-
The Sustainability Groups of CREW Boston and CREW Miami hosted a virtual information session for participants to learn more details about the Boston Miami Learning Exchange happening in November 2021. Topics included what do you hope to learn, who would you like to meet, and what are we missing from the 4-day Exchange.
» View Details
-
The Sustainability Group was excited and pleased to present long-time CREW Boston member Kimberly Vermeer to speak about her new book, Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition. In the book, she and co-author Walker Wells present a comprehensive resource on how green building principles can be incorporated into affordable housing design, construction, and operation. This fully revised edition captures the rapid evolution of green building practices and makes a compelling case for integrating green building into affordable housing. They argue that cities must embrace green affordable housing in the face of climate change and the affordable housing crisis.
» View Details
-
Michelle Lambert and her colleague, Kristen Fritsch, Sustainability Coordinator at Elkus Manfredi Architects, gave us an overview of why measuring embodied carbon is important and how it is calculated. Embodied carbon measures all the energy to produce, transport and build with specific building materials. This hidden source of carbon has a significant impact (estimated to be as much as 11 percent of total global carbon emissions) in addition to the “operational carbon” which is more universally understood and measured. It is important to reduce embodied carbon as much as possible as it is put into the earth’s atmosphere when the building is built and it takes 80-100 years for it to be sequestered. Operational carbon is not added to the environment all at once, but over time as it is used.
» View Details
-
Abby Roberts and Caroline Murry from Turner Construction shared both an overview and details of Turner Construction’s company-wide commitment to sustainability. Turner has committed to reduce CO2 emissions and water consumption on job sites by 50% by 2030. There is a Chief Sustainability Officer as a member of Tuner’s Executive team with sustainability representatives in all of Turner’s 50+ offices. There are numerous committees allowing opportunities for employees with varying backgrounds to get involved.
» View Details
-
In July 2020, the Sustainability Group welcomed Dr. Atyia Martin back for the third time. She was the first Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Boston as part of 100 Resilient Cities, and members of the Sustainability Group have been a sounding board and support system for her work. She led the development and implementation of Boston's initial resilience strategy which was the first one in the 100 Resilient Cities network to make racial equity, social justice, and social cohesion the foundation of building resilience across the city. She engaged over 12,000 people across government, community, businesses, and nonprofits to develop Resilient Boston: An Equitable, Connected City. SmartCities magazine selected Resilient Boston as the best resilience strategy of 2017 and the Center for American Progress featured it in its report A Framework for Local Action on Climate Change.
Dr. Martin presented practical strategies for making our own organizations more inclusive and more resilient.
» View Details
-
The Sustainability Group hosted a brown bag lunch on July 11 to hear Richard McGuinness, Deputy Director for Climate Change and Environmental Planning at the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) discuss the City of Boston’s planning for the short and long term impacts of climate change and sea level rise.
» View Details
-
On June 18th, CREW Boston’s Sustainability Group hosted an event on “Adapting Urban Environments to Rising Seas”. Jill Allen Dixon and Laura Marett from Sasaki discussed planning for resilience in Boston, including highlights of Sasaki’s work as a part of the citywide Climate Ready Boston consultant team, and in other cities.
» View Details
-
Hannah Payne, Sustainability Coordinator with the City of Somerville, MA presented at CREW's Sustainability Committee on the City's Community Climate Change Plan on February 14, 2019. The comprehensive plan, Somerville Climate Forward, contains implementable key priority actions that aspire for Somerville to become a resilient and carbon neutral city by 2050.
» View Details
-
On April 5th, the CREW Boston Sustainability Group hosted a presentation led by CREWBoston member Ellen Watts, and her Architerra colleague, Anna Arscott, to introduce rexBoston, Driving Resiliency, Leveraging Investment & Showcasing Innovation. rexBoston – resiliency exemplified – is a bold vision to catalyze 130 innovative current and potential projects throughout the City, accelerating climate adaptation and carbon neutrality and showcasing replicable solutions in an international resiliency exposition opening in 2020 and culminating in 2030. Inspired by CREW Boston members’ visits to Hamburg and Copenhagen, rexBoston embraces climate action as an opportunity for growth in support of the City’s Imagine Boston 2030, Climate Ready Boston, Go Boston, and Resilient Boston goals.
» View Details