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Events

Cash Mob celebrates Sustainable Small Businesses in Verona Borough

On Saturday, June 11, 2016 residents from Verona came together to shop and celebrate the Sustainable Small Business Designation of 18 businesses in the Borough. The Southwestern PA Sustainable Small Business Designation, one of Sustainable Pittsburgh's award winning performance programs, recognizes small businesses that incorporate sustainable practices as their strategy for success.

Sustainable Pittsburgh teamed with the Verona Chamber of Commerce and the Borough (a Bronze Designated Sustainable Community) to organize this “Cash Mob,” which occurred in conjunction with the Verona Business District Sidewalk Sale. Throughout the event, shoppers visited the businesses and entered to win several prizes, all of which were donated by participating Sustainable Small Businesses.

Patty A. Thomas, owner of Pinks Tiny Paws Daycare & Boutique, one of the participating Sustainable Small Businesses, said, “I had been doing these actions, not knowing they had been making my business more sustainable. I was so excited to learn that!

“We’re never too old to learn about sustainable business practices,” she said. “You can teach an old dog new tricks!”

Patty reported a sales increase up to 50% for the day of the Cash Mob.

The Verona Cash Mob was the fifth cash mob Sustainable Pittsburgh’s Champions for Sustainability program has hosted. All told, there are 191 establishments that have earned the Sustainable Small Business Designation in 35 communities around the region. Please meet your business needs by choosing and supporting them! Find them here.

Congratulations Sustainable Small Businesses for making your communities stronger through your sustainability achievements.

Interested in hosting a Cash Mob in your community? Contact us at sbiz@sustainablepittsburgh.org.

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Resources

Standing Tall: Fostering Tree Health and Community Well-Being

Thursday July 7
9:00 am to 12:00 pm (8:30 am registration)
Borough of Sewickley Council Chambers, 601 Thorn Street, Sewickley 15143
Cost: $20
All Certified Sustainable Municipalities receive complimentary registration. Email jprice@sustainablepittsburgh.org for the special registration code.
To register, access Local Government Academy’s Course Catalog. Add “Standing Tall: Fostering Street Tree Health and Community Well-Being” to your shopping cart and proceed to checkout.

Your community’s street trees, parks, and overall tree canopy are among your community’s most important “residents.” Healthy trees increase home values and improve quality of life. They also reduce energy use, carbon emissions and stormwater. Attend this session to learn what you can do to nurture and protect these valuable assets. With the information you learn at this program, you will also be able help your human residents to be more knowledgeable about tree care on their own properties.

Participants will receive guidance on resources and expertise to engage when developing their own program and participate on a walking tour to see Sewickley’s efforts in action.

Topics will include:
• Tree species selection & climate change preparation
• Dealing with Invasives and Pests
• Pruning, care of mature trees, and tree removal
• Snow and Ice control and healthy trees
• TreeVitalize grant program
• Allegheny Watershed Alliance and Allegheny Conservation District resources

Participants will receive resource materials for use back in their home communities including information about funding programs and technical support. Elected officials, municipal managers/secretaries, public works directors and employees, volunteers and citizens will all benefit from this program. Walking tour is rain or shine! Please be prepared with an umbrella or other rain gear.

Speakers include:
Kevin Flannery, Borough Manager, Sewickley Borough
Rebecca Zeyzus, Allegheny Watershed Alliance
Brian Wolyniak, Urban Forester, Penn State Extension
Joe Stavish, Tree Pittsburgh, Community Education Coordinator
Burlton Griffith, Arborist, Bartlett Tree Experts
Charlie Kirkpatrick, Allegheny County Conservation District
Walking Tour of Sewickley will be led by Jim Edson of Bartlett Tree Experts.

Offered in partnership with Allegheny County Conservation District, American Public Works Association – Western PA Chapter, Governors Center for Local Government Services/DCED as part of the Sustainable Development Academy, a joint program of Local Government Academy and Sustainable Pittsburgh.

Blast off the Starting Block
PGH Green Workplace Challenge Workshop #1: Getting Started with the GWC

Friday, July 29
8:30 am - 11:00 am (Registration begins at 8:00 am)
Union Trust Building, 501 Grant Street, 11th Floor Classroom, Downtown Pittsburgh 15219
GWC Participants: $10; Non-Participant/Sustainable Pittsburgh Member: $25; Non-Participant/Non-Member: $35
More information and registration

It's time to start earning points for the 2016-2017 Pittsburgh Green Workplace Challenge (GWC)! To get started, workshop attendees will learn how to set up different measurement tools, develop individualized game plans, build baselines, and start tracking actions.

Keynote Speaker:
Andrew Kreider, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Consultant, US Environmental Protection Agency

The goal of this first GWC workshop is to ensure participants will be able to complete core GWC actions--all of which have the potential of earning a participant 100+ points! Specific topics to be covered include:
• Setting up GWC measurement tools: ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager®, CommuteInfo, ROCIS air quality cohort, and waste audits
• Learning how new aspects of the Challenge will work: Neighborhoods, Category Playbooks, Ribbons
• Clarifying Legacy Points and Legacy Baselines
• Creating mentorships to connect experienced participants with new comers

WEBINAR: The Reporting Exchange - Can a collaborative platform reduce fragmentation and confusion in the reporting landscape?

Thursday, July 7
2:00 pm ET
Cost: $25
More information and registration

There is a growing recognition that we must reinvent our economies to consider true value, profit, and cost, as well as redefine business models to consider longer-term environmental and social impacts. Unfortunately, this vision has resulted in an increasing number of disclosure requests for companies related to their non-financial performance, creating a complex reporting landscape which presents an increasing resource burden for corporations. Companies have to invest significant resources to report their sustainability performance. Arguably, these resources could be better spent making the innovations to achieve true sustainability, while the diversity of language, definitions and metrics leaves room for confusion for both the reporter and the users of the disclosed information.

This webinar will introduce the Reporting Exchange, a freely available, multi-lingual platform to help business and others make sense of the reporting landscape. The webinar will detail how crowdsourcing and collaboration by global contributors can map out this landscape and provide business users with much needed insight and guidance into what, where, and how they need to report. By capturing the global reporting landscape for the first time, the Reporting Exchange will facilitate the identification of common themes across a plethora of global reporting requirements, initiatives, and schemes. The long-term ambition is to drill down to the core metrics that can be meaningfully compared, analyzed, and understood in the global arena.

Washington County Household Chemical Collection

Saturday, July 9
9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Washington County Fairgrounds
Participant Fee: $3/Gallon (cash only)
Overview
Event Flyer

Items accepted include paint, paint products, automotive fluids, lawn and garden chemicals, cleaners, solvents, aerosol cans, among many others. Call (412) 488-7452 for complete details.

Future of Mobility Forum

Monday, July 11
1pm - 5pm
Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, East Liberty
RSVP

Join the Regional Transportation Alliance and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development for this "Future of Mobility Forum."

During the Allegheny Conferences' quarterly Regional Investors meeting, Brian Heery, co-chair of the Regional Transportation Alliance (RTA) and Carly Dobbins-Bucklad, a Conference staff member and the RTA program manager, provided an update on the Regional Transportation Alliance (RTA) and its effort to create a 10-county vision for the future of transportation infrastructure and systems in the region. Initial insights gleaned from talking with hundreds of organizations around southwestern PA include a desire for multiple mobility options, with reliability and ease of use, along with connecting to jobs and education. Attend this forum to learn more.

Take it to the Bank: How Land Banks Are Strengthening America’s Neighborhoods

Wednesday, July 13
11:45 am - 1:15 pm
Pittsburgh Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, One Oxford Centre, Suite 3000, 301 Grant St., Downtown Pittsburgh
Free to attend; prior registration required.
Participation is limited to the first 45 registrants.
Registration

The Pittsburgh Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is pleased to announce the next session in its quarterly learning series designed specifically for the busy professional. This session will feature Kim Graziani, Vice President and Director of National Technical Assistance, Center for Community Progress. Ms. Graziani will share her insights from her on-the ground experience of working with land banks across the country and key takeaways from "Take it to the Bank: How Land Banks Are Strengthening America’s Neighborhoods." This report is based on research of more than 65 land banks in a dozen states and reveals key characteristics of successful land banks and lessons learned that can be applied locally. For more information on the report and the Center for Community Progress, please visit www.communityprogress.net. For more information on the session or to suggest a subsequent topic please contact Joseph Ott at (412) 261-7947 or joseph.c.ott@clev.frb.org.

Community Meetings: Pittsburgh Bike Plan

Thursday, July 14
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
South Side Market House, 1 Bedford Square, Pittsburgh 15203
More information and additional dates

Consider this: when the “current” Bike Plan was drafted, the Eliza Furnace Trail was brand new. Today, Pittsburgh has high-tech bike share (that you can rent with your phone), OpenStreetsPGH, a trail that connects to Washington DC, and protected bike lanes – things whose existence was barely even conceivable two decades ago. An updated Bike Plan is a necessary tool to move forward in expanding bike infrastructure, policies, and events.

• It allows the City to more easily seek funding
• Has a level of public and political buy-in
• And was also one of our top three policy requests of the City of Pittsburgh from our Member’s Meeting in November of 2014.

To create the Bike Plan, the Department of City Planning will be hosting four, city-wide Bike Plan meetings in July. Using an “Open House” format, there will be opportunities for learning about the internal city processes and project selection, as well as soliciting your feedback on aspects of the plan.

Huntington Breakfast Briefing: Ellen McLean, Port Authority

Thursday, July 14
7:45 am - 9:15 am (Registration, Networking, Coffee at 7:00 am)
DoubleTree by Hilton Downtown Pittsburgh, One Bigelow Square, Pittsburgh 15222
Rate: $49 Pittsburgh Tech Council Member / $175 Non-Member
More information and registration

Providing public transportation throughout Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, the Port Authority is currently focused on enacting a number of improvements to make service more efficient and easier to use. The Authority's 2,600 employees operate, maintain and support bus, light rail, incline and paratransit services for approximately 200,000 daily riders, transporting them to and from work and connecting them to the places they enjoy in the city and surrounding areas.

The Pittsburgh Technology Council is pleased to present Ellen McLean, President and CEO of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Ms. McLean will discuss the innovation strategies of the Authority and the ways they are serving their customers through technology investments, including implementation of smart cards, real-time vehicle tracking and on-street bus rapid transit. She will also discuss how area companies may engage and do business with the Authority.

Resources

ATTN Employers: Sign up to compete in the Pittsburgh Green Workplace Challenge!

Commit to making the Pittsburgh region a better place to live, work, and play! Sign up for this year’s Pittsburgh Green Workplace Challenge (GWC) and see how your business/nonprofit/university/municipality can save money, engage employees, and gain positive public recognition. Since 2011, more than 200 GWC competitors saved nearly $9 million in energy, enough water to fill Heinz Field 93 feet, and enough CO2 emissions to account for over four days of flights from Pittsburgh International.

Join the cohort of employers driving Pittsburgh’s reputation for environmental transformation and sustainability. The GWC team can help you get started and identify the top actions you can take to start saving. Throughout the year, they’ll connect you with resources to stay on track.

Sign up today to compete!

Energy Innovation

Energy Innovation (EI) is a biweekly newsletter of the Energy for the Power of 32 initiative. It features news and events that are accelerating sustainable development for the power of 32. View the latest edition of EI using the link below.

Subscribe to Energy Innovation.

Read the latest issue.

City Green: Innovative Green Infrastructure Solutions for Downtowns and Infill Locations

This EPA publication is for stakeholders who shape redevelopment projects in downtowns and infill locations. Using twelve case studies, it provides inspiration and identifies successful strategies and lessons learned for overcoming common barriers to green infrastructure in these contexts.

More

Air pollution to kill millions more without energy policy change: IEA

Premature deaths from air pollution will continue to rise to 2040 unless changes are made to the way the world uses and produces energy, the International Energy Agency said on Monday.

Around 6.5 million deaths globally are attributed each year to poor air quality inside and outside, making it the world's fourth-largest threat to human health, behind high blood pressure, dietary risks and smoking.

Pesticides could be claiming crops along with bee colonies

In a demonstration at Schenley Plaza in Oakland, the citizen-based environmental advocacy organization illustrated the future of picnics if bees were to disappear. The blanket would be missing traditional picnic foods such as watermelon, macaroni salad, ranch dressing and tortilla chips, and would instead feature lettuce, plain macaroni noodles, a slab of ham and a few onions. . . Stephen Riccardi, citizen outreach director with PennEnvironment, said that bees, which have been declining in numbers since at least the early 2000s, are responsible for pollinating 71 of the 100 crops that are the basis for 90 percent of our food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 1 of every 3 bites of food benefits from bee pollination, and pollinated crops add $15 billion annually to U.S. agriculture.

. . . In Pennsylvania, 60 percent of bee colonies are lost each year. The USDA said parasites, pathogens, poor nutrition or sublethal exposure to pesticides could be causing the decline. . . As a restaurant chef, Mr. Hermann said he was worried that the decline in bee population would make it harder to harvest his own “sweet and savory” honey but that it would also have an impact on most menu items. “If the bee population goes down, farmers have a harder time growing crops, so their prices go up ... that hits the entire market,” he said.

North American leaders to pledge more reliance on renewables

The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico will pledge this week to rely on renewable energy to generate 50 percent of North America's electrical power by 2025, White House officials said Monday. That's a big jump from last year's 37 percent level. But it's doable through greater efficiency and reliance on solar, wind and other clean energy sources, Brian Deese, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said. "The transformation of the American energy sector that's underway is going to continue," Deese said. "That has been driven by some of the policy choices this president has made, but it's also being driven by market forces that are bringing down the cost of clean energy at rates that even the smartest analysts weren't predicting only a couple of years ago."

Volkswagen's $15 billion lesson on the stakes of sustainability

. . the concrete financial toll of European automotive giant Volkswagen's deliberate manipulation of diesel emission testing revealed last fall is starting to crystallize. A $14.7 billion settlement announced yesterday for the owners of some 475,000 impacted U.S. cars. The company, once lauded for its sustainability efforts on corporate rankings like the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, is now No. 2 on the dubious list of the costliest corporate environmental misdeeds in history behind BP's $20 billion Gulf Oil Spill payout finalized last year. In addition to the very visible green marketing fall from grace for allegedly "clean" diesel cars, the 11-figure financial penalty reflects a new precedent for regulatory crackdowns. . . Perhaps more interesting, though, is that the settlement also dictates that Volkswagen will pay the Environmental Protection Agency $2.7 billion to compensate for previously unknown contributions to climate change.

At Pittsburgh hearing, environmentalists call for end to coal mining leases on federal land

Several critics of the program said taxpayers are not getting their money's worth and asked the agency to make changes to increase royalties and encourage competitive bidding. They also want more environmental protections…Larry Schweiger, president of the environmental group PennFuture, noted President Obama was set to announce a pledge with Mexico and Canada to use renewable sources for 50 percent of electricity generation by 2025. He called continued coal leasing inconsistent with such a goal. “The coal dependence of our past cannot be our future,” he said.

How to capture carbon dioxide from a power plant and turn it into stone

The pilot program, performed at Reykjavik Energy’s geothermal power plant under a European-U.S. program called CarbFix, was able to turn more than 95% of carbon dioxide injected into the earth into chalky rock within just two years.

“We were surprised,” said study co-author Martin Stute, a hydrologist at Columbia University in New York. “We didn’t expect this. We thought this would be a project that would go on for decades. Maybe 20 years from now, we’d have an answer to the question. But that it happened so fast, and in such a brief period of time, that just blew us away.”

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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 2016 from:
Alcoa Foundation
ALCOSAN
Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
Henry L. Hillman Foundation
Richard King Mellon Foundation
Pashek Associates, LTD
The Pittsburgh Foundation
University of Pittsburgh
UPMC



Special thanks to the SP Members

Sustainable Pittsburgh
307 Fourth Avenue, Suite 1500
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412) 258-6642
fax (412) 258-6645
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