Last week's Cleveland Sustainability Summit generated thousands of ideas and connections, with some groups meeting independently to figure out how to make their visions into concrete plans.

For example, Mike Dungan immediately after the summit shared that the Waste Reduction group had already formed an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) to pursue their deconstruction center or “Wastipedia” (name still pending) idea. This would be a physical space where materials from deconstructed buildings get sorted and products made in upper-level workshops are sold.

The Wastipedia founding board was formed on day three of the summit and is set to hold their formal organizational meeting this week. The board is made up of founding stakeholders Chris Kious (A Piece of Cleveland), Emily Baunach (Brown Flynn), Nicole McGee (For the Second Time Design), Mike Dungan (BeeDance), Robert Stockham (Great Lakes Design Collaborative), and Willis Barker (LR Realty). “The emergence of the Wastipedia Resource Center and the mission of the organization reflects the needs of the community and the desire to take on meaningful action NOW in a transparent and effective manner,” Dungan writes here.

We also heard that the idea from the Advanced Energy group, which included industrial giants like Alcoa, to build a 400-megawatt combined heat and power facility caught the attention of Mayor Jackson. And the sustainable Cleveland micro-loan group passed the hat and collected nearly $300 which the Gund Foundation will help them invest.

What will a sustainable Cleveland look like in 2019, and how will we get there? The final day of the Cleveland Sustainability Summit promised to answer those questions with 600 people from a cross-section of business, social and cultural perspectives winnowing three days of diving deep into the issues that help or hinder progress in Northeast Ohio into specific plans and a vision for change. What we’ll come away with is not only an action plan, but, in the words of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, “the greatest opportunity to impact the future in a substantive way as we've had in many years.

“This is about how can we create a green and sustainable economy in 2019,” the mayor added. “Not just products that are green, but how does that economy function in a green and sustainable way. If we do that and demonstrate profitability and practical use of natural resources, Cleveland will lead the way.”

This day was about coming back to the surface from what Case Fowler Center for Sustainable Value director and summit facilitator David Cooperrider called the deep dive into the action areas identified in day two of the summit. “We want you to go from design to destiny.”

Day two of the Cleveland Sustainability summit moved from standard speaker and networking into working sessions that consisted of brainstorming, drawing, creative ideation like sketch comedy (one group imagined a future not of Goodtime boat tours but ‘Best’ time with passengers dipping their cups and swigging from an imaginary Cuyahoga River capped by a theme song to sustainability). In the end, the 600 participants broke into small groups along topic area like Water, Renewable Energy, Vacant Land and Transportation to brainstorm and vote on exciting ideas and then move them into a deep dive session that includes a rapid prototype exercise with the goal of laying real groundwork for sustainability projects that advance Cleveland’s social, ecological and economic bottom line.

The day started with an inspiring address from Ray Anderson, founder of Interface, a carpet company that, after 13 years is halfway toward its zero waste goal. Anderson is a real sustainable business guru. He dispels the myth that sustainability costs more, saying, his company’s sales boomed after embracing zero ecological footprint and pioneering a petrochemical-free process of making carpet.

Van Jones, President Obama’s special advisor for green jobs in White House office of environmental quality, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland and author of Green Collar Economy opened the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit yesterday by calling on Cleveland to help the nation build a green economy.

“People talk about the rust belt; I think we should talk about the green belt,” Jones said. “You are already in the top ten in terms of patents and supply of green energy technology. Right here in Ohio, you have some of most skilled workers in world; the highest number of engineers in world. What you haven’t had is the benefit of a full community effort to lift them up and get across finish line.”

The only way to have the jobs of tomorrow is to produce the products of tomorrow in America, Jones added. Cleveland manufacturers can start by tapping $50 million in Recovery Act funds to retool their facilities and retrain their workers to build those products like advanced autos that rely on smart batteries can go 100 miles on gallon of gas, and green energy systems such as solar and wind turbines. For example, there’s enough steel in a wind turbine to make 26 cars.

Anticipation is building for the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit that will take place Aug. 12-14 at the Cleveland Convention Center. More than 600 people will gather to design projects to promote the creation of green jobs and a more sustainable economy.

It is hoped that the summit will be a catalytic event — setting an agenda for intensive work over the next 10 years to do as many sustainability projects as possible. Then, in the year 2019, the 50th anniversary of the famous Cuyahoga River fire, Cleveland can celebrate its emergence as a leading green city.

If you can't attend the summit in person (and registration is closed), you can follow the summit here on the GCBL blogs. For great background on the issues and opportunities for Cleveland's sustainable economy, see the summit briefing paper (which was edited by the GreenCityBlueLake Institute's David Beach). Or see the city's website.

It took two years to make their case to the school and to raise a chunk of good faith money, but LeeAnn Westfall and Erin Huber—two self-proclaimed “broke college students with a passion (for the environment)”—will graduate from Cleveland State University Environmental Science undergraduate program and Urban Studies graduate program respectively with a richer understanding of the challenge but also the satisfaction of planting a green roof on the Cleveland State University Recreation Center.

As is the case on many green buildings, the roof was designed for plantings instead of asphalt, but the school hadn’t raised the money, so it was put on hold. When Westfall and Huber’s professor, Dr. Julie Wolin, explained the situation back in 2007, the pair, who had just met, decided to make raising the funds and organizing the Student Environmental Movement their task. They raised $20,000 through campus events and bake sales, and ‘were loud about wanting to do this.’ They would like to see the future leaders of the student environmental group and future class gifts made to pay the school back for their share.

The redevelopment of University East Plaza (at the southwest corner of Mayfield Road and Euclid Avenue) is an illustration of how to refashion public spaces with an eye toward green practices. University Circle, Inc. is redesigning the space and adding the following green features: Replacing portions of the concrete with permeable pavement, using native/drought tolerant plants to reduce water use and runoff. Old bricks and seating will be repurposed elsewhere in the district. Super energy efficient LED lighting is being designed for the plaza level (although flood lighting on rooftop will be added to satisfy safety concerns). Finally, bike parking will be provided for 12 bikes (racks for four bikes were there before).

Green schools group forming
Northeast Ohio Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council is making a push to green school construction. It recently held a meeting on green schools and toured Beachwood High School’s green classroom. Now, the green building advocacy group is organizing a peer learning group which will have access to USGBC information and resources. Volunteers may include school administrators who can identify needs for new resources, such as a green schools toolkit. Contact emilyb@brownflynn.com if you’re interested.

Green, but sustainable?
Ralston Instruments Inc., a manufacturer of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, installed a 32 kW solar panel array on the roof of its facility in Newbury, making it the third-largest solar installation in Northeast Ohio. The solar panels generate around 25 kW of electricity on a sunny day; 8 kW on a cloudy day.

Bob Shields was raised in the Garden State, but walking through the Urban Farm between Lonnie Burten Recreation Center and the Outhwaite public housing projects on Cleveland's east side reminds him why he likes his transplanted home. He explains that neighbors like to pick and fry green tomatoes from the raised beds planted for the community outside of the farm’s black chainlink fence. Inside the fence, the neat rows of tomatoes, greens, and veggies fattening in raised beds are the handiwork of a dozen kids from the neighborhood who grow food for their families or to sell each summer (the garden’s partner, Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, paid for the fence after a less respectful ‘neighbor’ yanked 100 heads of lettuce out of the garden).

This half-acre plot on the grounds of a former elementary school is one of five urban gardens operated by the Cleveland Botanical Garden where Shields works. We also visit the 3-acre Learning Garden at the Dunham Museum site in Midtown where kids from the Hough neighborhood learn by cultivating and in open air classes about food production – from composting to planting, growing, tending, making products like salsa and finally, showing up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning to set up a stand and sell their wares at the Shaker Square Farmer’s Markets (and at noon on Wednesdays at the Cleveland Clinic).

For the past few summers, the group Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU) has found Cleveland kids work greening infrastructure projects. Last year, they built rain gardens and rain barrels; this summer they built a bioswale at Wildwood Lakefront State Park in Collinwood. The Cleveland residents and volunteers from Tri-C dug and installed 900 native, drought resistant plants at the park’s parking lot. The planted depression slows and cleans water rushing off the parking lot and reduces the overall volume that dumps to the lake.

Bioswales are gaining notice, says Claire Posius at the Cuyahoga County Soil and Water Conservation District, especially as cities look for solutions to new EPA stormwater mandates. The City of Lyndhurst recently installed a bioswale, and the City of Cleveland installed a cistern under the parking lot of the Aldi’s supermarket on Euclid Avenue to slow stormwater.

The Cleveland Clinic’s new Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center will install a 'greener' landscape. The research lab’s landscape plan, designed by Ivan Valentric of URS and approved by the city’s design review committee, features two large rain gardens in its parking lot.

Rain gardens in parking lots reflect a positive change in city policy.

Baldwin-Wallace College immerses select faculty in sustainability each year so they can filter in lessons from the interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree program – which counts 40 students as declared majors. One of the college’s annual training sessions was held at Cleveland Museum of Natural History last week. A dozen faculty – from economics, accounting, English literature to sociology – got a crash course on sustainability from speakers Andrew Watterson, director, Cleveland Office of Sustainability; Elaine Price, Cuyahoga County green space planner; and Benson Lee, owner of Cleveland-based fuel cell company, Technology Management Inc.

How can colleges such as B-W best prepare students for employment in the emerging sustainable business sector?

Higher education needs to emphasize systems thinking, says Lee who has a Masters degree in physiology. He also spent five years in the 1980s as a systems engineer at IBM where he “observed people and figured out how to make them more effective.”

After 14 years and $6 million in grants, Lee has developed a fuel cell that can convert a number of different fuels, including plant-based oil, into energy. While the Department of Defense is interested in further developing the fuel cell into a product, Lee is also working with Ohio farmers and envisions villages in developing nations producing power from hand-pressing plants.

Lee sees parallels between operating a company that specializes in ‘disruptive technology’ and the sustainability movement.

“Both don’t have any customers,” he said, adding, “You don’t count early adopters, because they are not ‘price sensitive’. They give you a false sense of hope. You have to be able to convert what you’re doing into economic value.”