Local leaders chew over sustainability
How about a high-speed rail to link suburban sprawl and take cars off the road? Or converting food waste into energy? Embracing adaptive reuse to repurpose old buildings? Overhauling public education to promote healthy lifestyles and to address a high dropout rate?
To kick off Earth Day, a panel of nine local business, government and environmental leaders convened over breakfast Wednesday to toss around wide-ranging and ambitious ideas on how Pittsburgh could be more sustainable. The common theme: Environmentally friendly practices can be marketed and can be profitable, but it takes everyone working together.
“I think we need to deliver the product to the masses that everybody is buying,” said Lucas Piatt, president and chief operating officer of Washington County real estate firm Millcraft Investments, which has done several projects in Downtown.
“I think the youth not only embrace it, but demand it — particularly as it relates to housing stock and what they expect to have in their homes and apartments.”
“If you have a good idea, you can probably bring it to market,” said Marc Mondor, managing principal and co-founder of evolveEA, an architecture and consulting firm in the East End.
“We’re a very connected city,” said Grant Ervin, the city’s sustainability manager. “You’re not too far away from finding a partner to come up with a solution.”
The panelists — hailing from the financial, health care, education and real estate sectors in Pittsburgh — were joined by Juan Coronado, the brand ambassador for Bacardi Limited, the Bermuda-based rum and spirits company. In his address to the group gathered at Vallozzi’s Pittsburgh in Downtown, Mr. Coronado said the company had cut water use by 70 percent since 2006 and reduced the weight of its packaging.
It also partners with a nonprofit called Bonsucro, he said, that protects sugarcane fields and coral reefs on Fiji, where Bacardi sources much of the sugarcane needed for its rum. The company’s recently launched Good-Spirited initiative, which builds on Bacardi’s current programs that reduce water, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and promises to verify by 2022 that all of its sugarcane comes from sustainable sources.
“It’s been part of our DNA since day one,” Mr. Coronado said, telling the story of how Bacardi’s eponymous founder in 1862 decided to repurpose old whiskey barrels in the distillation process.
Mr. Ervin said the city is still determining exactly how far Pittsburgh can go in joining the international conversation on setting “big, audacious, carbon-reducing” plans.
“Do we have the ability to set something audacious and find a way to get there?” he asked.
Aurora Sharrard, vice president of innovation of the Green Building Alliance, said she is looking for opportunity to set ambitious goals as her group works with the city on an upgrade to its Climate Protection Initiative, which assesses municipal greenhouse emissions to mitigate global warming.
“Pittsburghers have sort of had big ideas over the past 10 years. They got shot down for one reason or another,” Ms. Sharrard said. “I think it’s time to bring those out of the closet and revisit them. We know what the issues are. We know where we need to be.”
Given changing attitudes and myriad economical ways that communities can practice sustainability, Ms. Sharrard said, Pittsburgh and its companies shouldn’t shy away from commitments.
“Set a big goal — and then make it bigger,” she said. “I think the time for small plans [is] done.”
“Pittsburghers have sort of had big ideas over the past 10 years. They got shot down for one reason or another. I think it’s time to bring those out of the closet and revisit them. We know what the issues are. We know where we need to be.”
— Aurora Sharrard, vice president of innovation of the Green Building Alliance