|
|
- Info
Video Library
Watershed Report 2010
Watershed Address (17:09)
Script >
|
|
|
Every citizen, every family, every student and his or her teacher needs to know the foundation story of our shared Watershed Address. We all know our street address, but it’s really the quality of our local water and land resources that sustain us. The greater Lake Washington basin is home to some 1.9 million people, almost half of all the people in the Puget Sound bio-region. Because we are the most densely populated watershed community we have the biggest responsibility to model stewardship behavior.
|
Sustainable Schools Update 2010-11
Sustainable Schools Full (23:59)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
The Sustainable Schools Update can be viewed as a full movie or click on any one of the chapters below. This report is perfect for motivating your school green team, reporting to Student Council, the faculty, PTA, Principal’s Cabinet or the School Board. You can also compare this report to the 2009 Sustainable Schools Update, although we’ve refined our questions and our look since that first pilot year.
|
Watershed Schools (1:47)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
See a map of how our school districts overlap with the natural boundaries of our watershed address. Even Everett has one high school within our watershed. All together, there are about 113 high schools related to our geography which means roughly 16,950 high school seniors in our watershed will turn 18 this year and graduate. Have they internalized the three academic standards for Environmental and Sustainability Education?
|
Green Schools Momentum (7:26)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
|
We see huge momentum here, in the Seattle Schools with the Washington Green Schools Program and the King County Green Schools Program outside of Seattle. Tahoma, Bellevue and Mercer Island are the first school districts in our watershed to have 100% of their schools complete Level One. We highlight some of their efforts. We also report on the rapid expansion of food composting programs.
|
Resource Conservation Managers (3:46)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
|
Resource Conservation Managers in the Seattle Schools have developed an innovative Shared Savings Program which compares utility use school by school across the district. Schools earn a financial award for conserving energy, water or solid waste compared to the previous year or by meeting their conservation goals. 80 out of 84 schools were awarded funds totaling $84,875. The Resource Conservation Manager in the Lake Washington School District has documented energy savings over five years. The graphs are cool! We ask the question, “What if a school district’s annual RCM report was used in every classroom as part of a Local Living Textbook so that students could practice science, technology, engineering, math and civics with real data?
|
Mega Trends (7:22)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
We feature three mega trends. (1) Ground source heat pumps are being incorporating when school districts have a chance to rebuild a school. (2) Stormwater pollution solutions are crucial because 75% of the pollution causing ecosystem decline in Puget Sound is from the rain that washes pollution off our roof tops, parking lots and streets. Many schools are building green infrastructure. (3) Solar panel arrays on the roof tops of schools is a trend just getting started with a few leading schools sporting small 2,000 kWh demonstrations, all the way up to Finn Hill Junior High in the Lake Washington School District which is switching on a 319 MegaWatt system.
|
Curriculum Connections (3:40)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
We feature three exemplary programs. (1) A fascinating new high school program in Northshore involving a partnership with both McKinstry and Cascadia Community College. (2) An environmentally themed junior high in the Lake Washington School District. (3) The Tahoma School District’s effort to fully integrate sustainability education. Tahoma continues to be a leader in the state. Students learn about local and world environmental challenges, and use the environment as a classroom to investigate and solve complex issues.
|
Sustainable Cities Updates 2010 – Carbon Neutrality
Carbon Neutrality Full (17:21)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
You can view this segment as a full movie or click on any one of the chapters below.
|
Six Strategies (3:34)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
In researching the city of Seattle’s sustainability performance measures we came upon the blog posts of Richard Conlin, President of the Seattle City Council. Three of our student narrators take turns impersonating Conlin as he lays out six broad strategies for pursuing Carbon Neutrality. A great inquiry into systems thinking.
|
Climate Action Plans (2:54)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
Nine of our watershed cities have taken the first step towards carbon neutrality by calculating current greenhouse gas emissions, at least for their own city operations. In 2010, eight of these cities took the next step by establishing a Climate Action Plan to actually begin working on reducing their emissions. Seattle has an aggressive target of being carbon neutral by the year 2030. This report contrasts the range of targets that some of our other watershed cities are using.
|
Green Power Programs (4:48)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
Puget Sound Energy’s voluntary Green Power Program provides a way for home owners and businesses to invest in renewable energy equal to the amount of electricity they use. We map the leading Green Power purchasers among cities in our watershed, at least those served by Puget Sound Energy. Then we do the same thing for Seattle City Light businesses customers through a program called GreenUp. It seems like we are seeing some really big numbers and that the green power program is become systemic, but the math so far reveals that at best we are “greenish.”
|
PSE Home Energy (0:43)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
In 2010, Puget Sound Energy rolled out the Home Energy Report program offering residents a snapshot of their home energy use compared with 100 of their neighbors. We’re guessing that this strategy creates a nice little dose of peer pressure in the neighborhood.
|
Energy Disclosure (1:08)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
On January 25, 2010, the Seattle City Council passed the Energy Disclosure Ordinance which requires commercial building owners to track their energy use and make it available, “disclose it” to prospective tenants. It’s a cool strategy because the law doesn’t require a building owner to make any actual changes, but… once everyone and anyone can see the data and compare buildings there will be a natural desire to adapt to more energy efficient systems because it will save money. Plus, the market will demand it.
|
Seattle 2030 District (1:01)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
Formed in 2010, the Seattle 2030 District Planning Committee is working to create a groundbreaking high-performance district of multiple buildings in downtown Seattle. The 2030 District seeks to prove the business case for sustainability, that high-performance buildings are the most profitable building type in Seattle.”
|
Lake Forest Park (3:09)
Script >
|
|
|
|
|
In 2010 the City of Lake Forest Park completed a multi-year study of the economic value of their greatest ecological asset. By maintaining the “forest” in Lake Forest Park the city is a national leader in urban forest carbon sequestration.
|
|
