Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day as many of you know. I am lucky enough to have a job with a company that values the preservation of our environment and conservation of our resources. As I have mentioned previously, my firm spent a lot of time, money, and man hours recently to become Gold certified under the U.S. Green Building Council's "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Existing Buildings" (LEED for Existing Buildings). Wow, say that three times fast. I'm not going to explain what that is since I've already done it a couple times. You can check out previous postings for more info.
March 4 - LEED Certification Update - Gold!
January 28 - LEED Certification

Yesterday the local CBS station recognized our efforts in a special Earth Day feature and highlighted some of the features of our building that helped us to achieve this prestigious award. Because I was involved with the certification process and other sustainable activities at work, I was asked to interview with the reporter. And since I bike to work everyday, they asked me to interview with my helmet on in front of my bike. Luckily my interview didn't make it - woohoo! Anyway, they did get a couple staged shots of me and one of the principals riding around the office. Take a look at the video. I'm the cyclist in the blue shirt. The video also has some good footage of the building and talks a little bit about what we have done to be responsive to the environment and energy demands.
Earth Day - CTA Building


My firm also highly values social interaction and giving back to the community. A large group of volunteers donate their time every week to tutor at a local elementary school. For Earth Day, my firm offered to host an assembly with the kids to teach them about things they can do to protect the environment and preserve its future. I don't tutor with that group but somehow I also got roped into it aswell. I actually enjoyed it but it was rather unexpected. We taught the kids the basics of recycling, paper making, and the landfill process. My group had a station where we sorted garbage items and discussed possible reuses of the items or potential for recycling. This event was also covered by the news so we were featured twice in one day. No iterview this time for me but they did get me doing some kind of awkward jig as I stepped backwards over a pile of garbage to talk to the kids about the contents of the pile. Not my finest moment. But hey, I was on the news twice in one night so I it made up for it. Anyway, you can watch that video too if you'd like. The first portion about planting a tree and flowers is at a different school. Our activity came right after that, without any real transition.
Earth Day - Go Green

Sydney also participated in Earth Day activities at her school. She came home pretty excited about it. I couldn't get her to tell me much about what she did. What I do know is that they picked up trash around the school yard. She even came home and asked if she could go outside in the backyard and pick up garbage. I didn't know how to react to that one, proud that she learned something at school and was excited to take part in it or appalled that she thought there was garbage in our backyard.

I just asked Sydney to tell me more about Earth Day and what they did. She said that they read a book about recycling and picking up garbage. She said that as they were picking up garbage, she saw a "medium size spider" on her bag and got scared. Apparently it freaked her out enough that her teacher had to give her a hug to calm her down.

So that was our Earth Day.