Published on May 10th, 2008
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Why did more than 300 people spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon inside the first LEED-certified house of worship in the United States last week? Most likely because they want to help pass on lovely spring days to their children and grandchildren.
In 2006, Evanston, IL, which hugs Chicago’s border to the south, and Lake Michigan to the east, signed the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement along with more than 800 US cities. Those cities who signed the agreement aim to lower carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2012.
In an effort to achieve carbon reduction to 1990 levels, more than 130 dedicated citizens formed nine task forces, and devised broad recommendations on how this progressive and diverse city, home to Northwestern University and a lively downtown, could reduce its carbon footprint. Last weekend, a broad coalition of citizens and city government workers unveiled a draft of the Evanston Climate Action Plan. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on May 9th, 2008
Oakland, California-based architect Michelle Kaufmann has made a career of promoting green homes and green communities through her company, Michelle Kaufmann Designs. But if you’re not in the market for a new house, she still has some pretty cool tips for greening your home on the cheap.
On her blog, Kaufmann features do-it-yourself videos for a neat variety of eco-projects that let you reduce energy costs, recycle objects into useful items and add elements of clean, green living to your home.
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Published on April 2nd, 2008
Last week I wrote about preparations for Earth Hour, and this week I’m focusing on another way people in the Chicago region are re-examining the use of energy at night. The village of Homer Glen, in the Chicago suburbs, has made news recently for an attempt to curb an insidious manmade contaminant that is emitted by every population center in the world, but which few of us ever take notice of: light pollution.
The largely rural village of Homer Glen, located about 11 miles southwest of Chicago, adopted a groundbreaking ordinance in December that limits how much light a business can generate based on lumens, a measurement of emitted light. In doing so, the village became one of the first municipalities in the country to pass a law that specifically recognizes the night sky as a natural resource and that lays out specific measures to preserve it.
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Published on March 27th, 2008
The worldwide event known as Earth Hour is getting a big push in Chicago this year. As the flagship city for Earth Hour in the U.S., Chicago is joining Atlanta, Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities around the world promoting the March 29 event with a big P.R. campaign and high-profile corporate sponsorship to highlight the problem of (and possible solutions to) global climate change.
When the hour of 8 p.m. local time on Saturday arrives, the plan is that in dozens of cities across six continents, thousands of businesses and millions of individual citizens will be turning off their lights for 60 minutes. Earth Hour was a successful movement last year in Sydney, Australia, with 2.2 million people and over 2,000 businesses hitting the off switch. Even landmarks like the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House went dark for the occasion. The organizers claim that the Earth Hour 2007 event resulted in a 10.2 percent drop in energy usage, which is the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road for that hour.
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Published on March 17th, 2008
A voluntary compact authored by the Illinois Lieutenant Governor’s office has elementary and secondary schools around Chicago putting their environmental priorities down on paper. Students, teachers, and administrators from the first six schools signed the compact at a ceremony hosted by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn in January.
Modeled after the Illinois Sustainable University Compact, which began in 2006, the new Illinois Sustainable Schools Compact sets out 12 achievable sustainability objectives for elementary and secondary schools. These goals focus on conserving energy, encouraging recycling, and practicing natural landscape techniques (including minimizing the use of chemical fertilizers, following a conservative watering schedule, using rain barrels, and planting drought-resistant native species). For complete list of the goals in the compact, click here (PDF).
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Published on March 11th, 2008
Dominick’s grocery stores, which operates 99 stores in the Midwest, announced in January that it will become the first Illinois retailer to convert its entire truck fleet to biodiesel. By converting 78 tractors and 350 refrigerated trailers to B20 biodiesel, the grocer projects a 1,457,256 pound reduction in its yearly carbon emissions.
For many Chicagoans, this announcement may alter the perception of a large grocery chain not known for being particularly green. In the Second City, Dominick’s is sort of the Pepsi to to Jewel-Osco’s Coke. These two large mainstream grocery stores are known for having stores in many of the city’s neighborhoods, and for serving very large portions of the populace with conventional packaged food and some organic produce. If you’re not a dedicated organic foodie doing your shopping at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s (or at farmer’s markets or CSAs), chances are you’re a Dominick’s or Jewel regular.
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Published on March 5th, 2008
Last week I wrote about how the Chicago nonprofit Safer Pest Control Project has been working to protect people from the harmful effects of toxic pesticides. In talking with the organization’s Executive Director, Rachel Rosenberg, I learned about how common it is for people to be exposed to chemical pesticides in public places without being aware, and how dangerous this can be for children.
But even more insidious than the harm posed by toxins used to rid our homes and workplaces of unwanted critters is the problem of chemical pesticides used to control outdoor pests. In fact, the use of chemicals to kill animals and plants in our yards is a lot more widespread than you may have guessed. Consider these statistics cited by the Safer Pest Control Project:
- 78 million households in the U.S. use home and garden pesticides.
- $700 million are spent annually on pesticides for U.S. lawns.
- 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides are used on U.S. lawns each year.
- Three times as much pesticide is used on lawn per acre than on agricultural crops.
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Published on February 27th, 2008
If you’ve ever faced a pest infestation in your home, you know how quickly you want the critters gone–whatever the cost. Whether it’s roaches, termites, or rodents invading your space, it’s natural to want to strike back. You want the toughest weapon you can find to beat back the onslaught of little beasties before they multiply and take over completely.
But before you go out and buy that can of Raid and take aim at the crawling menace, pause to ask yourself: Do you really want to coat your home in toxins that you can’t see and that may persist on surfaces for weeks? Are you willing to put your children and pets at even greater risk than what you yourself face from these poisonous chemicals? Are you sure the solution isn’t more dangerous than the problem?
Educating the public about the dangers of chemical pesticides and promoting safe, effective alternatives for dealing with pests is the mission of Chicago-based nonprofit Safer Pest Control Project. Since 1994 this organization — which began as a coalition of four environmental groups–has worked to reduce the risks to human health wherever pesticides are commonly used, including in schools, childcare centers, residential buildings, yards and parks and in agriculture. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on February 18th, 2008
One of the defining features of downtown Chicago is the river which bears its name. The Chicago River has been inextricably linked to the growth of the city–Chicago became a transportation hub in the 19th century because of shipping routes from the Great Lakes into the Midwest and points beyond. In fact, Chicago is home to more movable bridges, 38 currently, than any other city in the country, and they all span one of the three branches of this river.
But the river which made the rise of this metropolis possible endured an incredible amount of abuse as the city grew up around it. For most of the last 200 years, the river was treated essentially as an open sewer, where household and industrial waste was dumped with abandon. (One particularly rancid part of the river earned the nickname “Bubbly Creek” because of methane buildup due to decomposing animal remains dumped by the Chicago stockyards, famously depicted in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.) The contamination led to many outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and other diseases in the 1800s because the sewage flowed out into Lake Michigan, the source of the city’s drinking water. In 1900, a massive engineering project succeeded in using locks to reverse the flow of the river so that the pollution was sent southwest through the newly completed Chicago Sanitary and Ship canal and into the Missippi River watershed, away from Lake Michigan. When Chicagoans weren’t trying to ignore the stench of the river or actively abusing it, they seriously messed with the natural hydrology. Not much respect.
This human disrespect for the Chicago River continued up through the 1980s, when the river was often still clogged with garbage. But beginning in the 1990s, things started turning around for this urban waterway. Pollution levels started to drop (due in no small part to enforcement of Clear Water Act legislation) and people began to notice that the river, no longer smelly and unsightly, could actually be an enhancement to city life, a corridor of somewhat natural green space in an urban setting. People began using the river for recreational activities that put them in closer contact with the water, such as canoeing and kayaking, in addition to the larger pleasure boats and sightseeing ferries. New buildings along the river are now built so that people can walk along the shore and appreciate this natural asset, rather than being sited facing away from the river, as much architecture did in the 20th century.
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