Reduce Landfills and Recycle - Its Revolutionary

My favorite tour for sure.

This 'taking the bull by the horns' and doing something about waste. Eddie Lott, founded Recycle Revolution (RR) after traveling for 4 years, living the good life, hang ing out etc. Then September 11 happened and he had an epithamy. "What am I going to do to make the world a better place?" He came to his home, his community in Dallas and knew he wanted to start his own business. With his family's support and blessing, he started Recycle Revolution in 2008. They moved to their larger facility 10 months ago because of the growth.

www.recyclerevolutiondallas.com

His mission to find an alternative to everything that has been created by Man. They collect paper, aluminum, glass, electronics, toilets, lamps, food waste and styrofoam. They provide education, audit reports and its all interwoven in the culture. They collect from 30 different bars, primarily in Deep Ellum who pay RR.  

Everything gets weighed and sorted. There are 8 different grades of paper.
Lowest to highest grade. Cereal boxes are the lowest and hard white (no print) is the highest. It is the "truffle" of waste. Hard white sells for $400/ton versus newspaper at $80/ton.

Eddie is working to create a community whereas his company reduces landfills and finds a user for just about everything they collect. He is forward thinking and as he talks, he becomes even more dynamic because of his passion and delivery. I want to hook him up with several large users here in Fort Worth. RR provides recycling collection at apartment complexes which is wonderful. When I lived in an apartment, any person that lived in a house that came to visit, left with bags of my recyclables. Really pushed the 'friend' envelope. 

I want to help Eddie expand into Fort Worth. LOVE LOVE LOVE him and his mission.

BRIT is IT!

Botanical Research Institute (1st Platinum LEED building in Tarrant County)

brit.org

Botanical Research Institute walks the walk and talks the talk about sustainability. Their brochure is ALL about how to be sustainable and how they are demonstrating it. They are taking this opportunity to teach people about "being sustainable." The new BRIT building at 70,000 square feet was ready for "move in" February 2011. It is a public organization but privately funded. BRIT was founded in 1987 after SMU Library was going to disperse their collection after financial difficulty. A group of leaders acquired the collection and started BRIT and it went public in 1991. They collect plants from all over the world and trade with other BRITs like kids trade baseball cards. They have a rare book room with the oldest book dated 1549. Thats old.

This guy LOVES his job!

This is the Herbarium.They have over 135,000 plants collected and kept in these climate controlled files at 65 degrees and under 30% humidity. (all photos by Amari Roskelly unless other wise listed)

brit.org

This building breathes: with the bamboo ceiling (a rapid renewable resource) carpet is wool or floor in children's library is made from recycled rubber and tennis shoes, linen wall paper, sunken cypress trees for lumber in the foyer etc. To top it off (no pun intended), is the living roof, not green roof because many of the plants go dormant during the winter months. They placed 5700 square coconut fiber baskets on the roof with 40 different species of plants.

brit.org

First Platinum building in Tarrant County and second in DFW area. They list the following categories in their brochure: Green to the Core.

• Water Efficiency
• Indoor Environmental Quality
• Materials and Resources - on site recycling
• Wood finish materials - recovered cypress
• Wool carpet and bamboo ceilings
• Recycled-content materials
• Indoor air quality
• Lighting

Those are INSIDE the building.
Then they have a whole list for outside to really make it a "sustainable site."

• Rain Garden
• Low-emissions vehicle parking
• Restored prairie habitat
• Living roof (pitched at 19 degrees)
• LEDs
• Indigenous plant material
• Retention pond
• Cistern that collects runoff from living roof
• Geothermal well (166 wells) has cut energy in half
• Solar panels (cylinders) produces 65,000 kWh a year

BRIT was definitely one of my favorites. You got to see first hand how when you look at the whole footprint and site holistically, how important it is to have all the pieces in place. I'm also excited about their educational feature. Takes some of the pressure of me and my fellow classmates. :) I'm thrilled it is in Fort Worth and hope to see many more.


My real question is do the plants tell the scientists a story by where they ended up and where they were originally? Does global warming or climate change affect these plants as they have adapted to increased temperatures?

Rahr Rahr for Beer (stolen from Amy Harris)

Rahr Brewing is probably not the most sustainable tour we took during this course but they do recycle where they can....which is important and they encourage their patrons to do the same. (Right, Audrey?)

Rahr has a beer six-pack carrier incentive that if you bring 20 of them back to the brewery (thats 120 beers), then you receive 5 Rahrbucks to be used in the gift shop or admission to one of their tastings.

After each brew day, a farmer named Jack with the Texas Hereford Association brings a trailer to the brewery and hauls away left over spent grain from the brewing process. Cattle apparently LOVE the grain, hmmm makes you wonder. 
www.rahrbrewing.com. Artisan Baking Company use the used grain from the Ugly Pug beer to make Ugly Pug Jalapeño Bread. Very interesting and sounds yummy.

I love this picture because Rahr Brewery and Fort Worth South encourage bike riding. Drinking and then driving or drinking and then riding your bike. You be the judge. Lowers the carbon footprint.


Rahr has done a nice job being available in just about every bar in the city. Nice job for reaching out to a local business. That too cuts down on carbon footprint by making many of your profits from the local market.


I will do my part in supporting this local business.

Green Beans are the Sustainable Magic Beans

Jackson Murphy owns his own consulting firm called Green Bean Analysis. He is on the Dallas Chapter of USGBC that administers LEED. He talked about the huge investor network of $1.2 trillion that is interested in ESG. Environment, social and governance.

Green Globes is a certification process that started in Canada and moving into the United States. Some companies are participating in the Green Globes instead of LEED. The IGBC, International Green Building Code is coming out in the spring. I will be interested to see if Fort Worth will implement any of the "green codes" before every other large city does.

I'm interested in any information that Jackson has on the appraisal data. I think that data will help sell sustainable development because the data will show the increase in value.

I was not going to become a LEED AP or any other level but it would probably help me have a better understanding of what others are talking about.

My favorite thing that Jackson said is that he wouldn't want tax exempt public properties to be LEED certified but still want them to meet the certification rating points. Public entities shouldn't spend the money. I liked and appreciated it more since he is involved in USGBC that administers LEED.

Real Estate by Homeland Security

Jerry Burbridge is with Homeland Security, Customs Border Patrol. He spoke before the speaker from DFW Airport.The main things I picked up from Jerry was 1) a LEED building can lose its certification if is managed poorly or wrong. The building has to be managed correctly, and 2) every building has 6 sides. 4 walls, the ceiling/roof, and the floor.

You learn more at the Bedford Library

(pictures provided by Amari Roskelly)

Bedford is what we call a "bedroom community". Tends to be predominately families and a large elderly and conservative population. Watching over the "taxpayers money" is a common theme in the mid cities.

Maria, the library director set out to repurpose the old Food Lion Grocery store and double the size of the current library all while staying within the $8.5 million budget. The foundation was in great shape to handle the load of the books but the plumbing had all been stripped and needed to be replaced. Her operating budget was $200,000 with 75% of it being for books. Nothing was to touch her book money.

When the city did a survey of its citizens about what they wanted from their new library, the number one thing they wanted was a drive up book drop off but the second thing was natural lighting. Very interesting. 

Maria had the opportunity to attend a "green design" conference for libraries. What she learned was that she could save money by going "green" which would allow her to save money, especially for her book line item.

She chose not to have the building LEED certified because she didn't feel it was good use of tax payers money and didn't want to spend $40,000 on LEED when she could put it towards her bottom line. There is about a 10% increase in costs to a project by going LEED, mainly because of tracking materials.

Maria identified grant opportunities through the Obama Administration and their Department of Energy initiatives. The DOE gave the library an energy efficient formula grant. They installed a reflective white roof which provided a $20,000 reduction in energy usage.

State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) gave a $2 million grant and they put all their money in solar panels for the roof from Sun Power. 453 khW per day were produced from the the solar panels.

The library installed 150 geothermal wells that does the heating and cooling. They won't have to replace for 50 years. I'm very interested in geothermal mainly because I don't know enough about the system. They have very little glass facing west. This is a picture of the field where the geothermal wells are located. Building is prohibited on the wells but ideas of developing a park or community garden is attractive.

This is the monitor for the solar panels. She can see how many khW are being generated each day, each hour etc. Very impressive. We made our visit on a cloudy day so it was much less than on a sunny day.

Place Making Helps with Sustainability

Jim Johnson, Director of Development, at Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. spoke to our class. I have known Jim for years as do most of us that live in Fort Worth involved with development.

Jim talked about a sustainable street and the importance of zoning and development standards. Those standards set the feel for the street and how people respond to it. The placement of the building, the width of the street, width of sidewalks, street trees etc. He talked about the importance of policy and how each plan such as the thoroughfare plan, parking regulations etc dictates how a city builds and creates the feeling of development. There is a term called "Place Making". 


I think that Jim talked a little over everyone's heads when defining a Tax Increment Financing district. I should have explained it in simpler terms. It can be very confusing.


Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. was the first Public Improvement District created in the state. The group of property owners downtown, mainly the Bass family, got together and created legislation in Austin that would allow PIDs in municipalities. They can be a great tool as demonstrated by Downtown Fort Worth.

Green Homes in Fort Worth

(www.ferrierhomes.com)

We toured Heather Ferrier's house that Ferrier Homes refurbished. It was built in 1938 with 1638 square feet.

They installed:

• ductless split units,
• reused as much material as they could,
• original hardwood floors,
• closed cell spray foam in the attic,
• tankless water heater,
• dual flush toilets,
• low flow faucets and showers,
• rainwater capture,
• xerioscape, and
• Class 4 shingles

They replaced 100% of the plumbing which makes a lot of sense. Something probably would have happened to the 1938 plumbing and they had already replaced many walls and filled with spray foam insulation. I do have lots of questions about insulation. SIP panels versus spray foam etc.

I thought it was very interesting that their homeowner's insurance provided a 40% discount from the Class 4 shingles.

(Wish I had known that two years ago. I went with white....)

The second house on tour was built by Ferrier Custom Homes and designed by Phillip Newborn. Definitely not my tastes. Not a lot of character on the outside (to me) but enjoyed the look on the inside. They had many of the standard "green" or energy efficient tools.

The house has a flat roof that I thought wasn't good for standing water or loads from snow. The snow killed many trees last year so I was surprised it wasn't an issue for this flat roof. I know Ferrier knows what they are doing. Its more of a learning process for me on the built environment.

The most dramatic element that this house had was their Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV). The house was built so tight that they needed an ERV to recycle the air. If the air is 50 degrees outside and 70 degrees inside, the ERV recycles the air and heats it to at least 60 degrees before it is passed into the house.

I love love love the ductless split units. I would be very interested in comparing costs between a duct system and the ductless split unit. They would lower the homeowner's costs significantly but do they pay for it at the front end vs. the back end and does it pay for itself?

The most fun thing that was on display was the smart meter. The homeowner purchased it online

http://www.theenergydetective.com/

You can really see what is using the most kilowatts. What I found interesting as well was although the young couple was interested in being "green", their electric provider was TXU instead of Green Mountain. TXU owns coal burning plants and Green Mountain provides clean energy. The cleanest electric provider thats available to homeowners.

I enjoyed the tours but it really highlights the huge need for education to homebuilders. That is what I need. A cost comparison of green options versus "black". Black being status quo or gas emitters.

DFW Airport, An Island

We met Rusty Hodapp, Vice President & Sustainability Officer at DFW Airport. He is educated as an engineer, working for the airport for 25 years. He proved himself to be a game changer in 2007 by writing policy that created a sustainability department that helped launch the way of thinking for this very large entity.

He has educated himself on the sustainable principles and has done a nice job of selling them by focusing on the economics first, which is the way to be successful. They run the airport like a business. CEO Jeff Fegan has adopted many of the policies which is necessary in order for the goals to be effective and sustainable long term. They are seeing a huge return on their investment in many areas of renewable fuels for their fleets and energy use.

LIVEWELL. Be healthy. Be fit. Be safe.

This is the marketing campaign for the social aspect of their sustainability program. They understand like many companies that well happy employees = profit. He quoted Andrew Savitz, who wrote Triple Bottom Line that it was important to find the Sustainability Sweetspot.

You can reduce operating cost which makes a profit while reducing emissions.

You can have healthy happy productive employees which reduces insurance costs, sick time and risk.

I found it interesting that they operate as an independent entity and legislate themselves in terms of health and safety. That I believe would present a lot of opportunity to be a game changer in the industry. I'm glad that they are going to begin the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) process. I have become certified in the GRI program and feel that it has become part of the standard among global companies and certainly those that compete globally.

DFW Airport made the conscience decision to NOT use alternative renewable energies in their police and fire fleets because it did not create a cost savings to offset the danger of the possibility of the fleet being unreliable. Wasn't worth the safety. I like that.

All of us driving to DFW Airport instead of speakers coming to us was probably NOT the most sustainable moment....just saying.


www.dfwairport.com