Meet the Ignite Lansing Green Team
One of things that makes me proud about Ignite Lansing is that we have a whole team dedicated to the greening of our events. We're trying to take small steps and consider the impact of our choices on the environment. We have 2 volunteers dedicated to helping make Ignite Lansing lean, mean and green!
How are we doing this? We are greening Ignite Lansing In a couple different ways:
- We are using local food
vendors, many of whom buy local and organic ingredients.
- We are using biodegradable and compostable cups made from a renewable resource - corn!
- We also kept the production of paper and printed items for the event low. We did not produce entrance tickets, posters, programs and other items. We are utilizing recycled office paper for our paper airplane competition.
- We picked a site for Ignite Lansing 2.0 that is "location efficient". The Old Town Temple Building is situated in a dense, traditionally-built urban center, accessible by foot, bike, car, and our award-winning public transit system. Old Town is dominated by mixed-use buildings, which helps residents and visitors combine trips and save energy.
- Also, the Old Town Temple building is undergoing renovations which will transition this building into its third "life" of use (It was a church, music venue, and now office space). By reusing the building, we're capitalizing on its embedded energy - the energy needed for labor in constructing it and in the production of the materials themselves.
- We will be streaming Ignite Lansing live over the web for those who want to cut down on travel or cannot attend.
As we descend on the Old Town Temple Building Friday, September 25, please consider making your trip to Ignite Lansing a little greener by biking, walking, car pooling or taking the bus (the #10 bus stops at the corner of Turner and Grand River Ave) to the event. Here's a map to the Old Town Temple Building.
We're always looking at ways to make our event greener so expect more exciting changes in the future!
Two big (green) thumbs up to our dedicated Green Volunteers:
Rory Neuner, Urban Policy Specialist at the Michigan Environmental Council
Erin Slayter, Co-founder of The Sweaty Mouse
Phil Earnhardt wrote on 09/22/09 2:27 PM
1. Find a way to dispose of cups by stacking them facing downwards. By stacking, you reduce the volume of cup for disposal by about 10x. This is something I saw at restaurants in Seoul years ago but have never seen in the US. You may have to create a DIY rig to do this.
2. The main downside of no paper program is follow-up conversations after the event. Create an electronic form of the program for the evening. Publish it on your website a week before the event so audience members can download before the event. Include the contact info that presenters want (e-mail, twitter-id, etc); obfuscate e-mail addr format if you publish e-mails there. You may want to publish in several formats: PDF, webpage, webpage viewable by stupid cell phone browsers, etc. DIsplay the URLs to the virtual program repeatedly during the event.
3. For your live feed, get your audio directly from the microphones used by your team and the presenters. Compressing the dynamic range of the audio can help make it far more legible.
4. Encourage presentations on green tech that is little-known. Two examples:
Foaming soap uses far less soap, washing is faster, uses less water (and less energy for water heating), and less processing to remove fewer added chemicals from the wastewater.
Ultracapacitors as a substitute for disposable batteries for handheld tools and other home uses.