runoff, like a downspout, and traditional water carry-off points like a creek or culvert.
“They’re very user-friendly,” Lewis says. “Either for homeowners or entities like a municipality, government center, school, church or corporation. We have seen more studies about how effective they are in alleviating runoff problems.”
Thanks to the diversity of wetlands in Missouri, finding the right plant is not a problem. The Missouri Botanical Garden, the Shaw Nature Reserve and the University of Missouri Extension Center are good places to start learning about rain gardens and the correct plants.
Also, the Shaw Nature Reserve will be holding a Native Plant School class on Rain Gardens on June 12.
Lewis says complete information about rain gardens, how to make one and what plants to use will be on their new website, www.showmeraingardens.com.
And for those who are “garden-challenged,” this is one garden that can’t
be overwatered!
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