Earth Day

The 41st annual Earth Day – April 22nd – falls in the shadow of the first year anniversary of the BP oil spill. The sad synchronicity of these two events is further amplified by Earth Day’s beginnings: Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson first hatched the idea in 1969 after returning from viewing the Union Oil disaster off the  coast of Santa Barbara (now bumped to the third largest oil spill in the US behind 2010’s Deepwater Horizon and 1989’s Exxon Valdez).

Earthdaysf.com explains that the senator was inspired by the teach-ins of the anti-war movement and “thought that tapping into local community concerns would be the way to advance an environmental agenda in Washington, D.C.” The success of the event spurred the passing of major environmental legislation later the next year, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

According to organizers, the 41st annual Earth Day will be celebrated by more than a billion people internationally, making it the biggest civic event in the world. San Francisco will debut a free full-day festival dedicated to music and environmental education in Civic Center Plaza. It also starts off a month long EHDD “teach-in” focused on redefining sustainability within the office. Lectures from the likes of Architecture for Humanity, Kiva, Hyphae Design Laboratory, and LMS along with internal dialogue, knowledge blasts, and community volunteer opportunities will give us a fresh perspective on our personal and professional understanding of sustainability.

Sustainability implies a commitment to meeting economic, social, and environmental goals now and in the future; however, in application it rarely refers to all three aspects of the definition at once. Every firm has a sustainability tab on their website now, but which ones actually get it? In this context, sustainable design is an oxymoron. Most LEED Platinum projects may reduce energy use and be made of recycled content materials but which ones could truly be called “sustainable?” The more I think about it, the more I feel that we need to move beyond metrics and checklists to a more embodied understanding of what environmental, social, and economic sustainability means in order to make design decisions that have a real positive impact. As William McDonough constantly trumpets, it’s not good enough to just do “less bad.”

We need to be inspired – it's in our nature as designers. So how can the environmental, social, and economic crises inspire rather than paralyze? The economic crisis is already forcing innovation, charging us into new markets (like planning) that we haven't focused on before and these new endeavors provide an opportunity to reset how we conceptualize what sustainability means to us as professionals and as people. My challenge for you then this Earth Day is to answer this question: what does sustainability mean to you?

- Janika McFeely, LEED® AP BD+C
  Designer