It has been another important year for green buildings in the St. Louis region – maybe not a normal year, but we continue to move forward, supporting greener, healthier buildings and communities. We at the U.S. Green Building Council-Missouri Gateway Chapter continue to play a vital role the greening of our region – though it’s mostly been virtual this year.
Green building education never stops - throughout 2020, we have hosted 36 virtual events. We added an every other week “coffee break” to our schedule, combining discussion of timely green building topics with the opportunity to connect face to face with your green building community. Topics have varied from indoor air quality to environmental justice – we are grateful to all our expert guests for joining us throughout the year. We look forward to continued monthly evening programs in 2021 on the second Tuesday of every month and will continue with coffee breaks as well!
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This year’s Green Schools Quest quickly transitioned and extended the project submission deadline for the 70 school and mentor teams participating in the 2019-2020 Quest. We would have normally held an in-person celebration in April to honor all participants and winners, but even with the stay at home order, the Quest was a big success. We announced winners virtually on May 15 and released a daily video the following week to spotlight the sustainability projects undertaken by students, teachers and mentors. We also had to re-think the 2020-2021 Quest. As schools throughout the region adapt to the impact of COVID-19, we launched a reimagined six-month challenge and invited schools to “Continue the Quest.” The format takes into consideration the challenges and uncertainties we face right now – it is curriculum-friendly, flexible and suitable for in person or online school. We look forward to the continued Quest for sustainability in our K-12 schools as we know these are our Green Building Leaders of the Future!
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This has been a big year for green schools. We are very proud to partner with the Missouri Environmental Education Association to pilot the Missouri Green Schools program. This program is a tracking and recognition program for early childhood through 12th grade schools in Missouri. It is designed to help Missouri schools improve the health and wellness of students and staff, reduce environmental impact, and incorporate environmental and sustainability education. Missouri Green Schools provides the tools and resources for schools to set and track environmental, health, and sustainability education goals that lead to recognition and cost savings for a wellness focused future.
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Our outreach and advocacy efforts didn’t stop in 2020 either. We continued working with partners, sponsors and members to support the City of St. Louis’ benchmarking and energy efficiency work. The big news this year was the passage of the Building Energy Performance Standard (BEPS) by the City’s Board of Alderman in April. This made St. Louis just the third City in the United States with such a requirement. Since April, we hosted a series of Q&A sessions on the legislation and our Executive Director has presented numerous times at regional conferences and sessions to raise awareness about the requirements and to celebrate this success. We also shifted our Benchmarking & Energy Efficiency Carousel, Benchmarking 101 Green Professional Building Skills (GPRO) Operations & Maintenance training to virtual this year.
Like many organizations, we are also doing some self-reflection to determine how we can better support diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racist efforts in our community. If you attended our State of the Chapter in January this year, you know that we released an Equity and Inclusion Statement then – we made some updates to that statement, adding some specific actions on how we can do better. We eliminated unpaid internship positions, added equity topics to our coffee break schedule, added a new sponsorship opportunity to support the participation of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises and community organizations, and are analyzing participation in the Green Schools Quest to be even more inclusive. Even so, we have a lot of work to do and welcome your input and suggestions.
2020 has not exactly been the year any of us expected, but we continue to advance our mission to advocate for greener, better buildings because Green Buildings Are Better for people, for the planet, and for our pocket books! Please join us by supporting our work this year. We can't get there without each of you.
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Thank you!
Angela Moore
Chair, Board of Directors
USGBC-Missouri Gateway Chapter
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