Green Workplace Challenge 1st Qtr celebration/Workshop #4 -- THIS FRIDAY!
See who the leaders are!
Friday, January 27
8:00 am – 11:45 am
Fairmont Pittsburgh, 510 Market Street, Downtown Pittsburgh
FREE for Green Workplace Challenge participants; $25.00 for non-participants.
Breakfast Provided
Come celebrate the early achievements of the bold cadre of companies and organizations that have risen to the call for action and competition through the Green Workplace Challenge (GWC)!
Learn from and interact with a panel of competing companies to learn what drives them to compete in the GWC, what actions they have implemented, and how different strategies are paying off.
The event begins with an inspirational keynote by Dr. Valerie Patrick, Bayer Corporation's Sustainability Coordinator, about the market opportunities, innovation drivers, and the financial returns that Bayer is pursuing in the spirit of competition embodied in the GWC. Dr. Patrick's remarks will be followed by a formal recognition of all competition participants.
For the second portion of the program, attendees can engage with a panel on innovative lighting and energy efficiency technologies that have direct benefits to energy savings (and GWC competition points). Lastly, workshop organizers invite attendees to share their concerns and needs about their own greening strategies with experts during a closing networking session.
Discover what regional impact the competition has already accomplished in just 4 months, recognize the achievements of the competitors, and learn how your organization can adopt what has worked for these leaders.
This workshop is ideal for representatives from businesses and organizations that are looking to gain insight on strategies that result in reduced costs, utility savings, and more sustainable operations. The media is invited to attend.
For more information, including registration, agenda, and list of speakers, please visit the registration page.
Don't Let Pittsburgh Be a Loser
The impending next wave of dire cuts to public transportation is a grave threat to Pittsburgh's, and thus the whole region's, economy. Roads, bridges, highways, and public transportation are the basis of our productivity. They are the lubrication of our economy. In particular, public transportation provides a lifeline for workers and for businesses. With an unusually high rate of transit ridership, (51% of all downtown commuters use public transit) and the positive economic ramifications of a strong transit system, it is no surprise that long overdue transportation funding solutions finally have bipartisan support in Harrisburg. This presents a golden platter win win opportunity for the Governor. The many ways in which the state has been instrumental in Pittsburgh's resurgence as a global model of resiliency now stand in the balance. There is no upwardly mobile, rising sustainable city in the world with a failing public transportation system. And these systems rely on public support as public services. In the past several years, the Port Authority of Allegheny County has remarkably reformed its management and operations -- more than any transportation entity in the nation. It should no longer be the recipient of the public's ire. The locus is now squarely on Harrisburg with Governor Corbett holding the wheel to steer us away from the precipice. Absent a state funding solution, the Port Authority is forced to deploy draconian service cuts. This could be the beginning of the end of public transportation as we know it and thus the unraveling of Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania's progress.
Bill O'Rourke
Board Chair
Sustainable Pittsburgh
Allegheny Conference Statement on Proposed Transit Cuts
The Allegheny Conference is extremely concerned about the impact proposed transit cuts would have on our region's people, communities and economy. But there is a solution. We call upon business executives and civic leaders, elected officials and others to encourage Governor Corbett and the General Assembly to act now on the recommendations presented last summer by the Transportation Funding Advisory Commission (TFAC).
Read the full comments here.
View remarks from Steve Bland, CEO, Port Authority of Allegheny County, to the House Democratic Policy Committee.
Visit the Port Authority website for more information.
To reach Governor Corbett, use this link.
Following are news stories covering the issue:
Read the Post-Gazette article:
More Port Authority transit cuts ahead Port Authority CEO says rollback plan 'not a scare tactic,' pleads for state aid
Read the Tribune-Review article:
Port Authority buses may not roll for 45,000
Sustainable Pittsburgh is now on Facebook!
Receive timely news items related to sustainability issues in the region, nationally, and internationally. Please visit Sustainable Pittsburgh on Facebook and "Like" us today!
Our Municipalities are Moving the Ball on Sustainability
With so many units of local government, this region would be well-served for its municipalities to become sustainability pacesetters. Our local governments have a profound role to play in the way we organize ourselves to live lighter, more justly, and with rising prosperity. Good news. Data from the 129 municipalities around the region that completed the on-line Sustainable Community Essentials Rapid Assessment demonstrate sustainability at the local level is taking hold. There is now an encouraging body of insight (91 policies and practices in the Rapid Assessment) serving to demystify what is means to be a sustainable community. And the many exemplar initiatives revealed a set convincing and inspiring precedent for municipalities to emulate the swelling tide of best sustainability practices among their peers. Toward accelerating this trend, in 2012, Sustainable Pittsburgh will be working with the Community Sustainability Coordinators and additional municipal leaders to evolve the Rapid Assessment into a formal SWPA Sustainable Community Essentials Certification Program. In the meantime, have a look at the following summary of the Rapid Assessment results and thank your municipal leaders for working to formally adopt sustainability as the way of ensuring the good life in our region.
View the summary.
Attend the Green Workplace Challenge 1st Qtr celebration/Workshop #4
See who the leaders are!
Friday, January 27
8:00 am – 11:45 am
Fairmont Pittsburgh, 510 Market Street, Downtown Pittsburgh
FREE for Green Workplace Challenge participants; $25.00 for non-participants.
Breakfast Provided
Come celebrate the early achievements of the bold cadre of companies and organizations that have risen to the call for action and competition through the Green Workplace Challenge (GWC)!
Learn from and interact with a panel of competing companies to learn what drives them to compete in the GWC, what actions they have implemented, and how different strategies are paying off.
The event begins with an inspirational keynote by Dr. Valerie Patrick, Bayer Corporation's Sustainability Coordinator, about the market opportunities, innovation drivers, and the financial returns that Bayer is pursuing in the spirit of competition embodied in the GWC. Dr. Patrick's remarks will be followed by a formal recognition of all competition participants.
For the second portion of the program, attendees can engage with a panel on innovative lighting and energy efficiency technologies that have direct benefits to energy savings (and GWC competition points). Lastly, workshop organizers invite attendees to share their concerns and needs about their own greening strategies with experts during a closing networking session.
Discover what regional impact the competition has already accomplished in just 4 months, recognize the achievements of the competitors, and learn how your organization can adopt what has worked for these leaders.
Who should attend: This workshop is ideal for representatives from businesses and organizations that are looking to gain insight on strategies that result in reduced costs, utility savings, and more sustainable operations. The media is invited to attend.
For more information, including registration and agenda, please visit the registration page.
New SWPA Sustainability Indicators launched at regional Smart Growth Conference
PittsburghTODAY launched its much anticipated Sustainability Indicators during the 11th annual Smart Growth Conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on December 13. The indicators help to measure the region’s progress and offer insight to the region’s embrace of sustainability.
Sustainable Pittsburgh contracted PittsburghTODAY to create this new category. Currently it includes such indicators as air quality, housing vacancy, daily vehicle miles travelled, traffic congestion and others. The list will continue to be expanded over time.
Close to 300 individuals attended the December 13 Smart Growth Conference, entitled “Smart Growth is Smart Business.” Participants learned about Innovative Financing solutions for urban real estate, housing, and metropolitan infrastructure, heard first hand how Green Infrastructure investments result in cost savings and business opportunities, and they saw real life examples of how blighted properties were transformed into valuable real estate and the related challenges and opportunities experienced in such projects. Overall the emphasis was on specific opportunities and next step action items around which the business community can rally to effectuate positive change.
The conference was sponsored by the PNC Financial Services Group (Gold level) and Bakery Square, Bombardier, and HDR (Silver level). Essential Public Radio served as the event’s media sponsor. The conference was presented by Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Green Building Alliance, NAIOP Pittsburgh Chapter, Pittsburgh Technology Council, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, Sustainable Pittsburgh, and the Urban Land Institute Pittsburgh District Council.
Former HUD chief Cisneros advises Pittsburgh to think young
The city of Pittsburgh should think young, according to Henry Cisneros, a former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and now executive chairman of Cityview, a Texas-based real estate investment and development firm. "That's one of the challenges facing the city," said Cisneros, but that wasn't the only challenge expressed at the 11th Annual Southwestern Pennsylvania Smart Growth Conference, held in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. Other challenges include encouraging city residents to work to benefit not just their own neighborhoods but adjoining areas as well as the entire city, and having the city's public leadership work to resolve existing stormwater problems that cause flooding and other damage.
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Smart Growth Conference is smart business move
The conference features sessions on innovative finance, blight and abandonment, green infrastructure and the indicators of smart growth. Former Clinton cabinet member Henry Cisneros, head of the CityView institutional investment firm, and Robert Lang, a Fellow of the Urban Land Institute, lead a lengthy list of presenters. To be smart about growth, businesses need to realize that even multi-national corporations are still local to someone. “How that [local] community operates is going to affect their labor force, resourcing of materials, tax climate and regulatory climate,” says [Brian] Jensen, who also heads the Pennsylvania Economy League of Southwestern Pennsylvania. “The geographical climate they work in will affect their operability and ultimately their profitability.”
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Smart Growth conference to focus on sustainability
"While the economy has changed dramatically, smart business is today -- as it always has been -- about keeping operating costs predictable and manageable, maintaining a dependable and skilled workforce and securing easy and affordable access to stable (if not growing) markets," [Brian Jensen, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Economy League] wrote. "As businesses invest in the sustainability of communities they help hold down the costs of government by growing the tax base and influencing policy decisions for wise capital expenditures and efficient delivery of public services" . . . Bill Flanagan, Allegheny Conference executive vice president, said the idea of smart growth is imperative to the organization's plans to revitalize communities and groups that haven't benefitted from growth the region has seen over the past two decades . . . "We're trying to create more seats at regional decision-making tables to allow our businesses to focus on ways in which quality of life, sustainable development and helping the regional economy equate to business opportunities," [Court Gould, Executive Director of Sustainable Pittsburgh] said.
More
Dearly Beloved Transit Rider... It's House In Order Time
Pittsburgh is a transit riders' town. With such a high percentage of workers and the public using public transportation, you know transit and the economy are joined at the hip.
Remember those drastic cuts this past spring? There's worse trouble ahead. We can anticipate those cuts will be nothing compared to what is coming now that Harrisburg has made it clear that a solution to the state's transportation funding crisis is not a priority. So, unfortunately, it's time we all start planning for a drastically smaller transit system.
Is weekend transit service important to you, or perhaps your employees? How about weekday evenings and nights? That's right. These are the depth of service cuts the Port Authority of Allegheny County has no choice but to begin planning to deploy in the face of our funding crisis.
The irony is that elected officials - who believe raising revenue for roads and transit will hurt the economy - are rendering our economy a calamitous blow by starving its life blood: affordable mobility that links us to opportunity, to jobs, to healthcare, to living. Public transportation is at the heart of our shared prosperity.
The 9/24/11 article, "Port Authority 'death spiral' could come with more cuts", is a must read for all who - or whose employees - depend on the bus or the T. We have about a 10 month window to contingency plan. Van and carpools, 4/10 work weeks, bike commuting, telecommuting, new parking accommodations are among strategies to consider now.
Our advance warning is here. It's time to get our transit back-up plan in order. We all, riders, and our economy depend on it.
Court Gould, Executive Director, Sustainable Pittsburgh
Ernie Hogan, Executive Director, Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group
Jeremy Waldrup, President and CEO, Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
Sustainable Pittsburgh and partners target Blight & Abandonment and Waste Management & Recycling in new programming for municipalities:
Topics were identified as a result of municipal self-assessments of their communities’ sustainability
The 120 municipalities around our region that completed the Sustainable Community Essentials Rapid Assessmentprovided a wealth of information in terms of the policy and practice of sustainability here in the region. Responding to those insights, Sustainable Pittsburgh and the Local Government Academy have embarked on an ambitious training agenda to help municipalities hasten the pace sustainability on targeted topics based on evidenced need and opportunity.
The local philanthropic community recognizes the regional economic high stakes and key role of local government in advancing sustainable community development. The Buhl Foundation is supporting development of a municipal programming series to address Blight & Abandonment. Similarly, The Alcoa Foundation has provided grant support for a series on Waste Management & Recycling.
Additional generous funders and partner organizations are lending their support and expertise to enable a range of training programs intended to build on existing municipal best practices and precedent. A key benefit of the Rapid Assessment was to show that sustainability, as reported across 91 actions, is alive and thriving around our region. For 2012, our plan is to evolve this initiative into a formal Sustainable Community Certification.
Thank you for donating through Pittsburgh Gives!
According to the Pittsburgh Foundation, individual contributions that flowed into PittsburghGives on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 totaled $5.15 million. Contributions will each receive an equal pro-rated share of the $750,000 matching funds, creating a total of $5.9 million raised for nonprofits.
Thank you very much for supporting nonprofits in western PA.
Read the Pittsburgh Foundation blog here.
Over 50 Main Street businesses earn Sustainable Business Designation through Sustainable Pittsburgh program
In late 2010, Sustainable Pittsburgh, in partnership with Town Center Associates, launched the Sustainable Business Designation program to advance sustainable practices among small, local businesses around Allegheny and Beaver County’s Main Streets. The program recognizes businesses for implementing sustainability actions that are simultaneously good for their bottom line, the environment, and the social fabric of their communities. To date, over fifty businesses have earned sustainable business designation through this program.
To create the program, Sustainable Pittsburgh developed a short checklist of sustainability criteria for businesses. These criteria include provisions related to energy conservation, waste reduction, stormwater management, land use policies, and alternative transportation, among other sustainability-related topics.
Sustainable Business Designation is reflected for each qualifying business in the business directory for their town, soon to be available at www.DowntownFirst.net, as well as through a certificate of acknowledgment and window display stickers. The designation helps customers identify and choose businesses that are committed to sustainability as a core principle to their operations and business model. Businesses can earn an additional, Local Business, designation in the directory as well.
The program is intended to inspire local, small businesses to apply sustainability practices and increase vitality among the region’s rich fabric of small towns and neighborhoods. If you and your business are interested in signing up for the program, visit: www.downtownfirst.net/sustainable-businesses.
Sustainable Pittsburgh is proud of the businesses who have shown their leadership in earning sustainable designation, becoming stars in their communities. Click here to view a list of businesses that have earned the Sustainable Business Designation.
Sustainable Pittsburgh offers Sustainable Solutions
Niche consultancy provides integrated sustainability analysis and recommendations for business, nonprofit, and municipal clients
After years of demonstrated results, Sustainable Pittsburgh is pleased to release case studies showcasing the positive impact its Sustainable Solutions Consultancy has had for its clients.
Through Sustainable Solutions, Sustainable Pittsburgh brings together a tailor-made multi-disciplinary team of experts to conduct a comprehensive Sustainability Assessment – an integrated examination of a client’s needs such as: energy usage, waste management, storm water management, transportation options, management practices, policies, strategic assets, and other areas. These Assessments use a whole systems approach and are intended to build capacity and provide specific quantified recommendations to save money in operations, conserve resources, enhance civic stewardship, and foster a culture of sustainability practice.
Sustainable Pittsburgh recognizes that businesses, municipalities, and nonprofits need assistance when it comes to incorporating more sustainable policies and practices into their operations. We’re happy to help. We’ve worked with a range of clients including The Mall at Robinson, Cranberry Township, YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh, and others.
Are you ready for a Sustainable Solution? Please visit our website to view our new case studies. And click here to view the Sustainable Solutions brochure.
Municipal Government joining business trend of appointing Sustainability Coordinators
The private sector around the nation and here in southwestern Pennsylvania is on a fast uptake in adopting sustainability as a top level business strategy. Remarkably, during these recession years, the membership of Sustainable Pittsburgh's Business Sustainability Coordinators/Officers professional development network has grown. There are over 70 Business Sustainability Coordinators we know of, representing companies of all types and sizes around the region.
Given the special role local governments play in fostering sustainable development, it's a certainty that municipalities follow the business sector lead in the bottom line practicalities of appointing municipal Sustainability Coordinators. We've been watchful for the opportunity to begin convening such a cohort. But it was not until Sustainable Pittsburgh deployed the Sustainable Community Essentials Rapid Assessment that we learned of sufficient numbers of existing Community Sustainability Coordinators to launch this parallel network.
Sustainable Pittsburgh is pleased to announce the trend of municipal sustainability programming is alive and well as evidenced by the fourth meeting of the Community Sustainable Coordinators network. One of the aspects most valued within the group is learning from peers and local experts about past and current practices and policies central to integrating sustainability in municipal operations, management, and public services.
In addition to self-help, the Community Sustainability Coordinators are committed to work collectively at scale for regional progress. They've decided to focus initially on impacting waste management and recycling by deploying a training program geared to elected officials and municipal decision makers. Indeed, municipal leaders are at the front line of sustainable community development. It is from our home towns that we take a cue to living in ways that add social, economic, and environmental abundance.
If you know of a Community Sustainability Coordinator, urge them to contact Sustainable Pittsburgh to join in the growing group of sustainability professionals. When you see residents and leaders performing as sustainability coordinators from the following communities, be sure to congratulate them:
Allegheny County, Cranberry Township, City of Pittsburgh, East Liberty, Township of Upper St. Clair, Borough of Monaca, Mt. Lebanon, Ohio Township, Scott Township, Urban Redevelopment Authority, and YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh.
Transportation Funding Update
Last week, Sustainable Pittsburgh shared with its 3E Links readers information regarding Governor Corbett’s Transportation Funding Advisory Commission’s recommendations. Included was Sustainable Pittsburgh’s encouragement to communicate to Governor Corbett just how critical transportation systems, infrastructure and public transportation are to our economy.
The recommendations of the Commission provide a positive framework from which to develop specific proposals that would benefit all modes of transportation. (note: the following two links will connect you to Sustainable Pittsburgh's latest 3E Links newsletter.)
- See a bulleted list on why you should be concerned if no improvements are made to State funding.
- See how this affects public transportation.
On Monday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured Sustainable Pittsburgh’s letter to the editor, "Transportation group provided sound advice."
An article in Tuesday's Post-Gazette, "Panel: How to do more on roads," provides an overview of the Panel's recommendations.
The Transportation Funding Advisory Commission full report is now available at: www.tfac.pa.gov
Smart Growth Business Council - SWPA
Sustainable Pittsburgh is in good company with the growing numbers of business leaders nationally who recognize that regional growth and development patterns -- guided by principles of smart growth and sustainability -- improve quality of life, lessen the cost of doing business, increase long-term profitability, help reduce tax and infrastructure costs, and contribute to recruitment and retention of employees. We recognize however, that the growing trend of business leaders engaged in regional smart growth has yet to really take hold here in the Pittsburgh region.
Last Fall's 10th annual SWPA Smart Growth Conference, with over 400 attendees, signaled that we are reaching a critical mass. It also illustrated need for greater private sector participation. Business leaders we've spoken with recently feel that the sector is now ready to be catalyzed.
In the post G-20 Pittsburgh upswing, time is ripe for forming a business partnership that is focused on rationalizing our region's patterns of development to more successfully spur economic prosperity and extend this region's signature livability to more persons. The bottom line business case of smart growth is increasingly apparent.
Sustainable Pittsburgh is looking for private sector leaders who seek ways to connect with their peers to identify:
- leverage points for channeling the pattern and character of growth and development to hasten regional sustainability that protects and enhances business investments
- policies and practices to ensure economic growth occurs without the impacts and inefficiencies of unchecked sprawl
- regional and local scale actions businesses can take to promote sustainable communities
- opportunities to have a seat at the table in regional, county, city planning and programming
- incentives to level the field for development and redevelopment to revitalize our older urban centers
- plans and policies at the new economics nexus of land use, transportation, housing, and development
- ways to engage business leaders in helping make smart growth the way of doing business in SWPA
This is an open invitation to the region's business community. Drop us a line if you are interested in establishing the Smart Growth Business Council - SWPA. Its launch will be the focus of the 11th annual Smart Growth Conference in October. Contact: cgould@sustainablepittsburgh.org
Sustainable Pittsburgh Provides Remarks on Marcellus Shale
Sustainable Pittsburgh provided remarks on Marcellus Shale development as part of the Leadership Alle-Kiski Valley's Economic Development Forum. Below is an excerpt."The very definition of Sustainable Development provides a framework for considering the Marcellus gold rush: 'Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' Within this definition is a value that meeting our needs responsibly means not shifting a burden from one population group or even from one generation to another. Let's consider such hard and fast lessons we can derive from the principles of sustainable development:
• Be mindful of the past lest we not replicate mistakes . . .
• Sustainable consumption . . .
• Environmental justice . . .
. . . In these days where sustainable prosperity is dependent on raising all boats, we can ill afford to fracture the region and any one of ours' quality of life. The principles of sustainable development are a recipe for avoiding mistakes of the past. They give a compass to marrying environmental protection with safeguarding ourselves and our communities while enhancing our regional economy. These are just a few thoughts along the over used lines of "we have to get this industry right" in order to realize its lasting potential."
Click here to read the full remarks.
