3E Links readers are early adopters of sustainable policies, products, and practices, and agents of change who educate friends and colleagues about the triple bottom line. Please share your issue of 3E Links with others and encourage them to subscribe by e-mailing info@sustainablepittsburgh.org.

Events

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.

Resources

REGISTER NOW: What Local Governments Need to Know About Woodsmoke & Outdoor Burners

Webinar on Woodsmoke Regulations, a program of the Sustainable Development Academy
Wednesday, January 25
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
View Flyer

The Sustainable Development Academy is a partnership between Local Government Academy and Sustainable Pittsburgh. This particular webinar will be presented by GASP (Group Against Smog and Pollution). Topics include:
- New regulatory measures that start May 31, 2012
- Where and how to report complaints
- Environmental hazards proposed by Outdoor Wood-Fired Boilers
- Guidelines for adopting local ordinances that regulate the use of outdoor wood burners
- Effects of Woodsmoke Pollution

For more information including registration, please visit www.localgovernmentacademy.org

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
For more information, including registration and agenda, please visit the registration page.

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.

Informational Public Meeting on Bus Rapid Transit in Pittsburgh

Thursday, January 12
Two sessions: Noon - 2:00 pm; 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
University of Pittsburgh Alumni Hall Ballroom, 4227 Fifth Ave. (between Lytton & Tennyson avenues), Oakland
For more information, visit GetTherePGH.org
View Flyer

Get There PGH, a partnership of more than 30 community organizations, is advancing a plan for Bus Rapid Transit linking Downtown Pittsburgh and Uptown with Oakland and possibly other East End neighborhoods. Bus Rapid Transit is designed to improve reliability and efficiency while reducing travel times and operating costs. In other cities, Bus Rapid Transit has been shown to support community revitalization initiatives and act as a catalyst for development. Get There PGH believes Pittsburgh can enjoy similar benefits from the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit in this corridor.

All members of the public are encouraged to attend to learn more about the project, provide ideas and discuss Bus Rapid Transit with project representatives. Brief presentations will be provided at 12:15 pm and 6:15 pm.

The public meeting location is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you require special assistance due to disability or limited ability to read, write, speak, or understand English, or otherwise need additional information, please contact:
Ginette Walker Vinski
Sustainable Pittsburgh
(412) 258-6646
gvinski@sustainablepittsburgh.org

Presented by Sustainable Pittsburgh on behalf of Get There PGH and the BRT Stakeholders Advisory Committee.

Southwest Pennsylvania Air Quality Partnership Winter Meeting

Friday, January 13
8:15 am - Noon
Botany Hall at the Phipps Conservatory, 1 Schenley Park, Oakland
Please RSVP to rpatchan@achd.net; (412) 578-8120

Agenda:

8:15 Registration and Continental Breakfast
9:00 Greetings – Jayme Graham, Chair, SPAQP
9:10 Welcoming Address, Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes
9:35 On the Move: Greening Transportation – Speakers on:
- Growth of natural gas vehicle use in the region
- Southwest Pa electric vehicles and public charging stations
- Bicycling to work
- New initiatives in the Region
11:10 2011 Air Quality in Review - Sean Nolan, DEP
11:30 Break
11:40 Business Meeting
- Financial and Activities Report
- Goals for 2012
12:00 Close

Lectures and Conversations Series, featuring Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Columnist Tony Norman

Wednesday, January 18
7:15 pm
Allegheny Y, 600 West North Avenue, North Side 15212
There is no charge for attendance, but donations to the YMCA’s Building Bridges Campaign will be gratefully accepted.

Topic: Culture and Politics in Pittsburgh and Beyond

Tony Norman, award-winning columnist for the Post-Gazette, will reflect on his career reporting on culture and politics in Pittsburgh and beyond. Although decidedly left in his thinking, Tony is known for taking on the sacred cows of all sides. He is as likely to criticize NPR as the GOP, as likely to defend Mormons as Occupy Wall Street. Love him or loath him, Tony practices journalism that makes a difference.

Sponsored By The Pittsburgh Steelers and First Niagara

Neighborhoods and Housing Markets
Comprehensive Community Development in the Metropolitan Context

Friday, January 23
11:00 am - 3:30 pm
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Pittsburgh Branch
717 Grant Street, Downtown Pittsburgh 15219
More information and registration

You are invited to participate in the second event in the Connecting to Markets Series. You will view a national panel presentation, streamed live from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. A question and answer session among participants and panelists at both sites will follow the presentation. After a brief break, a regional panel discussion, will take place at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's Pittsburgh branch.

Foreclosures have hit inner city, suburban, and exurban neighborhoods alike.
· What does this pattern of distress portend for future development patterns throughout regions?
· Has the exurban development model failed?
· Has the foreclosure crisis erased all the gains that city lower-income neighborhoods have made in recent years?
· Many cities are investing in new or substantially upgraded rail corridors. Do these improvements promise to bring new investment into previously distressed neighborhoods?
· What do patterns of demographic change, including immigration or the entry of new age cohorts into the home buying market portend for patterns of regional development?

This panel will explore ways in which neighborhoods within metropolitan areas are linked to one another through flows of population and investment from neighborhood to neighborhood, and how regional policymakers and community developers can work together to influence these flows to produce better neighborhoods and regions.

New data tabulations that explore some of the inter- and intra-metropolitan differences in housing markets will help provide a framework for both the national and regional discussions.

Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development

Reed Smith Spring 2012 Lecture Series: Upcoming lectures

Wednesday, January 25
The Supplemental Poverty Measure
Kathleen Short, Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division, United States Census Bureau

Wednesday, February 22
Inequality and the American City: Implications of the Neighborhood Effect
Robert Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences; Director of the Social Sciences Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

Lectures are from noon to 1:30 pm in the School of Social Work Conference Center, 2017 Cathedral of Learning, at the University of Pittsburgh. More information will be available at www.crsp.pitt.edu

Green Roof Bus Shelter Workshop

How to create unconventional green infrastructure in your neighborhood’s public right-of-way.

Thursday, January 26
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
East Liberty Presbyterian Church, Room 234, 116 South Highland Avenue, East Liberty 15206
Questions? Contact Maggie Graham or Loralyn Fabian
Information on Green Roofs

East Liberty Development, Inc. and Tsuga Studios are hosting this January 26 workshop. Until there is a concrete, regional plan for urban green infrastructure, it will be up to individual communities, on a very local level, to continue implementing such projects. It’s okay to start small. When you begin with small-scale, feasible projects, there becomes opportunity to create a large-scale, educational impact. As more and more small-scale green infrastructure projects are implemented throughout communities, they will work together to create a larger environmental benefit across Pittsburgh. To create true environmental change in this city, one must first create a change in mindset.

This project is supported in part by the Spring Program, an initiative of The Sprout Fund in partnership with The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Resources

Ohio Earthquake Was Not A Natural Event, Expert Says

Kim said that even though the wells have stopped pumping water into the rock, the area might not have experienced its last earthquake. "It could take a couple of years for the earthquakes to go away. The migration of the fluid injected into the rock takes a long time to leave," Kim said. Ohio's Democratic Senator, Sherrod Brown, said the quick response by the state shows it is a serious issue. "There are things we need to know about drilling and earthquakes," Brown told Reuters on Tuesday. Brown said he supports new energy exploration that brings jobs to the state but has questions about how companies will handle fracking and wastewater disposal. "They have got to answer the question of what they are going to do with the waste just like nuclear power," Brown said.

The Emerging and Interconnected 'Megapolitan' Regions

“Metros are the basis of integration into the global economy, I have no doubt about that,” says Lang, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He argues that the megapolitan scale will increasingly be that driver. “These are the key assets, these are the key ports, these are the key international airports, this is the key place of interface with the global economy.” And more locally, these megapolitans will also be the geographical unit that drives planning. “Not in terms of everything,” says Lang. “Not housing, not schools. But in terms of transportation planning, economic development, environmental planning, areas at that scale.”

More

Why investors need to act on climate change in 2012

Clearly the current economic woes of Europe and the US present a short-term headache but if we are to avoid a much larger hangover from our high carbon economy then long-term investors must act now to protect their assets from catastrophic climate change. As the dust settles on the COP17 agreement in Durban, two things are clear. Firstly, that government action to address climate change has not kept up with the pace and scale required to avoid dangerous climate change, therefore significantly increasing risk for society, businesses and the economy at large. Secondly, that although any future agreement may be too late to keep us below the 2C warming previously agreed as the safe target, it is likely that by 2020 all the world's governments, including the emerging markets, will agree [on] a plan to reduce emissions. This presents long-term investors such as pension funds with a challenging quandary. The slow progress towards action presents additional risks to their portfolio in the medium to long term from increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events. There is another significant risk building up in portfolios – when governments do finally agree a new legally binding climate change deal they will need to ensure that emissions reductions are made fast. This will therefore increase risks, such as stranded assets, to companies who have not transformed their business to decouple emissions from business growth. Given this dilemma investors must act in 2012 to reduce long-term strategic risk to their portfolio from climate change, rather than wait for a serious correction in 2020.

Smart Growth: The Business Opportunity for Developers and Production Builders

The benefits of smart growth are well defined, but less discussed are the business decisions needed to bring smart growth projects to market. As a result, investors, developers, and home builders may not have all the necessary tools to decide whether to invest in smart growth development models. Smart Growth: The Business Opportunity for Developers and Production Builders provides eight white papers that present a "business case for smart growth" to assist those considering whether to pursue smart growth projects.

Adopt a Redd Up Zone

Launched in October 2011, Redd Up Zone engages volunteers in street beautification and blight reduction in the City of Pittsburgh. Through this program, businesses and organizations recruit volunteers to adopt a “Redd Up Zone,” committing to year-round cleanups in a designated area as well as tracking neighborhood maintenance concerns for the City to address. In recognition of their commitment, the City of Pittsburgh will provide street signage that publically acknowledges the groups’ commitment to keeping Pittsburgh litter-free, along with the necessary materials and resources that they need to get the job done. Nonprofit organizations and corporations are encouraged to rally volunteers and adopt a stretch of streets.

Why Your City's Urban Canopy May Be Failing

Trees are an increasingly important part of the urban infrastructure. However, a lack a awareness about how to plant and nurture large trees in urban environments dooms many trees to lackluster performance and a short life. "Often, cities plant new trees in a few cubic metres of poor-quality soil, with predictable results," writes author Wendy Stueck. Although significantly more expensive, new technologies offer cities the option to improve the urban canopy by allowing large trees to thrive in urban environments: "Over time, working with American landscape architect James Urban, the company developed the Silva Cell, a system designed to help nurture big trees in urban environments based on research that shows larger trees provide exponentially greater benefits than smaller ones... Silva Cells are a modular system that puts tree roots under buried decks, with a layer of aggregate and pavement over top. The system provides drainage and irrigation and puts roots below the decks, so they don’t push up and buckle pavement. It also ensures plentiful volumes of unpacked soil – about 15 to 20 cubic metres in a typical installation, compared with 1.5 to 3 cubic metres for a tree planted in a conventional pit."

How the US Changed in 2011

A team of Brookings Institution researchers present five key findings about Americans and how the country grew in 2011 according to 2010 Census data. A cascade of statistics from the 2010 Census and other Census Bureau sources released during 2011 show a nation in flux—growing and moving more slowly as it ages, infused by racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants in its younger ranks, and struggling economically across a decade bookended by two recessions. The nation's largest metropolitan areas, and especially their suburbs, stood on the front lines of America’s evolving demographic transformation. Finding II details how Americans are "increasingly stuck at home": "The migration slowdown reversed in part the tide that swept many Americans into Sun Belt areas like Las Vegas and Orlando during the first half of the decade. One upshot is that population losses from many former “feeder” areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Boston have slowed considerably, especially among migrants with college degrees. Meanwhile, Austin, Dallas, and Denver displaced Riverside, Phoenix, and Atlanta from the list of metro areas gaining the most young migrants at the end of the decade."

House Democrats add to calls for more transit funds

Saying crumbling roads and bridges threaten the state's economy and public safety, three Democratic lawmakers have urged Gov. Tom Corbett to put transportation funding at the top of his priority list. But Mr. Corbett's transportation secretary, Barry Schoch, reiterated on Wednesday that other issues, including school vouchers and fees on Marcellus Shale drilling, are higher priorities for the governor. . . The state expects spending on roads and bridges this year to decrease by $500 million, or 25 percent, at a time when more than 8,000 miles of state roads are classified in "poor" condition and more than 5,000 bridges are considered structurally deficient. Another consequence of inaction will come in September, when the Port Authority says it will cut 35 percent of its bus and rail service if nothing is done to fill a projected $64 million deficit.

Christmas tree recycling available in SWPA

Many municipalities in southwestern Pennsylvania are offering curbside and/or drop-off recycling for Christmas trees. Visit Earth911.com. Under "Find recycling centers for", type in "Christmas trees". Then type in your zip code or address, city, state, and zip. The website will generate a list of places to recycle your Christmas tree. Be sure to click the "Curbside" tab to see if curbside pick-up is available in your community in addition to drop-off locations.

The Forgotten Human Right

In 2007, California adopted the first statewide children’s outdoor bill of rights, followed by similar symbolic statements in other states, including Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Kansas, and most recently Wisconsin. Cities and regions around the country have embraced similar declarations. Now the concept is spreading internationally. Henstra, with Thomas van Slobbe, one of the Netherland’s most prominent conservationists and director of the wAarde Foundation, have launched The Child’s Right to Nature Initiative. . . In November, Tony King, head of policy for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, wrote in an editorial for the British newspaper The Guardian, “When people talk of human rights in the context of nature conservation, they often mean protecting the rights of people in the non-industrial world to make use of the obvious things nature provides, such as firewood, food and traditional remedies.” But natural habitat offers even more than that.

For information on becoming a Member of Sustainable Pittsburgh, please visit our website.

3E Links is sent as a service to Sustainable Pittsburgh Members and interested parties and is being distributed for informational purposes. The information above was provided by or obtained from the organizing institution or one of its representatives. Our distribution does not imply endorsement. To unsubscribe, reply to this e-mail and type UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

Click here to access the 3E Links Archive. Use "Search" on SP's homepage for a great resource.

Sustainable Pittsburgh affects decision-making in the Pittsburgh Region to integrate economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality bringing sustainable solutions to communities and businesses.

Sustainable Pittsburgh benefits from support ($1,000 and up) in 2012 from:

Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
BNY Mellon
The Heinz Endowments
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
FedEx Ground
Richard King Mellon Foundation
Pashek Associates LTD
The PNC Financial Services Group
UPMC


Special thanks to the SP Members

Sustainable Pittsburgh
425 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1335
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 258-6642
fax (412) 258-6645
E-mail SP