Energy Field Trip - Day 1

Today was the first day of field trips for my energy and sustainability class. The trip included some businesses in the cities that were environmentally friendly in one way or another.

First stop of the day was a tour of The Green Institute. This building was the result of a grassroots campaign against a garbage transfer station nearly 13 years ago. Its a environmentally friendlly building (it uses all sorts of renewable energy) and its filled with tennents who are as well. One of the things that I found interesting here was the placement of the stairs and elevators. Usually when you walk into a building, the first thing you notice is the elevators. Here, you walk in and see the stairs because the elevator has been moved further inside the building. The reason for the switch-er-roo is people most often take the first method they see. In this building that is the stairs which uses A LOT less energy than an elevator. (http://www.greeninstitute.org/)

One of the tennents of The Green Institute is Peace Coffee which was our next stop. This is a small coffee business that buys only fair-trade, organic and local beans from more  than 13 countries around the world. They then micro-roast the beans down the hall from their offices. We got the chance to see the process in action. This was my favorite part of the day - you walked into the space that smelled fantastic. I had never seen the process of going from unprocessed bean to the final product so that was interesting to watch. (The picture is me with all the giant bags of coffee beans! You can tell that I am just a little excited to be there!!)

Don't fret, this coffee addict got a free sample of the spring blend and one of the old coffee bags. I am thinking that I will put the bag into a poster frame and use it like a poster. The website for this place is http://www.peacecoffee.com/.

Next, was time for lunch. We went to Common Roots Cafe (http://www.commonrootscafe.com/) which is a local, organic cafe. I thought the cafe was cute and the food was good but it was just a tad expensive. The picture below is of some of us enjoying our food. While here, we got the chance to talk to the owner and here how this idea got started. Some of the stats from this place are rather amazing - for example, they saved enough energy to run 3 cars an entire year.

                              

The last stop of the day was Pollution Control Agency. We got a tour of the resource center and got to dig around in a bunch of stuff. It was interesting to hear what they are trying to do for education on topics like water, recycling and trash even with all the budget cuts.

All in all, it was a lot of information and stops. But hey, I got some free coffee :) Stay tuned for Energy Field Trip - Day 2 coming next week.