Day of Service: Where is your project?

Welcome to the first annual Day of Service! On Saturday, Sept. 29, children will be leading the way to a better learning environment in our schools. They’re backed up by parents and teachers who are all working hand-in-hand to stress that Where We Learn Matters.

The concept is a simple one. Ask students and parents to look around their school and find a green project that needs to be done. It could be an edible garden, a schoolyard cleanup or decorated recycle bins. These simple projects are designed to remind school administrators, local officials and community leaders that healthy sustainable schools are important to our children and the community.

The Center for Green Schools is the organizing force behind this largely grass-roots effort. But the emphasis here is not on water efficiency or energy envelopes. The point of Sept. 29 is to wake us all up a little to where children are learning and remind us how much it matters.

Check out the Center’s site for service, Green Apple. Scroll down the home page to do a search for events in your area. Almost 10 percent of all schools in the U.S. have an event, so chances are you’ll have an opportunity to green up a location right in your area.

Be sure to bring a green apple! Take a pic of your child at your project site with the apple and post it to the Green Apple site. There it will join other pictures from across the globe. The projects and sites are very different, but these children all have the same goal: to remind us that Where We Learn Matters. 

Design Festival 2012: Something for Everyone

It's easy to be distracted by sustainable design’s engineering. To be dazzled by the triple-paned windows and the attic’s insulation coefficients. 

But this week it’s the art of design that's taking center stage in London. That’s where the London Design Festival is taking shape and inspiring designers from all walks, including architects, artists and audiophiles. No matter your profession, the art of design is on center stage.

The Sound Portal design is a rubberized black mass in the center of Trafalgar Square, looking perfectly out of place amongst the classical square’s architecture and statues. 

It is the brainchild of think-tank BE OPEN, whose mission is to foster creativity and innovation. Visitors to the portal will be treated to “soundscapes” on some of the most advanced audio equipment in the world. Designers say the point of BE OPEN is to remind visitors to appreciate the sounds as well as the sights of the Festival.

How much adventure can 12 hardwood chairs have? Plenty if they fall into the hands of Royal College of Art students. The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) wanted to advertise American lumber without the usual pop up tent and tradeshow table. Instead, they asked the students to use the lumber in new, ecological and interesting ways. The art installation, called Out of the Woods: Adventures of 12 Hardwood Chairs, coincide with research the AHEC is doing into the Life Cycle Assessment of their products. See more on the research as well as pictures of the 12 chairs here.

And then there is the installation by the artist Kris Ruhs. The German artist has filled a post-industrial display building with swaths and piles of shredded tires, inner tubes and other recycled and found materials. Sounds like a junk yard, but the installations remind you that all these materials can be graceful again in the right hands. Called Landing on Earth, the installation makes the user think about all the materials routinely tossed away in our daily lives and how they can come alive again. 

Inspired installations, each with a message to think beyond the everyday in your design.

Reinventing the Toilet with Bill Gates

Last week the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the winners of its Reinvent the Toilet Challenge with the top prize going to a solar powered model built by the California Institute of Technology.

The California Institute of Technology team won a $400,000 grant last year that enabled them to produce a toilet which can run without water and does not generate any pollutants – for only about 5¢ per day per user. As the winner of the Reinvent the Toilet challenge, the Caltech team won another $100,000 to perfect the device.

Caltech’s toilet is like any other toilet at the surface. The magic happens after the flush, rather than going into a septic tank or sewer, the water and waste is collected in an electrochemical reactor. The reactor, powered by solar panels, breaks down the waste into hydrogen gas, water, and solids. From here, the gas can be used to generate electricity, the water can be reused, and the solids, being inert, organic material, can be used as fertilizer.

Second place in the challenge was won by Britain’s Loughborough University for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water, earning them $60,000. The University of Toronto secured third place, earning $40,000, with a toilet that cleans waste, returning nutrients and clean water.

The goal of the challenge was to produce a low-cost toilet than can capture and process human waste without running water, sewer or septic access, electric connections, or sewage treatment systems. Being free of all these amenities allows the technology to be applied to developing areas of the world where it is needed most.

"Worldwide, there are 2.5 billion people without access to safe sanitation – including one billion people who still defecate out in the open and more than one billion others who must use pit latrines." – Bill Gates

Gates said he hopes that some of the new technologies will be commercialized within the next 2-4 years.

Could Thorium Power the Next Generation of Nuclear Reactors?

Nuclear energy has been a necessary evil, providing power in a way that is cleaner and more efficient than coal, but leaving hazardous waste and weapons-grade byproducts that pose a risk to everyone. However, there is a way to produce nuclear energy without any weapons-grade byproducts and waste that is only radioactive for a few hundred years rather than hundreds of thousands of years – and we’ve been able to do it since the '50s. The answer is Thorium.

Named after the Norse god of thunder, thorium could be the key to the 'greening' of the nuclear power industry. In addition to safer waste, thorium has a number of other benefits. It is 4x as abundant in nature than uranium, roughly 8% of which is located in the US. It is fertile, rather than fissile, which means reactions can be stopped when necessary making it virtually impossible to use as a weapon in a terrorist attack. Additionally, it even generates more energy per ton than uranium.

Back in the 1950s and '60s, researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory proved the efficacy of thorium reactors in hundreds of tests, but the work was abandoned when the Military determined they could adapt uranium power for their naval fleets. It was also noted by the research that thorium could not be used to build nuclear weapons, which much speculation has pointed to as the reason thorium wasn’t used.

Today, the focus has shifted from nuclear weapons to green energy technologies, giving thorium a fighting chance. In January 2011, the Chinese Academy of Science launched a Strategic Priority Research Program named the “Advanced Fission Energy Program”. One of the program’s main projects is building a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR). A TMSR utilizes thorium energy by the development of molten salt and molten salt-cooled reactor technologies. They expect to have a 2MW TMSR within 5 years and a 1000MW reactor operational by 2035.

Top 10 AEC Firms in Green Buildings and LEED Staff

With the green building movement now in its second decade, green practices have become integral in leading AEC firms. Giants 300 firms such as Gensler, Stantec, and Turner have set the standards for sustainability to the same priority as breathing – they do it automatically. The following charts list the Top 10 Green Building AEC Firms by Revenue and by Accredited Staff.*

Architecture

Top 10 Green Building Firms

Rank	Company	2011 Green Revenue ($)
1	Gensler	392,000,000
2	Skidmore, Owings & Merrill	165,750,000
3	HOK	164,680,868
4	HDR Architecture	137,120,000
5	Perkins+Will	131,350,000
6	HKS	119,325,668
7	NBBJ	106,167,000
8	ZGF Architects	75,600,000
9	HNTB Architecture	62,139,956
10	RTKL Associates	60,000,000

Top 10 Green Accredited Staff

Rank	Company	2011 Green Accredited Staff
1	Gensler	1211
2	Perkins+Will	986
3	HOK	854
4	HDR Architecture	802
5	Cannon Design	397
6	SmithGroupJJR	367
7	HKS, Inc.	342
8	IBI Group	313
9	RTKL Associates	242
10	Skidmore, Owings & Merrill	235

Engineering

Top 10 Green Building Firms

Rank	Company	2011 Green Revenue ($)
1	Stantec	189,400,000
2	URS Corp.	137,048,000
3	AECOM Technology  Corp.	118,000,000
4	Jacobs	102,496,836
5	Arup	60,960,000
6	KPFF Consulting Engineers	50,000,000
7	Burns & McDonnell	43,747,479
8	Syska Hennessy Group	43,150,000
9	WSP USA	34,500,000
10	Parsons Brinckerhoff	34,400,000

Top 10 Green Accredited Staff

Rank	Company	2011 Green Accredited Staff
1	AECOM Technology Corp.	914
2	Stantec	664
3	Jacobs	559
4	URS Corp.	501
5	Burns & McDonnell	272
6	Arup	233
7	Parsons Brinckerhoff	223
8	WSP USA	200
9	Clark Nexsen	191
10	Dewberry	178

Construction

Top 10 Green Building Firms

Rank	Company	2011 Green Revenue ($)
1	Turner Corporation, The	4,540,280,000
2	URS Corp.	3,875,000,000
3	Clark Group	2,324,000,000
4	Balfour Beatty US	2,137,850,000
5	Gilbane Building Co.	2,085,018,000
6	Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., The	1,911,396,378
7	PCL Construction Enterprises	1,730,300,000
8	Hensel Phelps Construction	1,476,940,000
9	Holder Construction	1,061,000,000
10	Barton Malow Co.	1,005,440,388

Top 10 Green Accredited Staff

Rank	Company	2011 Green Accredited Staff
1	Turner Corporation, The	1251
2	Jones Lang LaSalle	1250
3	Gilbane Building Co.	481
4	Balfour Beatty US	446
5	McCarthy Holdings	407
6	DPR Construction	399
7	JE Dunn Construction	390
8	Clark Group	355
9	PCL Construction Enterprises	336
10	Hensel Phelps Construction	325

*Professions listed as Accredited Staff include LEED APs, LEED Green Associates, Certified Energy Auditors and Managers, Certified Sustainable Building Advisers, Green Advantage Certified Professions, Green Roof Professionals, and High-Performance Building Design Professionals.

The Summer 2012 Course Catalog has Arrived!

Come see what’s new! RedVector is continually adding new courses to help you keep pace with a rapidly changing design and construction industry, so be sure to check out the NEW Summer 2012 Course Catalog for exciting additions like:

Commercial HVAC Building Envelope: Simulation study spotlights improving airtightness in U.S. commercial buildings

Geothermal Technologies Program: Learn about this underutilized, clean and renewable heat and power source

ADA Guidelines 2010: Accessible Routes: Provides criteria for basic elements within the “Accessible Routes” established by the guidelines

The Value of Concentrating Solar Power and Thermal Energy Storage: Examines the value of concentrating solar power and thermal energy in the U.S.

And don’t forget—all new RedVector courses are now mobile-ready and accessible via iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ and more for faster, easier online learning!

Download the Summer 2012 Course Catalog TODAY!