Buildings are Going Green
- by Peggy Rowland, Friday, November 30th, 2007
At the top a drawing of the TERRA house, a sustainable home being developed by the University of Memphis. Photo courtesy of the University of Memphis Center for Sustainable Design.
“We like to say our green building mission statement is, ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that hard’,” says Sarah Hadskey, chair of the steering committee for the Memphis Regional Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Hopefully that message will begin to take root in the Memphis community as the environmental movement gains momentum and exposure worldwide.
The formal mission statement of the chapter is to “educate the Memphis Metropolitan and Greater MidSouth community in the art and science of sustainable design and construction practices, and to guide the community into regular implementation of such practices.”
USGBC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding sustainable building practices, has more than 70 regional chapters across the country. The two-year-old Memphis Regional Chapter of USGBC has around 60 members and gained full chapter status in June of this year. Hadskey, one of several founding members of the local chapter, expects the membership to double next year.
“Sustainable design is a very old idea,” says Hadskey. “It’s just a matter of remembering how to do it.”
She likes to compare green building to building in the 1850s, before the luxuries afforded by electricity, air conditioning, cars and overnight delivery.
Anyone can be a youth mentor, says Emily Dupree, mentor liaison for the newly created Governor’s Mentoring Initiative, a program created by Governor Bredesen in partnership with Youth Villages.