FEATURE STORY: Examining the Purposes and the Outcomes of Consumption

NEWS BRIEFS
a) Middlebury College Building Comes Apart
b) Indonesia Trades Forests for Paper
c) Matching Material Needs in NYC
d) Eco-friendly Floors
e) Award-Winning Green Spaces
f) Greening Habitat Homes
g) Hotels Save Trees
h) Paper Recycling Remains in NYC
i) The Reprintable Book
j) Cooking & Building with Less Wood in Mexico
k) Affordable & Green Housing in Harlem

CAMPAIGNS & EVENTS
green building

FEATURE STORY
Examining the Purposes and the Outcomes of Consumption

Society is consuming the earth's resources, including forests, faster than they are replenished according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported Reuters on June 25, 2002 in "Earth Can't Meet Human Demand for Resources, Says Study" by Christopher Doering.

The study was undertaken by Redefining Progress, a California based nonprofit that works on environmental conservation and economics. Due to the soaring demand of the past 40 years, it now takes the planet 1.2 years to regenerate what humans use up in only one year, creating the potential of an "ecological bankruptcy."

Scientists calculated the "ecological footprint" of activities such as logging forests, building infrastructure, etc., and used government data and various estimates to determine how much land would be required to meet human demand for those actions. Not surprisingly, the study indicated that in the United States, each person consumes an average of 24 acres, while the global average is 5.7 acres annually.

According to Dr. David Suzuki in his July 30, 2002 Science Matters editorial, "How Much Stuff is Enough," the excessive consumption rates of Americans is no accident. After World War II, when the American economy dominated, the United States was concerned with keeping its economy booming (with memories of the Great Depression still present). The president's Council of Economic Advisors came up with the answer: consumption.

The editorial quotes Victor Lebow, a retailing analyst, as stating at that time, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate."

Dr. Suzuki asks, "What is an economy for? How much is enough? And what are the important things in our lives?" If these questions were debated more regularly by the American public, it would have a positive effect on wood consumption--decreasing it. Dr. Suzuki recommends a renewed focus on the need for more leisure time, better quality of life and the futility of the the "destructive path of hyperconsumption."

a) Middlebury College Building Comes Apart
Middlebury College which has made Environmental Studies (ES) a signature program on its campus in recent years is practicing what its teaching, working to create a "green" atmosphere on campus, according to E Magazine's article "Piece by Piece: Middlebury College Recycles Paper--and its Old Buildings" by Bill McKibben Mar/Apr 2002. The college deconstructed, instead of demolished, their 1960s Science Center which had a reputation as a drafty and ugly campus structure. The contractor pulled the building apart one piece at a time in order to reuse the materials, including 75 tons of wood. The college avoided landfilling materials altogether from this deconstruction.

b) Indonesia Trades Forests for Paper
Indonesia, home of the third largest tropical rainforest in the world, has seen a ten-fold increase in the pulp and paper industry and a forest that is disappearing at an alarming rate reports Reuters in "Indonesian Forests Vanish Into Paper" on May 13, 2002. The industry's capacity can consume 60-65 million cubic meters of wood per year--three times the country's estimated sustainable level. Sumatran low-land forests could be eliminated by 2005. In the past 10 years, the pulp and paper sector has cleared 2.5 million acres of natural forests to obtain 120 million cubic meters of wood.

c) Matching Material Needs in NYC
According to In Business magazine's in "Matchmaking in New York City" by Amy Satkofsky in its May/June 2002 issue, a nonprofit materials exchange organization, New York Waste-Match (NYWM) is keeping materials out of landfills, enabling institutions to reuse items such as pallets, wood and paper. Some of the industries that have saved thousands through this service include printing and publishing and wood working. Used lumber, pallets and corrugated cardboard are all materials that have avoided landfills through the exchange process.

d) Eco-friendly Floors
Carpets have not always been considered an eco-friendly alternative to hardwood floors. However, C+A Floorcoverings has been working to "green" its products in a closed-loop recycling system for floor coverings, according to "Waste Not, Want Not," by Katie Sosnowchik in GREEN@WORK magazine's May/June 2002 issue. The company leases its carpets so that the materials are brought back to the manufacture. Using waste carpet materials as the raw feedstocks for its commercial carpets is an important environmental characteristic of this carpet -- there are more than four billion pounds of carpet disposed in America's landfills every year, providing plenty of raw material. The company makes a 100 percent recycled carpet backing for its modular carpet tiles and 31-50 percent recycled content for the face of the carpet tile. Unfortunately, the company still uses PVC, but at least it has set up its systems to reclaim and recycle all of the PVC products that they make for floor coverings.

e) Award-Winning Green Spaces
Among the Top 10 "Green" Projects selected by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE) are several that address wood consumption, according to a special section, "When Buildings Go Green" in GREEN@WORK magazine's May/June 2002 issue. Camp Arroyo is an environmental education camp in Livermore, California which consists of stabilized earth bathhouses and a straw-bale dining hall. Pier One is an adaptive reuse project that turned an old warehouse on San Francisco's waterfront into office space and public open space--reusing a structure rather than tearing it down and building anew.

f) Greening Habitat Homes
Habitat for Humanity is constructing "green" homes in the mid-Atlantic which include wood reduction strategies such as optimum value engineering (OVE) reported Steven Winter Associates' newsletter Wintergreen, volume 3, issue 12, June 2002 in "Greening Habitat Rehabs With Help from HUD." OVE is a set of practices that reduce the amount of materials, such as wood studs, in construction without sacrificing building strength, safety and durability.

g) Hotels Save Trees
Hotels are increasingly paying attention to their "green" image and as such are beginning to implement some practices that reduce wood consumption reports E Magazine in "Green Hotels: Beyond Good Hospitality" by Jim Motavalli in the July/August 2002 issue. The Park Plaza Hotel in Boston has implemented a paper reduction campaign that saves an estimated 300 trees per year, while the Colony Hotel in Kennebunkport, Maine uses recycled paper.

h) Paper Recycling Remains
Thankfully, paper recycling was not among the victims of New York City Mayor Bloomberg's new budget which has eliminated glass and plastics recycling, according to the July 2, 2002 Associated Press article, "In A Move That May Have National Repercussions, NYC Rolls Back Recycling" by Katherine Roth. The move is the first significant rollback of a recycling program in the country. Paper recycling, however, has "worked for a long time," according to the Mayor, so was not eliminated.

i) The Reprintable Book
Green architect, William McDonough is featured in evWorld People & Technology's July 6, 2002 article, "Cradle to Cradle" by Bill Moore. In addition to his work as an architect, he is involved in numerous "green" projects. McDonough is the co-author of "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" -- a book that was published on a polymer instead of paper. The polymer can be reused endlessly and avoids the destruction of forests, chlorine bleaching and petrochemical inks tainted with heavy metals. The book argues that instead of consuming and disposing of our resources, they should be continuously reincarnated as feedstocks for other systems. McDonough is also calling on a renewed vision for recycling which he says is currently more appropriately called "down-cycling" as materials are generally recycled into lesser products that are eventually disposed.

j) Cooking & Building with Less Wood in Mexico
A small nonprofit is helping a community 100 miles west of Mexico City consume less wood, teaching rural farmers how to minimize their impacts on their environment, reported the New York Times on July 9, 2002 in "Aid for Farmers Helps Butterflies Too" by Carol Kaesuk Yoon. The group, Alternare has provided the community with stoves that use half the amount of wood of an open fire. They've also shown farmers how to build a long-lasting adobe home using just one tree instead of a house that requires 25 trees. The location of this project is particularly crucial as the residents are part of the 200,000 population living within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve--forested mountains that serve as a migratory spot for monarchs in the winter.

k) Affordable & Green Housing in Harlem
A "green" condominium and retail space development designed specifically for middle-income families is in the process of being constructed in Harlem according to "'Green' Multifamily Housing Grows in Harlem," by GreenBiz.com posted on Environmental News Network on July 10, 2002. Among numerous other environmental features, the building will include recycled materials. For more information on the project, see www.1400on5thpr.com.

CAMPAIGNS & EVENTS

Sustainable Washington Alliance in collaboration with American Institute of Architects DC Committee on the Environment and US Green Building Council, DC Chapter are hosting the Smart Design Forum 3 from October3-4, 2002 in Washington, DC. For more information, see www.swampnet.org/sdf/index.html.