JISC News

May 12, 2010

Joslyn Institute to Host Meeting of the Minds 2010

Omaha—There is still time to register for the world's premier summit on sustainable cities. Host to the Meeting of the Minds 2010 leadership summit, Omaha will provide a unique context for an unusual gathering of political, business and nonprofit sector leaders convening to discuss innovative approaches to sustainability in our cities and communities.

The Meeting of the Minds 2010 leadership summit, “Connecting the Dots: The Innovations We Need for Sustainable Cities” will be held on June 16-18, 2010 in Omaha, providing participants an opportunity to devise better formulas for small and large cities. The two-and-a-half day meeting will incubate strategies for a sustainable future based on new principles for economic, environmental and social development.

To promote this “rethink” of urban and regional development, Urban Age Institute and Joslyn Institute for Sustainable Communities join forces with global partners to convene the 2010 Meeting of the Minds. Toyota, Siemens AG, Cemex, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Urban Land Institute, Jones Lang LaSalle, Gallup, United Nation’s Habitat and Global Compact Cities Programmes, Regional Plan Association and Metropolis are among the summit’s many esteemed partners. The summit will connect approximately 150 municipal and national government leaders with private sector and design professionals throughout the many informational and networking opportunities.

Meeting of the Minds 2010’s opening sessions will feature lessons learned from four cities—two American cities and two cities in the Netherlands—grappling with sustainable urban development. Charles Rutheiser, Senior Fellow in the Anne E. Casey Foundation’s Civic Sites and Initiatives Unit, and Gabriel Metcalf, Executive Director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), will present on the experiences of Baltimore and San Francisco, respectively. Saskia Ruijsink, Specialist in Urban and Regional Management at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) will introduce a new short film detailing how Rotterdam and Delft are dealing with climate change.

Zerofootprint Foundation’s CEO Ron Dembo will showcase the Re-Skinning Awards’ winning projects. Each winner demonstrates innovative retrofitting technologies and systems ready to be applied in today’s market, each one featuring replicable solutions designed to enhance the efficiency and livability of the world’s existing housing stock.

Sustainability coordinators from the largest cities in the Midwest will lead two break-out sessions on sustainability at the city level, one concentrating on integrating sustainability into the comprehensive plan and the latter on the energy-efficiency imperative. A third session will feature Living Labs, moderated by Neal Peirce, Chairman of Citistates, and lastly, Barbara Hewson, Chief of the Urban Finance Branch of the United Nations Habitat Programme, will lead a program on global financing for affordable and social housing.

In conjunction with the first Regional Energy Innovation Summit, also convening on June 16 in Omaha, a special evening program will intermingle the guests of the White House Office of Social Innovation and the Kauffman Foundation with leaders from this Meeting of the Minds. Howard Buffett, White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation Policy Advisor, will share findings from the Energy Innovation Summit at the close of Thursday’s session.

For more information visit www.meetingoftheminds2010.org.

May 12, 2010

Joslyn Institute Among 2010 NETF Award Recipients

JISC is the recipient of 2010 NETF funding to continue the thinking behind the success of the 2008-2010 Nebraska Sustainability Leadership Workshops. As early as October, JISC will begin convening the first of four regional Conversations Conferences on Nebraska Environment and Sustainability Issues.

August 10, 2009

Entire Houses Are Being Recycled and Reused

LINCOLN— Board by board and brick by brick, EcoStores Deconstruction is removing several buildings in the Antelope Valley project area. Organized by the non-profit Joslyn Institute for Sustainable Communities (JISC), EcoStores Deconstruction is disassembling the structures by hand in the reverse order of how they were built. This process allows the crew to salvage all usable materials while greatly decreasing the amount of construction waste sent to the landfill. According to Steve Liechti, EcoStores Deconstruction Manager, “about 40 percent of everything in a landfill is from buildings.”

(The Lincoln Journal-Star has run an article on the program. Click here to read it >.)

Assisting with the deconstruction is a crew from Summer Works, an employment program for low-income youth ages 14–24. The crew is acquiring marketable construction skills as well as full-time summer employment. Liechti adds that in addition to training youth, deconstruction projects put dollars back into the economy through payrolls, support services, contracts and equipment rentals.

The first house in the project, located at 2345 Q Street in Lincoln, has now been deconstructed by the crew. Liechti states, “At least 60% of the materials from that house are reusable.” The next structure to come down will be 216 N. 23rd Street, followed by 2315 Q Street, and finally the apartment building located at 2325 Q Street. Also included in the deconstruction project are garages associated with the homes.

Salvaged materials from the structures are being taken to EcoStores Nebraska, located at 530 W. P Street, to be resold. EcoStores Nebraska is a retail warehouse devoted to selling second-use building, construction, and remodeling material, thus keeping good usable items out of the landfill and the larger waste stream. The store is stocked with materials from deconstruction projects as well as donations. These items are sold to landlords, do-it-yourselfers, bargain hunters and low-income homeowners at greatly discounted prices.

In operation for five years, EcoStores Nebraska has put over $100,000 a year back into the economy through these types of deconstruction projects. Remarkably, since 2004, 315 tons of materials have been diverted from landfills.

(Photo documentation of the 2345 Q Street deconstruction is available at www.facebook.com/ecostoresnebraska.)

Blighted houses and commercial structures are a growing issue in Nebraska communities. The costs to demolish them and then dump the wreckage in a landfill are prohibitively high. In addition, landfills have an inordinate amount of building materials in them, materials that could be recycled and reused. The idea behind the EcoStores Deconstruction project is six-fold: to keep these materials out of the general waste stream, to save money, to teach young people how to deconstruct (and so, how to construct) a building, to provide jobs for young people, to recycle good building materials and architectural elements, and to provide a salvage business (in this case, EcoStores Nebraska) with an income stream.