Watch this!!!! It will surprise you!!

I loved this documentary. Some people hear documentary and they automatically shut off, but please hear me out. The story is about a farming family from the midwest and the struggle to keep the family farm through the persistence of corporate farmers, deveolopment, naive neighbors, and poor decisions. It is a merging of old American values versus new age values and the struggle to retain personal history while welcoming change. This movie made me laugh, cry and taught me to be more understanding of uncommon situations. I don't want to say too much and give the story away!!!!

The Real Dirt on Farmer John http://www.farmerjohnmovie.com/FJhome.html

A Better Oveview of LEED

Under "Great Links on Sustainability" is a link to the United States Green Building Council who spearheads LEED. Information from their website can be rough to get through as most of the information is geared toward builders trying to apply for certification but there is a lot of helpful information on the site. The best part of the site is all the pictures of actual "green" buildings. You can see just how normal they look and also how "green" features can be exaggerated for aesthetic appeal.

The City of Portland & Portland State: Sustainable Together

We live in the great state of Oregon whose largest city, Portland, was voted one of the most sustainable cities in the world. So being a forefront in sustainability, the city has set some standards for others to follow.

One big step initiated by the city is all new public buildings MUST be LEED certified. If you don't know what LEED is, we'll explain this in detail in a later post. In a nutshell, LEED certification is a rating of how "green" a building is. The ratings range from a certificate for just one portion of your building to the whole building itself. When a whole building is rated it can receive a medal ranging from: silver, gold, and platinum with the latter being the highest rating possible. LEED certification is expensive so not all property owners want to fork over the $30,000 average it costs to obtain LEED certification. There are many properties that instill LEED practices and standards without paying for the actual certification.

Portland State is a public school in the city of Portland, therefore the LEED standard is applied to all new construction and remodels constructed for the school. A large majority of Portland's LEED buildings are clustered around Portland State's campus. We felt the school is wholly integrated into the fabric of Portland, not only by it's presence and location, but by the care and interest generated toward the school from those interested in LEED and sustainability. To further promote this cohesiveness we've gathered information about Portland's sustainable sites and combined it in an easy to use map. Even better, the map is actually a self-guided walking/biking tour of sustainable sites in Portland. We've tried to add all the sites, but have omitted some that aren't accessible to the public AND there are a long list of buildings waiting to be certified in the city of Portland alone. Hopefully one day, we'll have to make a number of sustainability maps, one for each area of Portland!!

More water saving tips!!

Here is a website we found that has good tips on saving water! Following just a few of these tips can save you money and save the environment.

For tips on saving water indoors: http://www.americanwater.com/49ways.htm

For saving water outdoors: http://www.americanwater.com/49ways_outdoors.htm

Water bottles...a big pet peeve!!!!

Water, water, water!!! Use a water filtration pitcher and store it in your refrigerator. You'll always have cold water and won't waste water by letting the faucet run until the water is cold. If you bring a reusable bottle from home, you'll lessen your carbon footprint even more. You'll save money over buying bottled water and will save energy and reduce pollution from the production, shipping and disposal of plastic containers. If you do have to purchase a drink, make sure to recycle the bottle. Bring it home and put it into your home recycling instead of throwing it away.

How are you being sustainable?

So we're just a couple of students working on a sustainability project for school and we need your help. We get a lot of high level information on what we can do to help the environment, but we need to know what people are doing in their own homes. Little things turn into big things. Help us make an impact, please let us know what you are doing to be gentler on our environment.