At least a dozen University Circle institutions who have formed internal ‘green teams’—staffers volunteering to reduce their organization’s ecological footprint—met November 19, 2008 at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

One of the key themes that emerged: how can a group of organizations working toward the same goals collaborate to form a green district?

The groups discussed where they stood on the green continuum – and described efforts to green aspects of their building and/or operations. For example:

• Recycling: University Circle, Inc. has a complete recycling program, with a City of Cleveland recycling dumpster (open to all institutions in the Circle)
• Composting: Magnolia Clubhouse has been composting for years
• Alternative fuels: The Botanical Garden is composting and, with Bon Appetite, their food service provider, producing biodiesel fuel made from their café’s used fryer grease which they use in their vehicles 
• Green building: The Natural History Museum is pursuing the highest level—LEED-Platinum—in the U.S. Green Building Council's green rating system
• Renewable energy: Case is exploring building wind turbines and solar panels on its campus.

Beau Daane at the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District, presented on tips to effectively start and generate interest for your business recycling program. Daane said businesses can look to him as a free recycling consultant.

This was the first of hopefully many district-wide green team meetings. We’ll report on milestones and lessons from the collaboration of University Circle green teams –whether it’s green purchasing, district recycling and composting, a bike-sharing program, etc. The goal when groups in a single geographic area or in a common industry work together is to produce significant cost and energy savings, while scaling up each of our efforts to green building, energy, food...