AZA Green Summit Day 2

Another great day of ideas, and supportive suggestions.

Detroit Zoological Society's Anaerobic Digester
 Courtesy Detroit Zoological Society

Though it's easy to feel as if one is falling short as we listen to the success stories of our peers - even as they (thankfully) tell us of their mess-ups; a more helpful, honest response is "look how far the field has come; look at how many peers I have to help me make similar progress."

Remember, no one goes all green (yet); and no one goes green all at once. Each of us has success stories and not-so-successful stories to share.

Here are the day's take-aways:

• Akron Zoo has impressive fundraising stories that are born of a strong strategic commitment to even the small projects, and with an emphasis on community engagement to create popular support and funding momentum from a wide array of resources.
• Detroit Zoo's anaerobic digester is cooking its first set of herbivore waste. This four-bay system produces compost for the zoo and methane gas to generate electricity to power the zoo's hospital. It's a very, very valuable innovation for zoos addressing waste management and renewable energy. As the learning and research progresses, the zoo plans to add kitchen waste to amp up the energy production and waste reduction.
• Seattle Aquarium was gifted with a community solar array (on its own roof), overcoming some institutional resistance and lack of understanding to participate in a program so successful that the utility reinvested the returns in a similar project at Woodland Park Zoo.
• Milwaukee County Zoo's clear goals drove success: electricity and gas each decrease 20% by 2020; water 30% by 2020; fleet vehicle fuel 50% by 2020; and increase in renewable energy use of 20% by 2020. Site assessment, submetering, retrocommissioning, and improved controls, all contributed to success. The county's grant writer triggered ARRA funding to support HGA Architects & Engineers conducting a study and recommendations.  
• Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium's green team is a marvel of grassroots efforts, energy, and success. For the conference, this was the first discussion of choosing green team members by interest not division - a topic which came up several times and may be signalling a shift in zoo approaches.
• The global giant Disney has environmental successes worldwide. A special feature is the corporate mapping of environmental impact and how the quarterly report card pits Parks and Resorts worldwide in a race to reduce. Target-focused, highest-impact initiatives rule over random acts of sustainability.
• The Cincinnati Zoo's green projects have grown in sophistication and broadened in commitment. The recent parking lot renovation as part of the Africa exhibit included unprecedented stormwater management design with the ultimate benefits being the zoo's neighborhood of disadvantaged residents often the victims of combined sewage overflow events.
• The Smithsonian's National Zoo has a green team and no sustainability manager, accomplishing so much with the support of a consultant and a structured annual approach: 
• January - team mind-dump and goal-setting 
• February - August - complete actions toward three projects supporting goals
• September - November - "accountability time"
• December - End-of-Year Report approved and published

And that, my friends, was another theme of the discussions: the struggle to measure. We all understand the value and importance, we do measure in many ways, but we often let the reporting-out step slip away from us as we hurry to put out new fires or work to keep up with the many other to-dos on our green lists. The resounding message was that when we measure we leverage our projects, attract more supporters, and have better information for better work. Let's all work - moi included - to make measuring green just as important as going green.

Tides of March: Consensus Webinars on Environmental Sustainability in Museums

The Wild Center. Photo by Barrier Free Travel

All around, and sometimes within, the museum field there are thinkers, worriers, and the hopeful who create tools and expectations to strengthen the pursuit of environmentally-sustainable action and thinking.

But it appears there is no field-wide opinion on how to extend and expand this work that is so critical to our missions and to our planet.

The first Tides of March discussion took place yesterday. Four directors stepped up to share their experiences and thoughts on best practices and standards, and how good green work might affect the field.

Ron Kagan of the Detroit Zoological Society, Julie K. Stein of the Burke Museum, Bill Eiland of the Georgia Museum of Art, and Nina Zannieri of the Paul Revere Memorial Association have led the way in encouraging organized, deliberate discussion with national leadership decisions to move this discussion off its current mark of "interesting, but not vital."

What do you think? What do you hope?  What change do you want to see?

Please join us for the next two conversations, online or by phone using the AAM WebEx access:

March 8, 2016, 3 pm EST with association leaders:

·  Bob Beatty and Cherie Cook, American Association for State and Local History

·  Sarah Beck, American Public Garden Association

·  Tim Carter, Second Nature

·  Shelly Grow, Association of Zoos and Aquariums

·  Tim McNeil, California Association of Museums

·  Dan Yaeger, New England Museum Association

March 24th, 2016, 3 pm EST with observers of the field

·  James Elder, Campaign for Environmental Literacy

·  John Fraser, New Knowledge

·  Greg Johnson, Perkins+Will

·  Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors

·  Douglas Worts, World Views Consulting

You can find us here:  Tides of March: Consensus Webinars on Environmental Sustainability

Book Review: Most Good, Least Harm by Zoe Weil

This is a gently powerful book worth reading if you crave a life of thoughtful choices for yourself and the planet.  The staff at the Detroit Zoological Society recommended it to me; it is one of the guidebooks behind their marvelous Humane Education program. It has been a very important read for me. [They also recommend Weil's The Power and Promise of Humane Education which I'll review next.]

Whether you worry about environmental sustainability, animal welfare, a civil society, or personal peace, this book has something for you. The author, Weill, says this “is not a how-to book…instead a call to define for yourself your deepest values, and to live accordingly…followed by practical information and guidelines that will help you achieve this goal….”

I hope you will consider reading it yourself, bringing it to your book group, or suggesting it as a group read to your green team or staff.  It is helpful with struggles such as “how do I know what’s right”, “I’m tired of being the only one doing this”, and “does one person this really make a difference?”

My favorite lines:

•  Vaclav Havel, 1993: “There is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility and tolerance [I add “honesty”], and that is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly, and tolerantly” [and honestly.]
• “…it’s still not possible to cause no harm at all. Yet each of us – you and I and everyone who is privileged enough to actually make consumer, political, career, recreation and lifestyle choices – is responsible for the effect of our choices….”
• “For many of us, the image of an activist is an angry, sign-toting, slogan-changing protester…but there are many different ways to be an activist – that is someone active on behalf of others, a change maker.

People notice other people: what they do, and don’t say or do. You’re being noticed. When you do your best, you’re making a difference – a very important one. Thank you.

Approaching Zero Waste: I

Imagine it – zero waste.  No, or nearly-no, waste leaving your site for a landfill. It’s happening in more places than you think: college footballfields, a Subaru manufacturing plant, and a museum near you. To be fair, zero waste really means only 10% waste with everything else recycled, composted or remanded to the hazard waste facility to do so: still daunting; still achievable.

The Wagner Free Institute of Science has a bead on zero waste: in 2014 they hit a diversion rate of 80%. We started our first year (2007) at 46%. From then till now, our yearly average is 65%. Don Azuma, Site Manager, started the program in 2007 and measure 47% diversion. Since then the yearly average has been 65% diversion. Here are the numbers for 2014: 

• The total waste stream came to 5,544.5 lbs. (2.8 tons)
• Of that, 80% (4,411 lbs) was diverted to recycling, reuse, or proper disposal (e-waste, hazmat)
• This significantly topped the 2013 mark of 68%.
• 432.3 lbs. of compost and worm food
• An estimated 483 lbs. of last year’s recyclables (aluminum cans/plastic/glass) came from the neighborhood’s – blown, thrown, and left behind

 Azuma attributes the constant improvement to continually looking for ways to reuse materials or convert them, instead of sending them to the landfill. I attribute it to commitment and creativity.  He said he didn’t start with hard numbers, just chose to start tackling the problem, “and then it picked up”. This is how good green works. Someone chooses to resolve a conundrum; in the process s/he learns, has some successes, and recognizes that some creative research and thinking can yield good results. Then one day s/he notices how far the work the institution has come, and how there’s a momentum that carries energy and engagement with it.

No one goes all green (yet); no on goes green all at once. But interest, commitment and creativity can surely speed the process. Azuma points out that the institution’s mission includes education, and this work fits. “By doing it and keeping the numbers, we can talk about it. This is education”.

At special events Azuma and his staff do the trash separation afterwards, but in regular operations he says the staff is very good at separating; “they’ve all bought in”, he says. His next initiatives are taking on the challenge of paper towel waste in the bathrooms, possibly through composting; and solving the plastic conundrum. “My mission is to keep plastic out of the waste stream”, he says.

Azuma says his list of material types that have been recycled, repurposed or properly-disposed materials is now 26, with the newest category being “bike frame”. Someone took the wheels and dumped it over the fence onto the museum’s property. Azuma donated it to the Neighborhood Bike Works in West Philadelphia to be reworked and reused by someone in need. When he found himself with dozens of extra bookends from the library, “perfectly serviceable”, he said, he called around to – libraries!  He found homes for them all. He could have interpreted book ends and bicycles “either as trash or a problem”, but he saw it as an interesting challenge and an opportunity.

Mike Nevala is in charge of “assets”, the goods that come and go, at the Detroit Zoological Society. After a storm event last winter created a flood and triggered a re-design and re-installation of the staff lunchroom, he had nearly 100 old staff lockers to re-home. He called around the zoo and found homes for nearly all in other departments, and then he recycled the rest. That goes right into his waste-diversion report for the year.

Sure it takes time. And sometimes it feels like that effort goes into a black hole. But Nevala’s colleagues have new resources, and Azuma has a new connection with Neighborhood Bike Works and a whole bunch of libraries. It will come around – not the trash, but the goodwill and partnerships.

Azuma says the plastic bags and the coffee cup lids drive him nuts, but the one without a solution so far is cigarette butts. At Dumbarton House in Washington, DC, within the waste conundrum, what bugs them is throwing out nitrile gloves all the time. In the UK and Germany public places use chewing gum collection points, with trade names of Gumdrops and Gummy Bins, to capture the mess and recycle it into toys, possibly tires, and, wait for it, Gumdrop containers. 

There are solutions to waste accumulation. They begin with McDonough and Braungart’s cradle-to-cradle and upcycle thinking in packaging and design. And as we get better at that, we also must get better at diversion. 

During 2015 the Sustainable Museums team is studying and testing Zero Waste strategies. These are the stories that encourage and inspire us.   

Green is a Cooperative Effort

Greenhouse view - Green Garage Detroit (from website)

You can't go green alone. Sustainability is an ecosystem concept - everything is connected. It's no wonder that we do our best green work when we share experiences and ideas, and as more of us test new practices and greener ways.

Happily, that process almost always has a positive feedback loop. You know that boost you feel when a conversation and ideas flow energetically and positively, when they come together to clear confusion, resolve conundrums, or create new paths forward? That's a lucky place to find ourselves; it's a place green work often takes us.

But what if you could actually, physically, go to that kind of place.  Well two weeks ago the team at the Detroit Zoological Society and I took a field trip to  The Green Garage. What a marvelous, marvelous place.

It's an environmentally-sustainable co-working space that focuses on triple-bottom-line business incubation. Some day I will build one for independent museum professionals. It's in a restored 1920 auto showroom building. Though it is not a nonprofit organization, community members saw the value of supporting such a project in Midtown Detroit, and they donated building materials and furniture for re-use and re-purposing,

By building in and using light tubes in the ceiling, super insulation, awesome windows, and solar with thermal mass storage, the building uses about a 10th of the energy of a similarly-sized conventional building. The website shows energy use reporting, and they use a chalkboard to record weekly waste diversion success. The members of resident businesses and nonprofits pitch in to help monitor activities, bring in new ideas, and continue taking the Green Garage and their work to new levels. Bravo! We could all live and work this way.

Congratulations to Tom and Peggy Brennan who taught themselves many of their green skills by meeting with friends over their kitchen table beginning a decade ago, and now run such an inspirational place. There is more to come - now they're moving on to building nearby living spaces as close to net zero as possible.

People ask me how I think Detroit is doing. I know Detroit is doing great, and going to do even better. 

Detroit Zoo and Crain's Detroit Business

What started as a "bottom line" conversation ended up as a Quadruple Bottom Line conversation thanks to the open mind and interest of a sharp journalist - Sherri Welch. She was writing an article on The Detroit Zoological Society's green changes for Crain's Detroit Business, and was willing to spend a lot of time, and to listen to unexpected answers...particularly that it's not always about money... not what a business reporter's expects.

Sustainability choices are complex - having a 125 acres, 210 employees, 3300 animals and over a million visitors makes them even more complex.  Explaining these choices can be really simple - "it saves xxx$"- and really complex - "we're exploring a variety of alternative energy approaches by considering highest use, return on investment, partnership options, and opportunities to move the field forward..." Looking for obvious and easy answers - low-hanging fruit as they say - is only the first step. Others are much harder; it takes strong leaders, positive followers, individual doers, many supporters, and thoughtful reporters to make up a community of people prepared to make good progress along the green path.

Happy Earth Day, Detroit Zoo, and to all the other zoos, museums, gardens, aquariums and historic sites and parks celebrating today and every day.
 

Water Bottle Filling Stations II

Are You Serious About Banning Bottled Water?  

The Detroit Zoological Society is. This is an indoor water bottle filling station in the education building:

This is me joyfully filling a water bottle and checking the counter: over five thousand bottles saved!

The trouble with filling a water bottle at a drinking fountain is that the flow rate is too low and the angle is impossible.  These filling stations are hands-free solutions to all those problems - and look mom...no plastic bottles to recycle! 

This is an Elkay (www.elkayusa.com) retrofit module - costing not quite $700 - to put on top of your existing water fountain yet still keep the water fountain!  

There are free-standing modules for outdoor locations, too.  Each allows water bottle filling plus two heights of drinking foundations.

Really? - What are you waiting for?