The Greening of the North Coast

By Milenko Budimir
Photos Courtesy Ecocity Cleveland

When the National Solar Conference – the annual conference of the American Solar Energy Society, dubbed Solar 2007 – comes to Cleveland this month, visitors to the Convention Center will find a city that’s going green in more ways than one.

A lot has been happening in Cleveland’s green building movement, and some would say green building, or sustainable development, is going mainstream. In fact,when Home Depot promotes an EcoOptions program that offers consumers information on how to be green, you can rest assured the movement has gone mainstream.

For some, the mention of anything green still conjures up images of hippies. However, the release of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth last summer brought green building and sustainability issues to the forefront of popular culture, and the growing realization is that green building principles are smart for our health, Earth and business too. As consumer awareness grows, the demand for green homes and products will increase.

For a city known around the world for a river that caught fire and a lake that was a toxic soup of industrial waste, the new emphasis on sustainable development and green building is quite remarkable.

In 2005, the city of Cleveland launched its own sustainability program. Program manager Andrew Watterson says the three main goals of the program are to save the city money, use sustainability principles as a tool for economic development and build capacity in the city around sustainability. The city is focusing on major areas including energy, buildings and facilities, transportation, health and environment. Any project promoted or established must be economically viable.

Right now, Cleveland stands in the middle of the pack when it comes to being green. In a 2006 ranking of the nation’s 50 largest cities by SustainLane, (www.sustainlane.org), Cleveland came in 28th.“There are areas where we are in the lead,” says Watterson.“For instance, we are taking the lead in renewable energy sources by investigating the feasibility of harnessing wind power in Lake Erie. Where we’re not doing so well is in the area of environmental issues, such as air quality.”

Recently, the city began using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) model, the national benchmark for green buildings.“We’re beginning to use this for our construction projects,” says Watterson, “including having a LEED-accredited certified individual on all of our design teams.” In 2005, the Cleveland Water Department began work on its Technology and Security Center building, which used LEED as the construction standard.

Healthy buildings that are also energy efficient are another focus. Watterson and I talk in a city building where all lighting is wired to motion detectors. If nobody is using a room, the lights shut off automatically.We also walk on carpet tile. If one section is damaged from a tear or spill, the entire carpet doesn’t need to be replaced. This saves the city money and reduces the amount of carpet material going into landfills.

Another major focus is storm water management. “We’re saying to developers, ‘Manage storm water on-site, and you’ll get a credit for it,’” says Watterson. Retaining storm water from rainfall reduces the amount of water going into streams and the area’s sewer system.

In addition, most construction and demolition waste is recyclable, so the city now requires that 50 percent of this waste be recycled, putting it back into the local economy. Demolished debris from one of the city’s old pumping stations was reused, along with locally recycled steel, for the new building’s foundation on the existing site, saving money and eliminating the need for trucks to haul the debris to landfills.

Recently,William McDonough, a world leader in the design of environmentally sustainable buildings, spoke at the InterContinental Hotel & Conference Center on the importance of adopting green building principles. McDonough is perhaps best known for constructing a 10-acre green roof atop Ford’s once-infamous River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. In his book, Cradle to Cradle, coauthored with German chemist Michael Braungart, McDonough argues that human artifice should follow the laws of life itself, and that we should strive to “humanize the built world.”

Doing so would not be going backward to the horse-and-buggy era, as some might suspect; small, incremental changes won’t do it either. McDonough argues for what he calls a Declaration of Interdependence, a statement of connection between human life, other life forms and the natural world.The idea is to glean design principles directly from nature, where systems have developed over millions of years in a kind of evolutionary research and development laboratory. Call it a back-to-nature approach.

David Beach, director of EcoCity Cleveland, says, “If we are going to truly live a green lifestyle and preserve the planet for future generations, we have to make fundamental changes, which begin at the level of city planning and urban design.” He looks to Europe as an example. The average European uses half the energy that a typical American does, yet their way of life and standard of living is among the highest in the world.

EcoCity Cleveland is housed in the Cleveland Environmental Center, which opened nearly four years ago in Ohio City. On a muggy late spring day, we walk from the third floor offices to the roof for a view of the haze hanging over the city. On the rooftop are rows of photovoltaic cells, blue-gray panels that convert the sun’s energy into useful electric power.The cells produce roughly four kilowatts of power, enough to run about 70 60- watt light bulbs.

The rooftop also sports a green roof, essentially a garden complete with gravel, soil and native plants. Green rooftops can help lower a building’s temperature during hot summer months, because the vegetation absorbs the sun’s energy without allowing it to heat roofing material, which transfers heat into the building. The idea is similar to other famous rooftop gardens around the country, including the one atop Chicago City Hall and the green roof at Ford’s River Rouge plant.

A large part of EcoCity Cleveland’s mission is to serve as an educational resource for people looking to be more environmentally responsible. As if on cue, in the middle of our talk, Beach fields a phone call from a city resident who is planning on painting his house. He wants information on various paints and their environmental impact.If positive changes are going to happen, they will come largely from individuals making more environmentally friendly choices.

Frances Crowe DiDonato, an attorney for the city of Cleveland, and her husband Mark DiDonato, a special education teacher, live in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.We sit in their beautiful century-old home on a warm afternoon.A ceiling fan steadily moves the air, cooling the sunny sitting room.

The DiDonatos do the usual environmentally sound things, such as using compact fluorescent lightbulbs and insulating their home to reduce heating and cooling costs.However, they go far beyond these simple things. For instance, Mark bikes three miles to work each day the temperature is above 40 degrees. “If it’s below freezing, the gears can freeze,” he says. Frances takes the bus to work every day.They sold a car, and now have only one.

Their yard is a model for green living. A series of barrels and hoses collects rainwater from the garage roof, which they then use to water plants around the yard. Using an old-fashioned human-powered push mower, Mark can mow the lawn in about 10 minutes. In the corner of the backyard is a compost pile. Composting turns organic material such as leaves, twigs, fruit and vegetable matter, eggshells and coffee grounds into a dark, crumbly soil-like substance that can be used as fertilizer.

The DiDonatos’ composting effort isn’t limited to the outdoors. In the basement, packed in a half-dozen blue plastic bins, is a small composting factory, whose employees are a special type of worm called red wigglers. (One year, Mark even bought Frances a box of red wiggler worms for her birthday, a present that certainly generated some puzzled looks from friends and colleagues.) The worms go quietly about their business, transforming food scraps and organic materials into rich, dark soil.

Examples of green buildings are cropping up in the Cleveland area, including a straw bale house in Cleveland Heights, and the West 58th Street townhomes known as EcoVillage, where a typical resident can pay as little as $400 per year in heating bills, or about $35 each month. Who wouldn’t like that in the dead of winter?

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