Are you one to keep track of sustainability news in your local paper, maybe The O and perhaps online? Do you faithfully follow LUBA appeals and UGB hearings? Are you looking for the next green tax credit, or want to keep tabs on how your elected reps are working to protect the planet?
There are a bunch of you out there like that here in the great PNW, but as with any proactive search for news and information, it's a hell of a chore to keep up, even if you know just where to look. Wouldn't it be great if someone was doing the watching out FOR you, and simply dropped the best of what they've found to your email inbox every day? And threw in a little economic and cultural news for good measure?
Sightline Daily is a free news service and blog featuring sustainability, economic, and social news from around the Northwest. Sightline Daily emails give you a snapshot of the day's news. Our editors get up at 5AM every weekday, check more than 40 papers, and handpick the top 10 stories affecting life in our region.
Weekly Score emails give you the best of our blog every Friday. From walkability and transit to climate policy and human health, Sightline's researchers provide commentary and connect the dots across issues.
When you sign up, you’ll join a group of journalists, policy makers, and engaged citizens who use Sightline Daily to stay on top of their game. Readers call it “a great way to get the most important and interesting headlines of the day in one quick location."
Granola in vanilla Silk for breakfast, with a side of NW enviro news--how can you top that?
Ah, but you can: if you sign up for the Sightline Daily before October 29, you'll be entered to win more than just the sense of well being that comes with being properly informed. How's an all-expenses, two-night trip to the Emerald City sound?Two Amtrak tickets, two nights at the snazzy new Hyatt Olive 8 with breakfast included, vouchers for dinner at the equally hip Lark and Sutra, plus other goodies for activities during the day. Does. Not. Suck!
Even if you don't get the chance to sign up by the 28th, or don't win the trip, you'll still come out a winner if you sign up. A well-informed electorate is a powerful electorate!
Oregon, and Portland in particular, always seems to be a favorite topic or frequent example in articles about travel, innovation or components of a "green" society. And for the most part, the reviews are always glowing, perhaps leaving the unremitting negativity and curmudgeonism to the locals. Two more such pieces have crossed the LO editorial desk in the last couple of days...
The first is one of those "where does your city rate on X" deals, this time concerning the quest for the "least wasteful" big city in America. Nalgene, the water-bottle maker who could probably slipcover Portland with the plastic from all the bottles they've sold here, conducted a survey of the 25 biggest cities in order to rank them on their wastefulness. Methodology? But of course:
The water bottle company questioned 3,750 people in America's 25 largest cities about their transportation use, waste, sustainability efforts, shopping habits, and reuse of items. Nalgene weighted the results to give preference to behaviors with an immediate and significant impact like driving less, recycling more, and reducing trash. The survey's index is based on a scoring system with a potential individual high score of 1930 and a low individual score of 193.
The top city turned out to be San Francisco, which came out solidly in front by their particular estimation. Second was New York, perhaps surprisingly--but the dirty secret about NYC is that dense living is more sustainable living, so for things like walkability and use of private transportation, the Big Apple does well.
Number three was the Rose City, forming a mini-tier with NYC and beating out Seattle by a strong margin. That's really the only goal for most Portlanders, beating the Emeralds, so even if we'd finished 24th that'd be OK, as long as #25 was Seattle. (The worst of the group was actually Atlanta, one of those classic suburban-sprawl, weak-transit cities).
A more regular endorsement has also come from the New York Times, which in addition to columnist Nicholas Kristof's hometown references also features the city every once in a while via their Travel section. This time it's the Frugal Traveler column, providing three pages of suggestions for Stumptown on the cheap. The reporter takes you to the Ace Hotel, Widmer, some cool Southeast eateries, the food carts downtown, the vacuum cleaner museum at Stark's, Pok Pok, Powell's of course--even the Acropolis strip joint that serves the cheap and tasty steak! (When was the last time you read a travel review with a strip club featured as a good thing?) A flavor:
Weirdly enough, these busy nights would end early, and I'd be in bed shortly after midnight. In retrospect, this made perfect sense. Good living takes its toll on the body if not on the wallet, and we all need energy to face the next day's agenda of food, friends and frugality. And every evening, as I drifted off in my soft Ace Hotel bed, under the reassuring weight of that wool blanket, I would try to figure out how to answer a question I heard almost daily, from strangers and from old pals who saw how smoothly I'd settled into my Portland routine. "So," they'd ask, "when are you moving here?"
I still don't know what to tell them.
I do: tell them you won't be coming until you already have a job!
I've been meaning to write about this captivating story for a while now, and this piece in The O is as good a point to jump into the process as it moves towards reality as any. I was unfamiliar with the Living Building Challenge before hearing of the Oregon Sustainability Center project, but it's a fascinating concept that is tailor-made to play to Oregon's green strengths and building commitment to being a world leader in sustainability development. Here's how the sponsors of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council describe it:
When LEED® emerged in the late 1990’s, it filled a huge void in the building industry: designers all over the country were trying to understand how to effectively define ‘green building’ and measure it in a consistent way. With a focused goal on market transformation, LEED® has done more for the national green building movement than anything previously conceived.
When the Platinum certification level was defined, it was widely accepted as the highest rank of environmental performance possible for buildings, and indeed it is significant. Yet, completing the requirements for LEED® Platinum certification does not fulfill the ultimate obligations of the building industry towards the pursuit for sustainability. Rather, it was defined by the changes that seemed possible at the inception of the LEED® program for the majority of projects.
The main focus of LEED® is to make green building mainstream and to move the bulk of buildings being built towards higher standards. The Living Building Challenge’s aim is to push projects even further to provide models for the industry to follow.
Both the governor and the mayor of Portland have committed to supporting the coalition of private and public groups that will be necessary to execute such an ambitious task, on the theory that a successful example of a zero-output large building will be a large beacon signalling the world's green technicians to sally forth to Portland and join the community where things are hottest. Here's what The O piece has to say about their commitment, and how it would all come together:
Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Portland Mayor Sam Adams are pushing for the center and consider it part of their economic development strategies. Kulongoski included $80 million in the budget in higher education revenue bonds -- to be paid back by the businesses and nonprofits that occupy the building.
"I think this is the future," Kulongoski said last week. "More and more, as people learn about the issue of climate change, they'll realize that Portland is the center of sustainability."
More than a dozen businesses, nonprofits and universities are working with the Oregon University System to create the Oregon Sustainability Center, a high-rise office building near Portland State University that would showcase the region's expertise in developing and designing earth-friendly buildings.
"This is like building a green stake in the ground in Portland," said Jay Kenton, vice chancellor of the Oregon University System. "We're going to do something no one else has done. It's going to brand us as a leader in many ways in doing that."
The grades among Oregon, OSU and Willamette University were pretty good, all Bs. Lewis and Clark, on the west side of Portland just north of Lake Oswego, could only score a C, due mostly to a common failing (more on that in a moment), but with some strong grades in the most directly impactful areas. However, one school, Reed College--known nationwide as Let Your Freak Flag Fly central, which I've always thought was a good thing--lags in some very important ways to the rest, all the more surprising for who it is. It's Reed, for heaven's sake! The ultra-PC, smart-is-cool, left-is-right denizens of young progressive utopia! What the?
Jack Graves, an executive with Vancouver, Wash.-based Burgerville said the chain plans to add at least three new stores this year after finding success with its naturally raised beef burgers, shakes from seasonal berries, and onion rings made from locally grown produce.
Country Natural Beef, a cooperative of 120 cattle ranchers in 15 states that supplies beef to Burgerville, also sells steak and round cuts to Whole Foods Market Inc. and other natural grocers.
Having Burgerville as a customer for its chuck has allowed ranchers to earn a better return on each animal, said central Oregon rancher Doc Hatfield, who established the cooperative with his wife Connie.
Country Natural Beef is based out of Antelope but has partner ranchers across 15 states, including Hawaii. Started over 20 years ago, as a premium-food provider using sustainable practices they were way ahead of the curve. But that's Oregon, isn't it? (Or wasn't it, at least?) A true cooperative partnership of like minded businesses, CNB has high standards that extend even to the slaughtering of the animals, justified by the fact that if the cows are treated so well in life, why would you act inhumanely at death? The process is interesting; obviously it doesn't work out well for the cow no matter what you do, and some will object fairly on those grounds alone. But it's done with great care:
The animals are trucked to the processing plant at Toppenish, Washington the night before slaughter. This is a short hour and a half ride. They are penned under cover with water and with the same mates they were with at our gathering lot. The next morning they are walked as a group to a pen which leads into a chute where they walk single file. They have all been through chutes before and are not frightened by this process. They enter the stunning box where they are rendered unconscious with captive bolt blows to the brain. The animals behind do not see the process. A side gate opens and they slide about 4 feet where they are shackled by a hind leg and bled. The side gate closes and is ready for the next animal that has seen none of this. There is no blood in the box they are entering.
One thing the AP story misses as a reason for the growing popularity of natural fed meats, particularly beef, is the comfort of single-sourced meat--that is, you know your burger all came from the same cow, and it was a healthy cow. No one in the industry really wants to talk about mad cow and the lax standards that create breeding grounds for toxic meats, but if I recall right at the time, Burgerville did market their use of single-sourced beef from CNB, on little table tents at the restaurants.
Speaking of, three more BV's this year--yay! I think some people believe the food there is magically less fatty or salty or caloric, because it's better made and higher quality food, but it's a haven from crap, one that's definitely hard to find among fast food outlets, and I praise it. Plus they have a rotating sides menu and feature local produce. It's part of what makes Oregon great.
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Jack Graves, an executive with Vancouver, Wash.-based Burgerville said the chain plans to add at least three new stores this year after finding success with its naturally raised beef burgers, shakes from seasonal berries, and onion rings made from locally grown produce.