Garbage Patches into Carpet & the ROI of Wellness: 5 Takeaways from the DVGBC Tri-State Sustainability Symposium

On March 4th, the Delaware Valley Green Building Council hosted its annual Tri-State Sustainability Symposium, a gathering of doers and thinkers to highlight opportunities and challenges in the field of sustainability. Throughout the day, dozens of speakers brought new solutions to the table in the realms of energy, wellness, resilience, and community, and participants engaged in the big questions surrounding sustainability—what is the state of our communities and where do we go from here?

Events like this bring passion to the forefront and galvanize people in their collective capacity to affect change. They also provide us with new paradigms and shifting horizons as we convene to learn what others are doing and how we can take action. For me, the learning outcomes of the day were varied and multiple:

1. Garbage patches can be recycled into carpet.

George Bandy, Vice President of Sustainability at Interface, gave an invigorating talk about the company’s reframing of what business can do for sustainability.

One of Interface’s core beliefs is that processes and products can be redesigned to convert waste into valuable raw materials. By partnering with the Zoological Society of London and local fishing communities in Cameroon and the Phillippines, Interface has helped to create a process whereby developing countries can “sell waste nets back into the global supply chain”.

To date, villagers in the Net-Works program have collected more than 66,860 kg of discarded nets, the nylon from which can be recycled into carpet tiles. In turn, the fishing communities have a way to add value to their communities through the cleaning and preservation of their natural resources.

“We cannot continue to design things that are only for us.”

Addressing the issue of ocean pollution and waste is vastly important - estimates of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch’s size range from the size of Texas to twice the size of the USA. The related pollution of oceanic ecosystems is immense, with some reports of plastic particulate concentration in the stomachs of marine animals estimated at seven times the concentration of zooplankton.

Circulation patterns of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 

Of the world’s response to the sustainability problems, George Bandy emphasized, “We cannot continue to design things that are only for us.” He stressed our global responsibility to steward the earth’s resources with intention and caution, saying, “It’s not okay to privatize the wealth and socialize the risk.” Bandy’s talk was a rousing and inspiring way to start the day’s trajectory of discussion focused on issues of sustainability.

2. By spending up to 3% more on building for wellness, companies and developers can see as much as a 20% return on investment.

Why should companies spend the money to design workplaces that look less like rooms full of cubicles and more like Google? Ed Klimek of KSS Architects, Bill Fisher from Liberty Property Trust, and Jennifer Taranto from Structure Tone gave a multi-perspective presentation on the approaches to and value of building for wellness.

“Ultimately, the built environment can impact wellness throughout our lives.”

Touching on the very origins of architecture as fulfilling the span of needs from shelter to self-actualization, Ed Klimek spoke to the swelling trend in approaches to designing for increased employee productivity and happiness in the workplace. “Ultimately,” he said, “the built environment can impact wellness throughout our lives.”

Providing a developer’s point of view, Bill Fisher explained how, when companies are spending only $10/sf on a building while spending $300/sf, a 0-3% investment in design can increase employee productivity by 10 to 20%.

Jennifer Taranto, Director of Sustainability for Structure Tone, discussed the WELL Building Standard, an innovative new tool focusing on building for health and well-being. Describing WELL as a dovetail for LEED, Taranto detailed WELL’s metrics-based approach, easy-to-use and freely available standards guide, and how it empowers companies by giving them applicable opportunities for positive health outcomes.

3. 99.9% of human evolution has been an adaptive response to the natural world.

Alice Dommert, of Prasada Wholebeing, and Elizabeth Calabrese, of Calabrese Architects, discussed how biophilic design reference nature for design solutions.

Said Alice Dommert, “In 10 years, we won’t even be talking about wellness,” suggesting that designing with nature and well-being in mind will become an inherent part of the language of design.

Calabrese, who coauthored The Practice of Biophilic Design with Stephen Kellert, discussed the principles of biophilic design:

• Repeated and sustained connection to nature
• Human adaptations that advance health & well-being
• Emotional attachment to settings & places
• Positive interactions between people and nature
• Mutual reinforcing, interconnected, and integrated architectural solutions

For further reading, Dommert and Calabrese pointed attendees to Dr. Judith Heerwagen’s research on the psychology of biophilic design, Harvard Medical School Professor John Ratey’s ‘Go Wild’ and ‘Spark’, and Wallace J. Nichols’s ‘Blue Mind’.

4.Designers can take ownership over a project’s relationship to the environment.

Kai-Uwe Bergmann, Parter at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), gave a keynote presentation that tracked how a selection of BIG’s projects across the globe respond to the climate conditions of their environments.

Bergmann discussed a Miami beachfront residential tower project, Grove at Grand Bay, that responds to Miami vernacular. By twisting the massing for two towers that occupy a narrow lot, BIG made the towers of more equitable value, providing residents in each tower with vast ocean views.

Addressing colder climates, Bergmann discussed multiple projects that include ski-down roof structures, such as the Koutalaki Ski Village in Lapland, Finland, and a Waste-to-Energy plant in Copenhagen that will expel a ring of smoke for every ton of CO2 the plant releases, a public installation that brings attention to human energy use.

5. Developers can be leading innovators in building for social impact.

Greg Heller of American Communities Trust and Ken Weinstein of Philly Office Retail spoke on a panel on social impact moderated by Alex Dews, Executive Director of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council.

Greg Heller argued that social impact real estate is an effective puzzle piece in the larger approach of community development. “The root cause of gentrification is disenfranchisement,” said Heller, who says that tools like metrics for evaluating social impact, a layered capital approach, and coalition-based funders and partners can help enact real social change.

“The root cause of gentrification is disenfranchisement.”

Ken Weinstein of Philly Office Retail discussed Jumpstart Germantown and its forward-thinking mentoring program that seeks to revitalize the Germantown neighborhood through residential renovations. The mentoring program matches novice developers with experienced real estate professionals to give community members the tools they need to help invest in local economies and projects that benefit their neighborhoods. Jumpstart Germantown has a $2 million line of credit that they use to collectively back projects that banks won’t fund, and offers open-source, online tools for development.

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The 2016 Tri-State Sustainability Symposium was a day full of opportunities for collaboration and connection, and the mechanisms for change that panelists and participants discussed are ripe for the harvest.

It’s important to remember that sustainability is scalable - resource management strategies function on a personal scale—taking the stairs, riding a bike, buying the family-size yogurt container instead of ten single-serving cups. Sustainability can also function on a group scale—cooking in, going paperless company-wide, reducing travel. And it functions on the scale of civilization—incentivizing reductions in energy use, agreeing to international sustainability standards, and creating opportunities for conversation like the Symposium itself.

In a TED Talk at TED2016, the Prime Minister of Bhutan, Ushering Tobgay, detailed the nation’s approach to climate change. Bhutan is carbon negative—it acts as a carbon sink—an impressive feat for any nation in the 21st Century. Bhutan’s land is currently 70% forested, and the country has committed to maintain forested areas such that they never dip below 60%. These forests act to sequester carbon from the air, and this functionality is preserved through government policy. Bhutan has made available community-wide low-interest loans for installations of solar panels to disincentivize chopping down trees to use as fuel. This is an excellent example of how a nation can empower its citizens toward sustainability.

And that’s really what the Tri-State Symposium was all about - sharing methods for sustainable empowerment. Whether you’re an architect, a developer, a business owner, a sales representative, or a teacher, everyone has a role to play in building sustainable communities. You can start with your community, your organization, or yourself—the important thing is that we foster opportunities for collaborative discussion and action, and that we value in equal measure everyone’s capacity to help.