Got Green?

What a great event! Art, food and music! This is one I haven't seen before - a traveling pizza oven!

Today is the Home Tour in the Coronado Historic. District. There are 11 homes and businesses on the tour. These are constructed between 1925 and 1943. There are street booths up along Sheridan from 8th St east to Kitchell. Our U.S. Green Building Council's Residential Green Building Committee volunteers are busy chatting with attendees about greening their homes. Beautiful day outside!

William McDonough is truly a legend in architecture! He's been a student of this field since the 70's. He began by discussing his history at University of Virginia as the Dean. He made it his mission to read all 30,000 of the letters Thomas Jefferson left behind. Quite a nice hobby! His comments "education requires the great clash off ideas," reference Jefferson's picks to head each Department.

McDonough's first question of architecture is "How do we love all the children, all the time?". And then, " What is the design intention of human species?"

He went on to say, "It's time to RE-THINK." "We don't have an energy problem. We have a material problem". His vision of Washington DC is green roofs where they grow their own food. He went on to say, "That's the first time they've been productive!". His current project is packaging materials that are sustainable. For more information, visit http://wwwmmcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle/htm

Speaking at the Arizona Centennial celebration today, Sandra Day O'Connor spoke of her childhood on a ranch in New Mexico, the Lazy B Ranch. The ranch had no running water and no indoor plumbing! She loves our wide open skies, rocky formations and gets excited when it's going to rain. She attended a public all girls school and recalled Eleanor Roosevelt coming to speak to her class. She told us that she was the most impressive person she's ever met.
Since retiring she has created a website to educate children about government, 5th - 9th grades, www.icivics.org. I'll forward this on to my grandkids!

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Mayor Phil Gordon opening the event at the LEED Certified Phoenix Convention Center! The building has a huge solar panel installation and our light Rail system is "as far as he knows' the only solar rail stop in the country. Mayor Gordon is one of 15 of the country's green mayors. Pretty cool!

Greenhouse gases has been reduced already and by 2025 over 25% of the city will have shade structures to reduce heat island effect. Mayor Gordon cultivated great talent that will remain now that his 2nd term is almost finished. Congrats to Mayor gordon for all his accomplishments and welcome Greg Stanton!

Maria Baier, Land Commissioner for the State Land Department, which manages 13% of the land in Arizona. She wants to keep "our product" our land viable. She encourages all od us to keep requesting funding for universities to continue research.

Andrew Soulier, Ernst & Young, spoke of the company seeing opportunity in Phoenix for sustainability. He then introduced Ed Fox, Chief Sustainability Officer, APS. Ed went on to say that APS employees volunteer over 165,000 hours doing community service. There are plaques in every conference room at APS regarding sustainability. They expect a 50% growth in population by 2030. APS and other utilities talk about decoupling their service as their existing model for earnings is outdated. As APS continues to reduce their profits to investors, new business models will be implimented.

Al Halvorsen, senior Director of Environmental Sustainability, Frito-Lay North America, and drives Pepsico Performance with Purpose program. Frito-Lay has 13 LEED Certified Buildings! They are a HUGE corporation with loads of Brands under their umbrella. They have green teams back in the 90's for each company brand. Their Casa Grande plant was built in 1984. That plant is now almost off the grid! They recycle 75% of their water daily. And they send nothing to the landfills from that plant. This is their showcase plant and it's in AZ! They are using this plant as a benchmark for their other plants. Their business model is now to be authentic & transparent.

This is just the start of an all day event with many more speakers to come.

REO's have been stripped of entire kitchens, appliances are missing, and they need flooring, Given those missing details, they can easily be remodeled and upgraded using am Energy Efficient Mortgage or 203K loan. Features can be added to foreclosures and the buyer who qualifies for an FHA mortgage can use this program.
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