Home » Portland, Sustainable

Greenest City in the US!

A big thank you to Portland and all of its green minded inhabitants!  Portland, Oregon has been rated the #1 Greenest City in the US by the Mother Nature Network.  The criteria that was rated to determine the rank was carbon footprint reduction, air and water quality, efficient recylcling and management of waste, percentage of LEED certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy, and easy access to green products and services.  Check out more on Sustainablog and Mother Nature Network.

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Composting now mandatory in San Francisco

San Francisco, California has a great city recycling program with nearly everyone participating by recycling everything possible in their daily lives.  With a lofty goal of being zero waste by 2020, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco is striving to meet that goal by making composting mandatory.  New green bins have been distributed to homes and businesses for a total of 3 bins per business and household.  The green bin is for compostable organic matter, the blue bin is for recyclables, and the black bin is for the remaining trash.  The mandatory composting will bring SFs current 72% deferred waste rate (amount of waste that does not end up in a landfill), to over 90% deferred waste.  That means that only 10% of the city’s waste is actually ending up in a landfill.  Go Cali!  Check out Inhabitat for the original article.

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Shift House - The Passivhaus standard comes to Portland

The Shift House is a $300,000 home  being built right here in Portland using the German Passivhaus standard.  The Passivhaus standard saves 90% of heating/cooling energy use by having an airtight house with no unwanted heat gain or loss.  The triple layered triple sealed windows and walls make it so that you can heat the whole house with only a standard blow dryer.  Though if not done properly, the Passivhaus homes can get too warm for comfort on the inside.  In order to prevent overheating the house, or air stagnation, there are several fresh air exchangers around the house that keep fresh air coming in from outside without any energy loss.  Passivhaus standards are often used right alongside the LEED standard, although LEED only strives for 15% improvement on energy efficiency while Passivhaus aims for 90% improvement.  The greatest part about having a Passivhaus is the lack of a furnace, you heard that right, no furnace at all in the entire place.  Passivhaus homes are not that popular in the US yet (only 7 have been built), and is much more common in Germany right now.  For a 10-15% increase in the cost of building the home, you can reduce 90% of its heating and cooling needs forever.  This is a great step towards having a carbon zero home.  Read more about the Shift House at Willamette Weekly.

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New PDX airport sewage treating lobby

Living Machine is helping build the new Port of Portland administrative headquarters next to the airport, which will also serve as an atrium for arriving people from the airport.  Being the center of sustainability, the Port of Portland felt that the entrance to the city should really showcase the true meaning of sustainability in one of the last untouched frontiers to be tested.  Most of the time, we use perfectly good drinking water to carry away our eliminated waste where it is partially treated and then dumped into the river and local ecosystem.  The closed system by Living Machine creates a natural greenhouse of gorgeous plants that deep beneath the surface of the soil are helping play host to the natural breakdown and cleaning process for the waste that is flushed from the airport bathrooms.  The water is cleaned using a chain of monitored processes until eventually clean (yet non-drinkable) emerges at the end ready to be pumpted right back into the toilets of the airport.  Never to fear, this water is only used for toilet flushing and despite being perfectly clean and pathogen free it will never be used for sinks or drinking fountains.  The building is expected to open Spring of 2010 in a 10 story building.  The blackwater purifying plants will be located in the ground floor lobby of the building. See Wired Magazine and USA Today for more information.

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Portland Fruit Tree Project

A great local non-profit the Portland Fruit Tree Project has gained some national attention recently when the New York Times ran “Neighbor, Can You Spare a Plum?”  The Portland Fruit Tree Project aims to provide better access and sharing of food from local fruit and nut trees.  The Portland Fruit Tree project locats and lists many fruit trees in the area on their website where you can pick up some free food when it is ripe. Just remember to stay on public property while you do your picking unless you are with a picking party or the owner.  This provides free or low cost home grown food to you, and many harvesting parties often end up donating half (or sometimes all) of their harvest to local shelters and food banks.  As a side result of collecting this food there is less waste and no mess of rotting fallen fruit.

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Largest Solar Power Facility in the US (Austin, TX)

Recently approved and construction is moving forward on the new largest solar power facility in the United States outside of Austin, Texas.  Austin Energy will be leasing the plant from Gemini Solar Development (a company based in San Francisco) who will own and operate the facility.  Austin Energy already owns another solar energy facility already in operation (next door to this one).  The 30 MegaWatt facility will be able to power about 5,000 homes.  Check out Inhabitat for more.

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Guerilla Gardening

Guerilla Gardening is a trend that is gaining popularity worldwide.  Concerned citizens and vigilante gardeners are taking over unused and neglected plots of land both large and small and turning them into gardens.  Some people believe that these spaces should be used to plant native plants and encourage the natural and native species to the area, others are going for a more ornamental approach with their plant selection, and there are also people who are using these spaces for urban food production and community gardens.  The best and most legal approach to a community garden would be to request the owners permission, or the cities permission if it is public land.  However, some owners and cities are harder than others to get permission to plant a garden.  Enter Guerilla Gardening, where you illegally take over and plant a garden anyway.  The important thing is to select a neglected section of land that you will improve.  Your garden stands a better chance of survival if you plan it well and leave the plot in obviously better condition than when you found it.  A great example from LA Guerilla Gardening shows a before and after photo of a roadside strip of ground that was all brown weeds before getting a gorgeous Guerilla transformation into a flower bed.    My favorite example is that of urban newspaper and flyer dispensing bins that get abandoned for whatever reason which someone designed and built a wooden insert which turned the empty newspaper box into a streetside flowerbox.

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Sustainability at Portland State University

One of the greatest things about living in the greenest and most sustainable city in the country is that our great local university offers some of the finest courses available on ecology and sustainability.  Portland State University in downtown Portland offers both Bachelors and Masters programs on Evironmental Science Management, and even minors for sustainability, or Sustainable Urban Development.  Check out http://www.pdx.edu/esm/ for more information

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Solar Powered Bus Station

Waiting for the bus in California just got a whole lot better.  Between now and 2013 San Francisco will be installing over 1,100 solar powered bus stop shelters which will provide an intercom, LED lighting, and a WiFi router for internet access to the citizens.  These great looking bus shelters were a project by Lundberg Design.  The shelters are also composed of over 75% recycled material (most of that material is also local to the Bay area).  Congrats to SanFran for their really inspired idea, I hope the big guys here in Portland city hall are watching. See Inhabitat for more.

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