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.

The Work of Image Permanence Institute Just Gets Better

Two years ago I wrote about Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and IPI's Guide to Sustainable Preservation Practices. This fall I attended a second NEH-funded two-day training by the IPI team and it was awesome; really awesome.

The first time I wrote about it I said: "If you're thinking about changing - or learning more about - climate control and energy savings in your collections spaces, then please get yourself" a copy of IPI's Guide.

That still holds true but now I'll be more specific: "if you have collections, get yourself a copy".

Even if you know all the stuff in this gem of a handbook, it can surely help you share this critical information with people who don't have your background, who are not as comfortable with the language, and who probably have something to do with the management or financial support of the collection you care for. Educating them is an important first step is doing your work well.

This is a gift to you from IPI and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Surely you have $25 (add shipping) left in your budget to do yourself, your collections, and the long-term sustainability of your institution a huge, huge favor!

If you're not yet convinced, let me tell you a bit about what's inside.

Diagrams:

• how general types of mechanical systems are designed to work in buildings
• how air supply is managed, and about "return air" 
• how humidification works
• what is Dew point - seriously, they have the best-ever description of this for non-HVAC folk

Recommendations with how-to's:

• collect baseline data
• environmental
• system documentation
• create an Environmental Management Team
• define the optimal storage environment for your institution (don't assume 70/50 anymore)
• identify and correct "sub optimal operation" of your system after you've established your appropriate environment

Clear descriptions of complex, important concepts:

• how environment effects material decay
• what data loggers do and how to choose the right location for your environmental monitors; 
• how to recognize all sorts of actors on your energy and climate situation: windows, lights, people, air movement, sunshine, and regional weather and climate

It also has a great bibliography that could be a valuable departmental book group reading list, worksheets, and lists of NEH grant opportunities and IPI products.

I strongly encourage any director, collections manager or curator, facilities manager and development director to get a copy and read it. And if you are lucky enough to find a workshop or a conference presentation by any of the IPI team - GO!

IPI's Guide to Sustainable Preservation Practices: What Every Museum Should Buy Itself for the Holidays

If you're thinking about changing - or learning more about - climate control and energy savings in your collections spaces, then please get yourself IPI's Guide to Sustainable Preservation Practices.

This is a practical what-is and how-to manual that will demystify the discussion on collections climate standards and HVAC systems for your staff, your HVAC vendor, your board, or an MEP engineer unfamiliar with museums. And it's the background you need for your next grant proposal on collections spaces and HVAC systems.

Diagrams explain about how general types of mechanical systems are designed to work in buildings; how air supply is managed, and about "return air"; how humidification works; what data loggers do and how to choose the right location for your environmental monitors; how to document your mechanical system so that you know what you've got - something we all must do and never get to; and how to recognize all sorts of actors on your energy and climate situation: windows, lights, people, air movement, and sunshine.

Understanding how your building works and how that affects your collection could not be made any easier. Here is the Table of Contents:

Section 1: What You Need to Know
1. Basic Elements of the Environment and Their Effect on Material Decay
2. The Factors that Shape the Storage Environment

Section 2: What You Need to Do
3. Document the Current Storage Environment
4. Document Each Storage Facility's Mechanical System
5. Understand the Role of Dew Point
6. Analyze Collected Data

Section 3: Institute Sustainable Preservation Practices
7. Create and Environmental Management Team
8. Specific Activities of the Environmental Management Team
9. Investigate Opportunities for Energy Savings

Section 4: Additional Information
(a bibliography, worksheets, NEH grant opportunities, and IPI products)

I'm using it in my role as sustainability advisor on an NEH Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections planning grant team at Dumbarton House in Washington, DC. It will be a boon to our work there.

So if you want the science behind the move to change the 70/50 T/RH guidelines; you don't understand Dew Point or humidity, really; or you are ready to bring your "collections care and facilities staff together to manage the environment to reach both preservation and energy savings goals", this is a gift to you from IPI and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Surely you have $25 (add shipping) left in your budget to do yourself, your collections, and the long-term sustainability of your institution a huge, huge favor!

 

Book Review: Sustainable Museums: Strategies for the 21st Century

Author - Rachel Mandan with case contributions from practitioners around the world.
Publisher - MuseumsEtc, Edinburgh See Book Details Here.
[This publisher  has a wide variety of global-perspective publications...keep an eye on them.]

Sustainable Museums provides solid foundational information for greening museums. It is a mix of the author’s work and a solid list of contributed cases from museums, trusts and agencies in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Denmark and Kenya.

After an introduction on the key events in literature and politics leading to the current state of sustainability worldwide, author Rachel Madan, a UK museum consultant and Executive Director of Green Museums, provides eight sections addressing the value and design of the foundation for greening your museum: vision, leadership, team development, impact assessment, strategy development, use of targets and milestones, developing policies and plans, and then communicating sustainability practices and messages.

She’s dead on when she points out how the world and the museum field has made too little progress on sustainability, and, sadly, I had to laugh and one of interviewees referring to green team situation as more of an ‘after school club’ than an agent of change. It’s true. Green teams have become common, but rarely do they mature past interest-group status to leadership teams.

Madan’s suggestions on developing vision, identifying barriers and ‘drivers for change’, and creating strategic communication methods and sustainability steering groups, caught my eye. I particularly like that in her suggestions, as well as the case studies, that there is very little green ‘bling’ and very much an emphasis on efficiencies, collaboration, and sound baseline information.

The sales pitch is a bit strong, but the author's solid experience, and the valuable cases, soften the advertisements. Among the cases’ great stories I found many valuable snippets I’d hope the field could emulate. If forced to choose favorites, here they are:

 Shedd Aquarium (US) has evolved from a Green Team to A Green Sustainability Department

 Minnesota Historical Society (US) is tackling a statewide, property-wide assessment for efficiencies

 National Gallery in Denmark creates carbon accounts for exhibits

 United Kingdom museums and trusts are benefitting from collaborative, government-supported, direct-delivery programs supporting energy reduction

 The Design Museum (England), uses a cross-comparison of audience datasets between “GreenAware” and “Mosaic” software for evaluating audience awareness of and commitment to green practice, and the correlation to museum interest and support.

 The highly-efficient Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Center honors the site by also using local materials, respectful profile and emotional planning.

 Renaissance South East’s (England) Green SLIME program (Science Links in Museum Education) for partnering with schools to advance environmental understanding and practice

 Hull House (US) and its Re-Thinking Soup program using local food to provide a weekly soup lunch for discussing food sustainability, security, and resourcefulness

They were a pleasure to read, and a shot of inspiration. Some days I feel I am banging my head against the wall, and others I feel at least I’m not doing it alone!

The PILOTs are Coming: Use Sustainable Practices to Pay your Payments in Lieu of Taxes

The PILOTs are coming; the PILOTs are coming – even to little Concord, Massachusetts.

As more financially-stressed municipalities turn to PILOTs – Payments in Lieu of Taxes – and other nonprofit fees to build revenue, wary nonprofits are exploring ways to respond. ‘Right’ or ‘wrong’ is no longer the discussion; mitigation is.

I believe that by using sustainable practices to reduce demands on municipal utilities and services, museums could challenge their costs to the city: measure the reduced demands you make on city services through your green practices, and use that to stave of requests for PILOT fees.

Municipalities including Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Indianapolis and even Concord, Massachusetts, are beginning discussions about PILOTs and asking mostly large, but even small nonprofits like Concord’s Emerson House to make payments to the municipality. What’s a museum to do? No, it’s currently against the law to tax a nonprofit, but these requests are in lieu of taxes; they are pressure points, not tax bills.

Now I’m all in favor of responsibility, but I’ve been preaching the green practice is a museum’s responsibility and that green practice reduces museums’ costs to the municipality. I think it’s our responsibility to reduce those costs, but I also think that museums should get credit for those savings in lieu of Payments in Lieu of Taxes!

Since PILOTs are about money, the negotiations between the museum and the city will require quantification: the value of your services, the cost of your demands on the municipality, and fair compensation on both sides of the equation. Measuring the benefits of environmentally-sustainable practice is your ace in the hole:

- how much has waste-reduction reduced your museum’s demand on municipal disposal services?
- how much has water-use reduction and stormwater management reduced water flow from your site?
- how much have energy-saving measures reduced your demand on public utilities?
- how have your museum’s transportation policies and practices reduced demand on transportation infrastructure?

If you’re using this tactic now, or if you do decide to use it, please let me know. I’d love to work with you on this!

A few links for the curious:
Concord and the Ralph Waldo Emerson House
http://www.massnonprofit.org/news.php?artid=1925&catid=13

Boston’s Task Force and plans for
- creating “a consolidation program and payment negotiation system, which will allow the City and its tax-exempt institutions to structure longer term, sustainable partnerships focused on improving services for Boston's residents”;
- clarifying “the costs associated with providing City services to tax-exempt institutions” and - developing “a methodology for valuing community partnerships made by tax-exempt institutions.” http://www.cityofboston.gov/assessing/PILOT.asp

Overview of Cities asking for PILOTs: Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, British Columbia
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2009/11/local-tax-exemptions-at-risk-boston-cleveland-pittsburgh-and-british-columbia.html

Hawaii, Kansas, Pennsylvania, etc., etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/28charity.html

The Situation in St. Louis.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/9F3DB4701FB3A495862576FE000A93D1?OpenDocument

A Blog Post suggesting students might help measure the value for Penn:
http://temple-news.com/2010/03/29/sans-estimates-city-nonprofits-have-no-landing-strip-for-pilot/

Call for Nonprofits Participation in Policy Discussions
http://www.blueavocado.org/content/attack-tax-exemption-killers

The National Council of Nonprofits report “State Budget Crises: Ripping the Safety Net of Nonprofits” http://www.councilofnonprofits.org/sites/default/files/Special-Report-State-Budget-Crises-Ripping-the-Safety-Net-Held-by-Nonprofits.pdf

Green Energy for Hancock Shaker Village

Shaker innovation is alive and well at Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts. For a few years now the staff and board at the museum have really embraced green opportunities. In a visit last summer I had a short course in bio-fuel research and their Switchgrass (and others)-growing project with UMass Amherst.

But today's news is about a 'bundle' of seven businesses and nonprofits and their new solar panels. The seven groups are installing solar arrays as I type, and they aren't paying for it. Instead, the green energy and financing company is funding the build, with a little help from the State, and the seven members of the 'bundle' have committed to long-term purchase at a good and stable rate.

The Village is installing its array on and next to the modern Visitor's Center, but the energy company will own and maintain the system. The Village benefits from price reductions and protection on a third of the energy it uses. Its staff, members, and community (meaning all of us) benefit from the Village's carbon reduction. And the project builds on the Village's role as a place to think about a more principled life in the 21st century, demonstrating sustainable practice at this site from the 19th into our times.

Renewable energy projects are complex: tackling them as a team is the best and fastest way to make an important difference. Ah yes, yet another example of museums making positive differences in their communities.

Adventures In Kyrgyzstan

Petroglyphs are new to me. Exploring this boulder field near Lake Issyk-Kul near Cholpon Ata in Kyrgyzstan is a highlight experience in my museum career. Mining history circa 1870 is about as old and rocky as I get, but these from 500 BC opened new doors to history.

The question was, How/If to make them accessible to the larger public? This site is a newly-discovered source - at least for non-herders. There's a well-known, well-mapped site not far up the road.

In this case, the more sustainable museum is the one not built.