Council for Sustainability and Eco Practices at SCAD

The Council for Sustainability and Eco Practices at SCAD has joined the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, the City of Savannah, Chatham Area Transit Authority, Coastal Commuters, the Savannah Bicycle Campaign and Pedestrian Advocates of the Coastal Empire to encourage people who work downtown to Dump the Pump and leave their cars at home on Friday, May 16.

The purpose of Dump the Pump: Leave Your Car At Home Day is to raise awareness about the benefits of using alternative modes of transportation and to encourage people from throughout the community to commute by carpooling, mass transit, bicycling and walking.

Scheduled during National Bike-to-Work week, the next Dump the Pump will focus on promoting bicycles as a viable mode of transportation in Savannah. Featuring connectivity, level terrain, great weather and tree lined streets, Savannah is a great town for bicycles. In addition to having a great city to cycle in, commuting by bicycle reduces fuel consumption and traffic congestion while providing economic, health, and environmental benefits to individuals and to the community. Furthermore, it has been proven that bicycle commuters provide significant economic benefits in downtowns including increased sales at local restaurants and retail stores.

On May 16th, a Dump the Pump Coffee Break will be held in Davant Park located at the south end of Colonial Park Cemetery on Abercorn from 7 – 9 a.m. The Dump the Pump Coffee Break will celebrate Dump the Pump participants by offering free coffee provided by Jittery Joe’s Coffee, doughnuts provided by Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and fresh fruit from Fresh Point Produce. Prizes have been donated by Bicycle Link, Georgia Bike Law, and the City of Savannah.

Recognizing that distance might serve as a deterrent for some commuters to ride bicycles, those who want to participate in Dump the Pump are encouraged to use the public transportation system offered by Chatham Area Transit or find carpool partners through Coastal Commuters.

May 16 will also feature a PACE Crosswalk Action at Liberty and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard from 12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. Crosswalk Action is an organized event in which a group of pedestrians repeatedly cross a street in a marked crosswalk in a legal fashion. The goal is to communicate pedestrian safety messages in a fun and friendly way. Members of the organized group carry cheerful, non-confrontational signs featuring educational and advocacy messages. Successful crosswalk actions require people! So if you are interested in participating please let us know or just meet us at the southwest corner of Liberty and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.

The spirit of Dump the Pump will continue on Sunday, May 18 with the Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s second Savannah Wheelie ride. The ride will begin at 1 p.m. from Grayson Stadium in Daffin Park. Participants will be eligible for a discounted Sand Gnats ticket to that afternoon’s game.

Information regarding Dump the Pump: Leave Your Car At Home Day will be featured at www.savannahtransit.com. We ask SCAD community members to pledge to Dump the Pump and mention SCAD in their pledges.

There are a wide range of things an organization can do to make itself greener. Many revolve around the concept of decreasing the institutional carbon footprint. This is the first in a series of posts on such measures. I’d like to think of them as conversation starters. We often hear about stuff like using mass transit, riding one’s bike, getting a more fuel-efficient vehicle, using compact florescent bulbs, and the like. These are all important steps one can and should take (within the limits of reason and finances, of course). However, one option I rarely hear about in the context of becoming greener is telecommuting. Telecommuting seems to come up most often in the context of flex time, allowing parents time to care for their young children, for example. But, what has it got to do with going green? Well, I think a moment’s reflection makes this obvious. When people work part of the week from home, they don’t drive their cars to work, thus conserving gas and reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. According to the Green Living Ideas Web site:

Seeing as the typical U.S. household spends 18% of its income on driving costs– more, even, than it spends on food– telecommuting offers a viable way to offset the steep expenses of gas and automobile maintenance. One study reports that we could save about 1.35 billion gallons of fuel a year if everyone who was able to telecommute, did so just 1.6 days a week.

The implications for a greener planet are clear, but there is an important corollary here that should not be overlooked. If one didn’t have to spend 18% of his or her income on transportation, that would make one’s salary go a lot longer. Many are not easily convinced of the necessity or desirability of a greener planet, but some of these very same people change their tunes when they realize the economic benefits, especially to those in the middle class struggling in an economy on the brink of recession. And the one sector in the economy we don’t have to worry about is the energy sector; they are still making record profits even today. A little telecommuting won’t hurt their bottom line that much. And, based upon the law of supply and demand, it could very well bring prices down on oil for those times and things we would still need it for. Less demand means more supply means lower prices.

Telecommuters also do not use campus resources like electricity, water, heat/ac, etc. According to this article on “The Many Benefits of Telecommuting“:

More and more green businesses are encouraging telecommuting and there are a great many reasons why. Telecommuting not only saves the earth by decreasing transportation-based greenhouse gases, but also provides employees a peaceful place to complete key projects without interruption. Productivity increases of up to 40 percent have been reported through telework programs. Not only does telework reduce transportation-based emissions, it also reduces total energy consumption at the work place. Smaller businesses can inhabit smaller premises by rotating telework days amongst employees.

Now, of course, some jobs just must be done on campus. Faculty must be present to teach ground courses, and physical resources can’t be serviced from a distance, to name a couple that come to mind. However, other jobs could easily be done from home, at least part of the time. Personally, I would not advocate that positions typically be 100% telecommuting. I may be old-fashioned, but I still think there is significant benefit to the office experience, especially in areas where inter-staff collaboration is common and crucial. You can certainly accomplish a lot through modern communications technology, but some times nothing beats a face-to-face brainstorming session. There are obviously a lot of variables to consider with regard to who and how and such things. However, if there could truly be increases in productivity that are concurrent with decreases in energy consumption, it seems like a potential win-win-win situation (worker, organization, and environment).

The SCAD Sustainability Council reminds the SCAD community that Tuesday, April 22 is Earth Day, and encourages participation through one or more of the following activities.

What you can do to make a difference:

• Practice a paperless teaching day
• Ride your bike to class or carpool
• Reduce energy use by turning off lights and computers, and using natural light when permitted
• Do not buy bottled drinks or use takeout containers
• Eat locally and buy locally, particularly in your neighborhood

The 12th consecutive annual celebration in Savannah Earth Day will begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 19th at Forsyth Park. Events include:

RecycleRama (8 - 11 a.m.),
Earth Day 5K Run (9 a.m.)
Earth Day Festival (11 a.m. - 3 p.m.).
Savannah Wheelie Earth Day Bike Ride (3 p.m.)

Attractions include:

• Live Oak Exhibition Alley with information and giveaways to make households more energy and water efficient.
• Green Bistro: more than 15 food vendors preparing tasty delights using local produce.
• Frees classes on Kitchen Composting, Rain Barrel assembly, and Native Landscaping
• Live Reptile and Bird Exhibit
• Coast Guard Helicopter
• Music and Entertainment featuring the Cajun band Feufollet from Louisiana.

For more information, visit the Earth Day Savannah Web site.

By Verena Paepcke

(Originally published on Friday, Jan. 4, 2008 in The Chronicle)

Sustainability and green design are hot topics at the Savannah College of Art and Design and throughout the United States. In fact, the college has a new faculty council — the Sustainability and Eco Practices at SCAD Council — that formed in Fall 2007 to focus on SCAD’s environmental stewardship. The council is made up of faculty and staff from the schools of Building Arts, Communication, Design and Liberal Arts, as well as from the SCAD communications and student media departments. The council’s mission is to support SCAD’s sustainability practices and goals to green the curriculum and the college’s institutional activities by channeling the efforts and expertise of faculty and staff.

Beginning with this issue, The Chronicle will feature a weekly column titled The Green Scene that will inform the SCAD community about activities on and around campus that are focusing on sustainability practices from the micro level to the macro. The column will highlight activities in the classroom, initiatives on campus, projects in Savannah and more. Several groups already exist at SCAD and in Savannah with the same goals, and this column will be one of the platforms where we can combine efforts to inform the community. Student groups already in existence are Project Green, led by Brian Bessenaire; the Student Vegetarian Association; Students for a Better Environment and the student group with the U.S. Green Building Council.

One of the newest initiatives is a “teach-in” that SCAD will host Jan. 31, coordinated by FOCUS THE NATION. For more information, e-mail or check out the Web site. Additionally, the council changed requirements for the campus printing service that made double-sided printing a standard procedure at the college. Also, an interdisciplinary major, design for sustainability, is in the development process.

Council members are open to ideas. Members include School of Building Arts professors LaRaine Montgomery and Deborah Brooks; School of Communication Arts professor Scott Boylston; School of Design professors Robert Fee, Peter Fossick, Christine Miller, Verena Paepcke and Pamela Wiley; Faculty Ombudsman Daniel Levine; Assistant Director of Internal Communications Seth Michalak; and Director of Student Media John Bennett.

By Scott Boylston

(Originally published on Friday, Feb. 22, 2008 in The Chronicle)

As I sit in the Melbourne (Australia) Airport writing this, I can feel somewhat sanguine knowing that the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from my air travel to Australia for a conference on sustainable urban development were “neutralized” by the conference’s offsetting of all carbon emissions from their guest speakers’ travel. Judging from the variety of the speakers’ countries of origin — China, Norway, Germany, Colombia, India, Denmark, Lebanon, Kenya and Holland, to name a few — the offsets must have been substantial.

EcoEdge2: The Urgent Design Challenge in Building Sustainable Cities featured some of the world’s most innovative green architects and urban planners, including James Brearley, Bernard Khoury and Stefan Behnisch. They spoke of heroic endeavors, such as building entire green cities in China from the riverbed up, creating meaningful architecture in post-war Beirut and developing impressive green architecture portfolios. I talked about Savannah.

Over the last eight months I’ve investigated the emerging sustainable attributes of the city, interviewing urban planners, city officials, architects, nonprofit directors, organic farmers, environmentalists and many other individuals interested in creating a greener Savannah. And while Savannah still faces a host of challenges in terms of environmental sustainability, it also possesses a rapidly crystallizing promise for a much greener future. What had long been a personal hunch before my interviews and research soon transformed itself into an intriguing mosaic of efforts by many individuals to make use of the city’s embodied “green wealth.” The dynamic interplay of Savannah’s historic patterns of organization, coupled with its varied yet increasingly harmonized, emergent sustainable properties, has created an urban landscape that hints at what a sustainable city for the 21st century might look like during its nascent stages.

Make no mistake: We are a long way from realizing that promise. But rather than delving into the shortcomings here, I’d like to highlight the need for individuals who are interested in contributing to positive change to step forward, to actively involve themselves, and to seek out sources that can help them become founts of information and inspiration in their own right. The EcoEdge conference wasn’t filled with people bemoaning the slow rate of change with tirades against the problems of the world. It was filled with individuals who are doing something about it. They are all creative to their very bones, but their creativity is not trapped in some isolated notion of what their particular discipline demands of them. Instead, their creativity is applied to their disciplines in relation to a much broader context — the struggle of humankind to carve out an existence that isn’t, at its core, destructive to the rest of the living systems on Earth.

Savannah’s best hope for a green future is not Oglethorpe’s human-scaled city grid — that’s already done its job by getting us to this particular point. Neither is it SCAD’s impressive adaptive re-use of historic buildings throughout the city — that, too, is firmly established as a part of the important foundation. Savannah’s best hope is now in the hands of the creative individuals who reside within its city limits, and in the city’s willingness to look outward for its inspiration even as it looks inward for its opportunities.

By Robert Fee

(Originally published on Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 in The Chronicle)

Regardless of how it may seem, sustainability is not a well-embraced idea. Many intelligent and conservative people challenge the notion of global warming as the chief threat to our habitat. Science, they say, has not proven with certainty that the planet is getting warmer, or that we are in any way responsible if it is.

Some people piously tell us that none of this matters because the world will go on after we have departed. If you don’t believe this, watch a rerun of the History Channel’s “Life After People” or “The Planet of the Apes.”

I think it does matter, and if I am human with a self-interested philosophy of life, then I take responsibility for it. After all, isn’t it in our self-interest to not consume resources that are beyond the carrying capacity of the planet?

Paul Hawken brought this to our attention in his 1993 book “The Ecology of Commerce,” the same book that inspired Ray Anderson to be an articulate spokesperson for the cause. As founder and CEO of Interface Carpet, Anderson is an in-the-trenches, real, working example of how theory informs practice and practice reveals principle. If you haven’t heard Anderson talk, stay tuned because my job as a member of the Sustainability and Eco-practices Council is to get him back to SCAD soon.*

As designers of products, environments, communications and services, we can all work to improve the sustainability of Earth. Just as we are fast learners regarding our particular design projects, we must quickly learn the science behind the manufacturing processes and materials we use. Janine Benyus’s seminal “Biomimicry” provides a strong foundation, including a detailed description of life in an ordinary field and why specialization can be risky. Take industrial designers’ favorite plastic polymer, cellulosics. Its primary ingredient is cellulose — plant fiber. That is a good thing, but how many of us know the number of toxic chemicals used to refine and manufacture it? I don’t.

Another environmental concern is an abundance of service-oriented obstacles — which we can solve as designers. Easily recycled soda and water bottles exist, but if they don’t get collected, they won’t get recycled. If you buy a new computer, will the manufacturer take your old one and properly dispose of it? How about reusable grocery bags? They are a technical solution to the paper vs. plastic dilemma, but who actually uses them? Do you?

These are all design problems that can be tackled by architects, designers and business leaders.

By Peter Fossick

(Originally published on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008 in The Chronicle)

Good, environmentally conscious design makes good business sense. To be competitive, businesses must be efficient. Every wasteful act in the extraction and production process is a poor business decision.

Do the products we use today really represent the pinnacle of human genius if they are made using methods that cause pollution? The answer is no.

We need a new paradigm in business. We need to redefine the concept of the free market so all the costs of the manufacture and use of a product, throughout its entire life, are accounted for in dollars. We need new, efficient manufacturing systems using innovative products that not only have no negative impact on the environment but have a restorative effect too. Above all, these systems have to be more competitive in terms of profits than the polluting systems they replace.

The post-industrial economies in the developed Northern hemisphere have swept their dirt under the carpet by relocating their manufacturing to emerging markets such as China, India, Mexico, Vietnam and similar countries. We rely on these countries to produce the appliances and consumer goods we have in our homes, but we do not see the impact the manufacture of these products has on the environment.

The solution to this problem lies in micro markets. In his book “The Long Tail,” Chris Anderson described the phenomenon of small, micro, niche markets, in which specialized customer needs represent 50 percent of new e-commerce business turnover. Amazon.com is a great example. A significant proportion of Amazon’s turnover is very specialized reading material. Companies such as e-Bay, Nike, Toyota, Dell and many others have all recognized the importance of being customer-centric, specializing and offering choices.

This business model requires that companies can cope with large and complex inventory and know what customers like and want. However, the concept of mass-customized products and services that are made-to-order, just-in-time and above all made locally (within 250 to 500 miles) has proven to be best for both business and the environment.

Japanese car manufacturers have started to do this, developing manufacturing plants that are flexible, are located geographically close to their markets and create products that are highly customized. Another example is the Mercedes Smart Car. The customer becomes a co-designer and, in so doing, begins to engage with the product and brand in a way that is great for business.

Being situated locally also means that businesses have to respect the environments in which their customers live and where their children play. Conducting business in their own backyards, so to speak, will drive companies to find innovative ways to reduce waste, emissions, toxicity, energy and material dumping.

Companies must learn to innovate and make money, too. And that’s good for jobs, the economy and the environment. It’s just good business.

By Scott Boylston

(Orignally published on Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 in The Chronicle)

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we will do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
— Rajendra Pachauri, Ph.D., chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

If, as Plato once said, necessity is the mother of invention, then the human race is on the verge of a tremendous era of innovation, for we have clearly reached a point of necessary change. There are 6.6 billion people vying for the natural treasures of one small planet, and in the process of harvesting this bounty we are using means that degrade and deplete the very resources we require. This is simply not a sustainable model of existence.

What, then, is a sustainable model of existence? Can we begin implementing such a model by 2012? These are the most pressing questions of our time. A more pressing question, however, is this: Will you contribute to this change, or will you hinder its course with your inaction?

Artists and designers have historically challenged the status quo with their foresight, intuiting that, while much might be good in any culture, all is not perfect. But discerning shortcomings is not the only gift of visionaries; they can provide creative ideas for overcoming those shortcomings. And so next week’s Focus the Nation Teach-in will offer the SCAD community — a community of creative thinkers — an opportunity not only to learn about how their daily choices contribute to the problems of global warming, but to share their ideas about how this problem might be adequately addressed.

On Jan. 31, in conjunction with a national teach-in involving more than 1,200 colleges and universities, SCAD will hold a full-day seminar on the challenges of and potential solutions for global warming. The program will be held at the Trustees Theater, 216 Abercorn St., 8 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., with a consecutive series of speakers to coincide with the daily class schedule. At 6 p.m., Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary on global warming, “The Eleventh Hour,” will be screened, free and open to the public. The night before these events, an hour-long, interactive national webcast, which will include participants such as actor Edward Norton and sustainability expert Hunter Lovins, will begin at 8 p.m. While a large screen will be set up at the Oglethorpe House ballroom, 201 E. Oglethorpe Ave., limited seating is available, so you’re invited to join the webcast from anywhere; visit www.focusthenation.org/2percentsolution.php.

Albert Einstein said, “The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.” Here at SCAD we have individuals well equipped to open the door to new ways of thinking; not only are they young and energetic, they are, to their very bone, creative. It’s simply a matter of expanding that creative vision, which often encompasses the more narrowly defined tasks of an artistic discipline, to include the broader context of the shared human condition. Please join us for this important event, and help us define a path forward.

By Christine Miller and Scott Boylston

(Originally published on Friday, Jan. 11, 2008 in the Chronicle)

What does sustainability mean to you? How do you feel when you engage in what you consider sustainable practices, like reusing a plastic container or riding your bike instead of driving your car to class?

Industrial design students in the Fall 2007 Contextual Research Methods course at the Savannah College of Art and Design asked these questions to understand how people think and feel about sustainability and sustainable practices. Using ethnographic-style research methods, the students explored the wide range of meanings people attach to sustainability, and designed more knowledgeable solutions as a result.

As part of their study, the industrial design students distributed “workbooks” to students in the graphic design course The Role of Design in Social Awareness. In the workbooks, students wrote about their interests, their passions and what they enjoy doing in their leisure time. They explained what influenced their thinking and actions relating to sustainability, and listed three main areas they associate with sustainable practices. Finally, they used words, pictures and sketches to express what sustainability means to them.

Based on the responses in the workbooks, the industrial design students identified four major areas of concern: transportation, energy conservation, recycling and personal choices, such as supporting local organic produce, buying certified organic products or recycling at home. The industrial design students then developed a “co-creation” session, during which they worked on teams with the graphic design students to conceptualize college-wide campaigns about sustainable practices in these four areas.

The co-creation session resulted in four initiatives that can be taken to the next phase of development by subsequent classes. Several students worked over the holiday break to create a podcast documenting the project, which is scheduled to debut at the SCAD Teach-in Jan. 31.

This project demonstrated how students benefit from interdepartmental interaction. The spontaneity that resulted from working with creative individuals whom they hadn’t met before — and who possessed distinctly different methodological approaches — was one of the key factors in energizing the teams’ creative output.

Sustainability, at its core, is about understanding the broad context of the designed world and arriving at a holistic appreciation of complex systems. To achieve this, it’s imperative that designers in one field understand the methodologies and factors at play in other specialties. The Fall 2007 exercise was beneficial because even as it encouraged students to wrestle with sustainable design ideas, it also reinforced the notion that disciplines must work together to develop sustainable models of ideation and action.