New York’s greenest office building shows the beauty of sustainability

I love it when sustainable things are more awesome than non-sustainable things.

The Danish architect Bjarke Ingels once said that, thanks to the modern environmental movement, we’ve gradually come to believe that sustainable life is less fun than normal life. But, to me, architecture in particular and real estate development in general has demonstrated exactly the opposite: some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, the most interesting, the places you’d most like to work out of, are built with sustainability right at the forefront.

The Durst Organization’s One Bryant Park is a great example of this. Located just off Times Square, it’s the second tallest building in New York and the first ever platinum LEED certified high-rise office building. It’s also where Al Gore has his New York office. And the other day, Alexander Durst was kind enough to give me a tour of the building.

The big thing with sustainable building is energy consumption, and the big thing with energy consumption in a high-rise is cooling. Even in winter, office buildings capture and trap heat that needs to be dispersed. So we started our tour at the chillers, around 80 feet below the Manhattan streets.

Essentially giant air-conditioning units, these chillers work best and most efficiently when they’re running full blast. So, rather than waste energy by having a bunch of chillers the same size operating at less than full capacity, One Bryant Park employs a variety of chillers of different sizes -- from 600 to 1,200 tons -- and adjusts the configuration as cooling requirements fluctuate throughout the year.

Keeping track of the chillers’ performance, as well as the building as a whole, means keeping track of a lot of data, so a giant display makes it easy to see at a glance how the chillers are doing, what the temperature is on each floor, and even what the CO2 levels are on each floor. If there’s too much CO2, people get sleepy -- and it’s a well-known fact that people tend to work less while they’re sleeping.

Another problem with energy consumption in office buildings is that it’s erratic. During the day, while everyone’s at work, it spikes dramatically, while at night it’s almost non-existent. But for power companies, this is a big problem. They have to have enough capacity to handle the heavy daytime loads, but they can’t just switch it off when people go home. So they make it a lot cheaper to buy power at night.

One Bryant Park addresses this problem by using the cheap night power to make ice, and then using the ice to help cool the building during the day. Although the ice storage units take up around 100 times the space of an equivalent chiller, it’s far more energy efficient for the building itself, and helps level out the demand for the power company.

On individual floors, instead of cooling from the top down -- which requires unnecessary effort to cool the rising hot air -- the air is cooled from the bottom up. One Bryant Park’s attention to air quality is so good that the air inside is actually cleaner than the air outside!

The developers worked very closely with the city to make sure One Bryant Park would be a good neighbor; the results are evident in the free public space, filled with greenery, that’s open to everyone. They also maintained the façade of the historic Henry Miller theater, the only theater in New York where you enter at street level to find yourself at the top of the balcony, and have to descend to get down to the stage.

Finally, being the second tallest building in New York has its perks, and one of them is this: a stunning view of the tallest, the Empire State Building.

One Bryant Park is the kind of building you’d want to be in even if you didn’t care a bit about the environment. It’s beautiful, spacious, has lots of natural light and just feels good. Far from being “less fun” than normal buildings, it’s actually more desirable. I don’t know about you, but if this is what sustainability is all about, I’m in.

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend – AED: Ideas Changing Lives.

  Photo by job_earth on Flickr.com

Don’t you love it when you find people on the same page as you? Our Friday Featured Friend this week are working towards a world in which “all individuals have the opportunity to reach their full potential and contribute to the well-being of their family, community, country, and world.”

We’re there too. So this week’s Friday Featured Friend is AED: Ideas Changing Lives.

AED are a nonprofit organization working to improve education, health, social development in more than 150 countries around the world.  

With more that 3,000 staff working on over 300 programs around the world, AED are driven by a “commitment to making a positive difference in the world and in people’s lives, particularly for those who are underserved.”

Making a positive difference is what MiniMonos is all about. We’re a community where kids from all over the world to meet up, chat and play safely. So the work of AED’s Centre for Youth Development and Engagement really resonated with us. 

They’re running Youth Leadership programs, Peace Building programs, and Workforce Skills programs to set youth up for a better future.

Not only are AED doing great work with youth, but their Environment and Energy program also talks the MiniMonos language: it focuses on behavior change related to the problems of sustainable development and environmental protection.

AED have just become the newest member of NetHope, a collaboration of the world's leading international humanitarian organizations working together to solve common problems in the developing world. 

There’s a wealth of info on the AED website so have a look around and check out the great work they’re doing.

Friday Featured Friend -- Elgin Draper

I wanted to share a special person with you this week, Elgin Draper. He is my 93 year old neighbor, as sprightly and able as anyone 30 years younger than him and a great source of wisdom.

Elgin has had many roles in his life. He has been a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, a teacher, a farmer, a professional, a cook, a traveler, a gardener, a singer, and many other things besides. He says that he is incredibly fortunate to have lived such an amazing life and that he expects much more to come yet!

Elgin grows a lot of his own vegetables in his year-round vegetable garden and he adores flowers. He says his garden keeps him fit and aware of what nature has to share. Elgin tells me that he understands why it is important for people to have a concept of protecting the environment but it bothers him that this has become a distinct "thing to do", apart from our daily lives. For him, nature, the environment, the seasons, and all that constitutes the "environment" are a fact of his everyday life, to be attended to, cared for, and to remain attuned to. In other words, Elgin doesn't make it into a concept or a cause, he just "is" in his environment, relying on it to sustain him and in turn, doing his best to care for the garden, the native wildlife, the trees around him.

I asked Elgin about his children and grandchildren. He has many! He tells me that it has always been a deep privilege to have known all of his children and grandchildren and that he has always treasured them for who they are, and whatever achievements they make for themselves in life. He is adamant that teaching children includes the subject of "mistakes". Elgin says "Too many people think that mistakes are terrible things. That's not true. Mistakes are simply another side of learning, another way of seeing the world. And from mistakes grow many amazing things." His worry is that by raising children to be afraid of making mistakes, we risk curtailing their creativity and teaching them to be risk averse and fearful. Instead, Elgin says that children need to learn who they are by doing, experimenting, and occasionally getting it totally wrong. In a very gracious and diplomatic way, Elgin tells me I could do with a bit more of letting go of my own fear of getting things wrong too. That touched my heart -- he is such a wise soul!

Elgin doesn't know how many "seasons" he has left but he says he's going to make the most of every season to come. He showed me his penciled plans for the spring garden (it'll be spring in New Zealand shortly) and proudly tells me that he even has some of the grandchildren coming over the help till the soil and plant. I said I'm game for pitching in too, as there's a lot of gardening wisdom for me to learn from! Thanks to Elgin for our lovely chat at the kitchen table with the hot chocolates. You're a very amazing, wise person even though I know you'll never read that here because you don't own a computer -- I'll just remember to tell you next time!

~~~~

This is to be my last featured friend. I have really, absolutely enjoyed bringing you a vast array of wonderful friends and I hope that some of them have touched your lives as they have touched mine. And dear readers, it has been a real privilege to have so many of you let me into your lives to share the goodness, kindness, enthusiasm and sheer amazingness of all that you are contributing to humanity and our planet. Keep doing the amazing things you're doing, keep on being the wonderful people you are, and I will be looking out for all of you as you continue to make this world a better place. ~ Felicity

Friday Featured Friend -- Myoo Create

I’m really excited to introduce you to our Friday featured friend this week, Myoo Create (that’s “me & you” combined). Myoo Create is a new initiative with an all-embracing promise that if we're keen to collaborate, we can make a better future together. I love how this company is doing fantastic things combining sustainability-focused crowd-sourcing with brands, in order to come up with answers to sustainability challenges -- it's truly groundbreaking. In fact, Myoo Create is the first community online that is dedicated to crowd-sourcing innovative sustainability solutions, so it's got an exciting future ahead of it.

Launched in April this year, Myoo Create has quickly started making a positive difference with challenges already underway (see below). Essentially a community (kuh-Myoo-ni-tee) for environmental and social innovation, Myoo Create provides a space for people who share a passion for inspiring and co-creating a better world. It's a place where any of us can come together and apply our talents to challenges that matter, and the breadth and diversity of community are an important part of Myoo Create's philosophy.

Charlie O’Malley and Rebecca Petzel form Myoo Create's initial team. Motivated by the power of combining innovation and entrepreneurship to create lasting change for the better, they're people who are passionate about social and environmental change through collaboration. And they’re both very humble: Charlie says “I'm still learning about how change happens, but I'm excited about the contribution that Myoo Create can make. I think I have just about recovered from my education, but I still try every day to make sure I forget at least one thing I learned and to learn something different instead. As I get older, this gets easier and easier! I'm looking forward to plenty of unlearning on this Myoo Create journey.” Myoo Create’s team are wonderfully approachable and down-to-earth people, something I am totally convinced will have this project resonating with an ever-widening community for many years to come!

Rebecca explains that, as consumers, we can help increase the pace and effectiveness of change on issues such as waste, packaging, and use of energy and materials, by engaging directly with brands to suggest our ideas and innovations. In this way, sustainability comes about through what Rebecca terms "harnessing the global brain". Myoo Create facilitates the growing expectation we have as consumers that companies will listen to us and that we will to be able to interact with our favorite brands, taking an active role in the decision-making, especially when it comes to sustainability -- to bolster the point, Rebecca says that 80 percent of consumers have ideas on ways that companies can improve their sustainable practices!

Myoo Create connects organizations faced with environmental and social challenges to a community full of ideas, innovation, creativity, and solutions. It does this through the very simple process of having organizations post their environmental or social challenge with Myoo Create, along with offering a prize for the best sustainable solution.

In turn, the Myoo Create community submits suggested solutions to the challenge. The community as a whole then votes, as well as sharing thoughts and feedback on the contributions in order to ensure that the best contributions make it to the top. Once the winners are selected, the prizes are allocated and then, the solution just keeps on giving because the organization finds a great solution, the entrants and participants are rewarded for their efforts both financially, through being featured, and everyone benefits through ideas sharing and connecting. And, as Myoo Create says, “We all end up with a happier, saner planet.”

At the moment, Myoo Create is running an engaging and fun "Care to Air" design challenge with Levi's. This challenge started on June 1 and runs until July 31 (so you still have some time left to innovate!). After Levi's surveyed its supply chain, it discovered that almost 60 percent of the climate impact of a pair of jeans accumulates post purchase - hey, I'm thinking as I write this, that's when I'm washing and drying my jeans! Levi's realized that the messaging isn't only about improving its own processes but also draws in the consumer's washing and drying habits after purchase. While Levi's is doing its part to bring its carbon footprint down to zero and to build sustainability into everything it does, Levi's wants its customers to join in too. And the challenge is... to find groovy, neat, terrific, fantastic, inspiring, effective ways to dry your jeans. And given the increasing bans on clotheslines in North America (something I found very challenging when I lived there!), the best solution will be the one that combines style, sustainability and effectiveness, to overcome our very modern reticence to using natural drying approaches. So, if you've got some ideas, don't sit on them -- zip them into the Myoo Create community and you might just have the best idea awaiting discovery! (I'm going to ask my little dude what he thinks - he always has amazing creative ideas!)

My deep thanks to Rebecca Petzel of Myoo for taking the time to share her enthusiasm and information about the wonderful Myoo Create with me! You can join the community and leave your ideas, entries, and comments, as well as following Myoo Create on Twitter, or contact Rebecca or Charlie. And enter the Levi's Care to Air challenge here. And please feel free to share with us anything you're doing on Myoo Create.

Letting go of stuff

We’re not greedy, we say. It’s everyone else who is acquiring useless stuff. ~ Judith Levine

I've found that despite reading quite a number of self-help decluttering books, actually shifting stuff out of my house, out of my comfort zone, out of my life, isn’t always simple. More and more I realize how easy it is to lapse into keeping and longing for too much stuff, all the while recognizing that stuff isn’t going to change my life for the better.

So, why do we gather stuff and why do we hang on to it, often long after it has served any useful purpose? Often for me it's about emotional ties - there is the stuff people give me that I feel obliged to keep, and there is the stuff that speaks to me of good times or of times I held on and made it through despite the odds. For me, a lot of my stuff speaks to my past, a past I have often yet to make peace with. I realize that even that’s an excuse – emotional pain forming a barrier to utilizing common sense but still, it's very real.

Deep down, I also know that it’s the memory in my mind’s storage that needs dusting off the most. When I’ve learned to dissociate memories from stuff, I know I’ll find it easier to let go. Until then, I'll keep trying to spend wisely, declutter when the mood descends, and ask myself “Do I really need that?”. There will be times this doesn't work, but I'll keep working on it.

In creating a pathway to a more minimalist lifestyle, I'm going to practice:

• Acceptance that I am the sum of my relationships, my health, my dreams, my hopes, my sanity, my connections, and not the sum of what I have.

• Self-forgiveness for my inevitable moments of weakness while living in a society driven by a “stuff solution” for every problem.

• Realization that she who dies with the most toys doesn't delay the inevitable. It’s the journey that matters, not the collecting, it's the legacy of who I am, the love I have spread, that lives on, not what I owned.

So now there’s another “R” for me. Recycle, reuse, reduce, and release.

How do you let go of the "stuff" that isn't either useful or beautiful in your life? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff

A fun talk by Rory Sutherland about why it truly matters to sweat the small stuff - he discusses what we really remember and why small things are very important things. He explains why thinking that "big strategy" or "great expense" as always being the better option is actually more of a myth than a reality. Rory also ties in climatology as one large reality where very small changes can have a disproportionate effect. At the end, he asks us all a question about what we should call this need to focus on the small, the less costly, the missing piece in our big-is-always-good worldview. It's worth a moment to watch it (if you have problems viewing it, click here):

Friday Featured Friend -- John Peter Thompson

  

Our lovely friend for featuring this Friday is John Peter Thompson. John Peter is a gardening speaker, an invasive species program developer, sustainability consultant, and agricultural research policy advocate. And to top off his expertise, he is also a deep thinker who has the most delightful sense of humor! It's wonderful to be able to bring to light some of his thoughts to share with you today.

John Peter has long cherished the beauty of the world and all of its intricate interconnections. Fascinated by the myriad relationships that nourish and support each other, he says that "whether in music that I compose, or a garden that I plant, a landscape that I conserve, or a world that I conserve, I am looking for and finding beauty woven in the cloth of an ecosystem, or the intricate patterns embedded in the calculus of life, drawn to the flames of life's interaction with the cosmos."

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that one of John Peter's main passions is a concern for the unintended consequences of introducing invasive species to new homes and ecosystems, often something we do without thinking through the possible repercussions first. He explains that an invasive species is a species that is not native - any animal, insect, plant, or even disease, that hurts the environment around us, and spreads quickly by human activity such as trade and recreation, food production and gardening. John Peter considers that "the costs of invasive species are a symptom of unsustainable land use decisions based upon our past needs."

John Peter is working on finding ways to reconceptualize how we see our world, so that we can better understand the implications of how our activities and ways of living impact the planet. As part of this process, he seeks to bring together the many disciplines such as agriculture with ecology, biology with economics, etc., in order to help manage the systems of our world, both human and ecological. His laudable inter-disciplinary approach is targeted at finding new pathways to sustainability, "working," he says, "to bring sustainable ideas to life so that a new generation will have a natural philosophy that is sustainable." We love the idea of a sustainable natural philosophy, an innovation sure to be appreciated for many generations to come.

And by logical extension, John Peter is greatly concerned about our continued unthinking use of finite resources. He explains: "For ten thousand years now, mankind has been plowing the earth each spring and in doing so, disturbing the interactions and relationships of the species around him in order to extract resources to improve his quality of life. When man numbered only a few this made some sense, but as the number of people has grown, the sacred places of the world have waned, and now, indeed, are almost gone. We have lost the idea of the sacred and now live in a time when we think there is no need for sacrifice; we think there is no end to resources to make the things we need." Troubled that there is a conflict between what we as humans want right now and what is good for us tomorrow, John Peter is seeking to "find ways to enhance a sustainable paradigm for the future, a pattern for life choices that will enable humanity and ecosystems to interact and grow together, to sustain each other." And we can follow John Peter's journey as he documents his frequent presentations, discoveries, and thoughts on his fabulous blog Invasive Notes.

While John Peter laments that he sometimes feels "like a Moses trying to lead a new generation to the Promised Land", he has no doubts that children are the way forward for a sustainable future, telling us that "children see the beauty in the complexities of nature without being told how". He believes strongly that it's time we stopped "unteaching" children of their innate ability to see the wonder of the world and ceased trying to "replace this wonder with the craft of waiting in line to buy something we suggest that they really need instead." We heartily agree! And we sense John Peter's great hope when he tells us that while he "will not see a world that thrives on sustainable principles, I can help today's children begin to dream of one in which one day they shall live and play." We love the passion, the conviction, and the certainty of John Peter that children will change our world for the better, facilitated by all of us cherishing and nurturing their dreams of a sustainable way of life.

A big thank you to John Peter for sharing his innermost thoughts and ideas. And you can find out more about him at: 

• Invasive Notes blog
• Twitter
• Facebook
  

Feel free to get in touch with John Peter - he'd be delighted to help your organization with tailored presentations on sustainable sites and sustainability, climate change impact, and invasive species solutions. And he's a dab hand at tackling those invasive species in your garden too!

Switch off the computer -- it's Green IT Week

This week is the inaugural Green IT Awareness Week (1st – 7th June 2010), “IT” standing for “information technology”. The idea behind this week is to start bringing some consistency to green IT approaches within organizations across the world, in the hope that sustainable IT practices can be made more cohesive and commonplace worldwide.

ComputersOFF.org is the organization behind Green IT Week, and we love its slogan "Saving the planet, one idle computer at a time". ComputersOFF.org is looking to give us all an opportunity to learn and find innovative ways to reduce the environmental footprint both of our own IT usage and that of the organizations we're connected to, whether as workers, volunteers, or owners. It’s a great initiative and we hope it will spark many new ways forward for implementing green IT.

There is a lot each of us can do if we’re benefiting from IT at work or at home:

• Unplug: Switch off your computer and all of its peripherals when not in use. The energy is still in use unless you’ve switched everything right off. Use energy savings settings on your computer, copier, and printer. And forget the screensavers - they consume energy and aren't needed with LCD screens.
• Be paper-free: Reduce your printer usage, use recycled cartridges, double-side print and use draft mode. Practice reading on-screen and not pressing print as an automatic reaction. Communicate electronically rather than by paper trails. Use cloud computing to share information easily and to store without printing. Send invoices electronically.
• Recharge, recycle: Charge your mobile devices using solar, use rechargeable batteries for all electronic devices, and recycle all old cell phones, computers, and spent batteries.
• Go small: Prefer laptops or thin clients over desktop computers; they use a lot less energy.
• Telecommute: Try telecommuting, even just a few days a week, and support others in your workplace who are already telecommuting.
• Search green: Use green search engines such as Gigablast.
• Buy green: Check Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics. Look for ENERGY STAR on all electronics, including computers, power adapters, etc.
• Host green: Have your servers hosted by green, renewable energy. MiniMonos does.
• Wider green: Purchase or make eco-friendly carrying cases for all portable devices. Buy software online and use eco-friendly cabling.

And you can check out the initiatives, activities and discussions at the Green IT Week website.

5 good reasons to never stop learning

"I have never let schooling interfere with my education." ~ Mark Twain

Learning is an important part of growing – for our entire lives. As a child going through school, with all the tests, exams, and constricting expectations, I yearned for the day my “learning” could stop and I could start “living”. Leaving aside what that says about the educational system, it was pure delight when I discovered the point and beauty of learning at university. From that time to now, I have continued to love learning, having my perspectives challenged when I discover new ways of seeing things, and arriving at new understandings about how our world is.

Yet sadly, learning beyond educational institutions isn't always well appreciated. Apparently, even 42% of college graduates never read a book again after college! Learning lifelong matters. And here are five good reasons why:

1. It unleashes your real, unexplored talents instead of focusing on your limitations.
2. It keeps you aware of the world around you, the one well beyond your own neighborhood.
3. It stops you from stagnating and releases you to enjoy life to its fullest.
4. It prevents you from being bewildered by or enthralled by "expertitis"; and
5. It teaches you that the questions are as important as the answers.

And it's never too late to start learning again:

As Hunter Nuttall says: “You were given a large brain for a reason. Use it.”  At the end of the day, those who remain involved with learning stay healthier, happier, and a whole lot more connected than those who think learning stopped the day they left school. Learning is for life; it's only your schooling that ceases.

Sir Ken Robinson -- Bring on the Learning Revolution

"Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability. At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability, of intelligence." ~ Sir Ken Robinson

In the following brilliant video, Sir Ken Robinson talks about the crisis in creativity and education. He laments that we make very poor use of our talents and many of us simply don't know what our talents are. He is saddened by meeting so many people who go through life thinking that they're not really good at anything.

He makes a compelling case for us to become "disenthralled" from what we take for granted and from what we expect education to be. He says it is time to shift from an industrialized educational model that standardizes what children learn, expects everyone to go to college (and not just any college) regardless of talent, timing, or interest - what he calls an obsession with linearity and conformity. Instead, he says we need to adopt an agricultural model of education, one that is personalized to the needs, talents, and interests of children, one that resonates with their spirit and organically creates the conditions in which personal talents flourish.

We think you'll enjoy the following talk by Sir Ken: