Commonweal

Eco-Pioneers by Steve Lerner

Eco-Pioneers by Steve Lerner
For the past five years Steve Lerner, Research Director at Commonweal, has traveled the country searching out people who are doing the nuts-and-bolts work of inventing solutions to environmental problems.

Steve's book, Eco-Pioneers: Practical Visionaries Solving Today's Environmental Problems, was published by MIT Press on October 1st, 1997. The book contains detailed profiles of 25 of America's foremost environmental innovators. Among those featured are the following:

Pliny Fisk III is an Austin-based green architect who discovered that flyash from coal-fired power plants, a troublesome waste product, could be used to make a substance stronger than Portland cement that he dubs "Ashcrete." Fisk developed a building technique that looks like a giant Tinker Toy. His hollow "Green Forms", which provide convenient conduits for plumbing and electrical lines, are made out of rebar (recycled steel) and "ashcrete." Fisk is a master at using local building materials and waste products in order to avoid the use of unsustainably harvested materials that must be shipped over long distance.

John Todd invented what he calls a "living machine" that purifies municipal sewage using aquatic plants, fish, algae, microorganisms, and trees that don't mind getting their feet wet. Todd's method uses large translucent tanks linked together in a greenhouse enclosed gravity-feed system through which the sewage circulates. As the wastewater moves from tank to tank, aquatic plants use up the excess nutrients, break down the toxic chemicals, and sequester heavy metals. These living machines make unnecessary the use of toxic chemicals or large amounts of energy to treat municipal sewage.

Alana Probst is the daughter of a sawmill owner who now works as an economist for Ecotrust in Portland, Oregon. She is one of the foremost practitioners of conservation-based development, a new initiative to protect ecologically critical habitat while at the same time generated jobs that don't damage the environment. Probst started a revolving loan fund and a bank that provides start up loans for entrepreneurs whose businesses are protective of the environment. She has been working in Willipa Bay, Washington, a biologically dense temperate rainforest, where she has provides loans and business expertise to oystermen, cranberry processors, gleaners, and a sawmill operators who have a stake in keeping the local ecosystem vibrant.

Paul Mankiewicz invented a super light-weight soil that can be safely used to create urban rooftop gardens, where normal soil would cause the building to collapse. Mankiewicz also developed an odorless, highly efficient composting unit that can be placed in apartment building basements to handle urban kitchen scraps.

Juana Gutierrez, co-founder of the Mothers of East Los Angeles, is promoting water conservation in the barrio by giving out free low-flow toilets in exchange for water guzzling porcelain toilets which are smashed up and recycled as a gravel that forms the underlayment for street construction.

Scott Bernstein is providing owners of small apartment buildings in the inner city of Chicago with access to low cost loans so that they can afford an energy-efficient retrofit of their buildings and thus keep rents affordable. He is also making available technical expertise and access to low cost loans to owners of small electroplating shops so that they can safely handle toxic chemicals, meet EPA regulations, and keep blue-collar jobs in the city. He has persuaded the managers of the local commuter railway to schedule train stops at inner city stations so that residents can travel to jobs in the suburbs. And he is pioneering "location efficient mortgages" that permit first-time home buyers to qualify for higher loans to buy houses in the city near where they work because they will not have to spend as much money on transportation as they would if they bought a home in the suburbs.

S. David Freeman, recently appointed general manager at the Los Angeles Department of Power and Light, calls himself a "utility repair man." Under the Carter Administration he terminated funding for eight nuclear power plants as head of the TVA. More recently, at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) he closed a nuclear power plant and surrounded it with one of the nations largest solar power plant. He eliminated the need to build more power generating units through an ambitious power conservation program. And he switched to a variety of renewable power sources.

These are only a few of the stories Lerner tells in his book.

Book Order Information

Anyone interested in purchasing Eco-Pioneers can buy it through Commonweal (415) 868-0970; through MIT Press (617) 625-8569; or by requesting that their local bookstore carry it. (462 pages, hardcover, $25.)

Other books by Steve Lerner are also available through Commonweal:

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