Are you in the market for paper products made from dung and rice paddy and pulped to perfection by elephants in Sri Lanka?
What about toothbrushes made from recycled plastic yogurt cups, a wind turbine for your back yard or lumber milled from recycled local trees?
The Green Festival, which drew some 35,000 attendees to some 500 speakers and exhibitors last week at Navy Pier, had all that and more, covering topics from green building and renewable energy, to clean technology, natural foods and socially responsible investing.
The Green Home Pavilion was a center of activity, particularly on issues such as natural lawn care, eco-home remodeling on a budget and finding new uses for old trees — those that are diseased, knocked down by the wind or just in the way.
“We’re trying to recycle as much of the urban forest as we can,” said Bruce Horigan, who along with wife, Erika, owns Skokie-based Horigan Urban Forest Products. They take felled trees to their Lincolnshire mill and produce lumber used by local artists, cabinet makers and builders. The company can mill wood to a customer’s specifications and, in many instances, can offer the provenance — the address and history of the lumber.
According to Horigan, lumber pricing can vary greatly, but the cost of lumber from recycled trees is comparable to fresh-cut lumber. Local architects, designers, contractors and landscapers specializing in the sustainable sides of their trades offered tips.
A presentation by Matt Nardella, principal of architectural design studio Moss Design, covered sustainable architecture and the environment. To Nardella, designing in harmony with the environment can put us in better touch with our surroundings and improve our long-term health.
To this end is Moss’ work on St. Monica Academy, at Foster and Harlem Avenues. The school’s two asphalt parking lots are being converted to pervious concrete, which allows water to circulate. The lots are surrounded by bioswales, landscape elements filled with native plantings that absorb runoff and recharge ground water instead of sending it to the sewer.
New street trees were planted to help cool the building better in the summer, and native planting was incorporated into the landscaping as was an “urban farm” for the students to tend and harvest.
“Most of the Chicago land ordinance requires landscaping along the sidewalks, so the plantings are really no more expensive than planting non-native,” Nardella said of the project’s costs.
He added that pervious concrete is more expensive than asphalt.
“If you look at any building products as an upfront cost, it’s easier to pick the one that’s not sustainable because it’s cheaper,” Nardella said. “But if you investigate how it’s extracted, where it’s transported from and what its impacts are on the environment after it’s installed, then you’ll usually find that the green material is the better deal.” Chicago-based architecture firm 2 Point Perspective showcased large-scale images of a house and studio they are redoing the eco-friendly way.
The residence, near Armitage and Sheffield Avenues, has bamboo casework, recycled blue-jean insulation, glass countertops, and no-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint and adhesive.
The firm partnered with Greenmaker, a local retail and wholesale supplier of energy-efficient building materials. Greenmaker is so committed to the non-conventional that it’s moving next year from North Pulaski Road to the Green Exchange at 2545 W. Diversey Pkwy.
The Green Exchange is slated to open in the first quarter of 2009 to house more than 100 “green” businesses offering a variety of products and services, including an organic cafe, architecture firms, manufacturers an eco-salon, yoga studio and boutiques.
David and Doug Baum, co-developers of the Green Exchange, have been into adaptive reuse since 1989. They are putting it to work at the Green Exchange, where they are reusing nearly 95 percent of the original Frederick Cooper Lamp Co. building from 1913. “We’ve been taking white elephant buildings and turning them into something new and productive,” David Baum said.
In the festival’s brochure, co-producers Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange and Alisa Gravitz of Co-op America characterize it as a celebration of “what’s working in our communities-for people, business and the environment. Here, green means safe, healthy communities and a strong local economy.”
Steven Pasch, 24, of St. Paul, who attended the festival looking to tie his business degree in with sustainability, points out the need for local involvement.
“I always see a new use for items that shouldn’t be wasted,” Pasch said, adding that he’s seeking some hands-on training in the green field.
The company Mr. Ellie Pooh, maker of the Sri-Lankan elephant dung paper, has its own community-based movement. In Sri Lanka, where agriculture is the dominant land use, elephants are killed because their size and appetite interferes with farming.
The firm plans to reduce the human/elephant conflict by opening paper recycling plants in rural areas and training villagers in paper making. With an adult elephant producing, on average, 500 pounds of dung each day, it is a freely available resource that the innovative company hopes to convert into an asset.
Their motto: “100 percent recycled, 75 percent dung, 100 percent fun.”
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spalikuca@tribune.com
