Alumni
Red, Black, and Green
As the world tackles the realities of global warming, meet four alumni who are part of the solution.
By Lindsay Beller
We've heard a lot about the notion of "going green." The buzzword took off as the need to address global warming sank in. But individuals have personalized this message in different ways, by reducing carbon footprints through lifestyle changes, pursuing new career paths, and advocating for more sustainable practices, to name a few. Spectrum talked to four alumni who are all doing their part, in their own ways, to help the environment.
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ECO-ENTREPRENEUR | BOB PERKOWITZ '80
The yellow "Perkowitz" sign advertising a window fashions store on Green Bay Road in Wilmette offers a clue to what drives Bob Perkowitz '80 to raise awareness about the serious environmental issues facing the world today.
Working at the family business and at other jobs throughout childhood ingrained the Glenview native with an entrepreneurial spirit and a need to work hard to pay his own way. In 1977, the self-described "serial entrepreneur" enrolled as a commuter student and opened his own window coverings store in Highland Park. He has since started up or run eight more companies with revenues up
to $500 million.
With an interest in environmental issues, he also joined the boards of the Sierra Club Foundation and Environmental Defense Fund, but found they only targeted environmentalists and missed out on a big segment of the population. In 2005 Perkowitz drew on his entrepreneurial savvy, management skills, and environmental interests to launch ecoAmerica, a nonprofit that combines consumer research and marketing techniques to raise awareness among, and change behaviors and attitudes of, who he calls, "environmentally agnostic" Americans.
Perkowitz wanted to reach those who may not have donated to the cause or joined a group, such as college students, but could still reduce their environmental impact. "My approach is to engage people," he says. "EcoAmerica brings consumer research and marketing techniques to engage people and make environmental issues relevant again.
We don't ask, 'Do you believe in global warming?' We ask what people think about the environment, identify groups who are sympathetic, and add a tipping point."
In its first year ecoAmerica was a founding sponsor of the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, an effort to get schools to become carbon neutral. At press time, 583 presidents had signed on. The organization is also partnering with The Princeton Review to provide green college ratings for prospective college students and with Monster.com to launch a green job Web site.
Perkowitz's interest in environmental issues dates back to incidents like the Cuyahoga River burning and Three Mile Island. "It was normal at the time to have an environmental ethic," he says, adding that the passage of clean air and water legislation led to better practices nationwide and a decline in national attention on environmental issues.
But as a student who was busy operating his first business, Perkowitz concentrated on earning a degree so he could attend business school. He chose Lake Forest for its liberal arts focus and flexibility to create his own major in Social Thought, which enabled him to take classes in disciplines like politics and sociology. After earning an MBA at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management a year later, selling his successful window cover company, and running a home furnishings business, he landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he and his wife, Lisa Renstrom, began to pursue a philanthropic interest in the environment. Renstrom is the former president of the Sierra Club.
In addition to ecoAmerica, Perkowitz runs three for-profit ventures that have an environmental bent. He is president of Paradigm Management, Inc., a business consulting and private equity management firm that targets sustainable businesses. He also serves as managing partner of VivaTerra LLC, a company that sells sustainable women's clothing and home decorations, and as chairman of Potenco, Inc., which develops products to promote human power generation.
As he works to bring environmental issues to the forefront, Perkowitz sees a renewed interest among Americans. "We hit a low point at the end of 2006, but now people are starting to realize that fires, droughts, and hurricanes are starting to have an impact," he says. "Climate change is going to be the defining issue of our time."
GREEN BUILDER | MELANIE WEST '92
Melanie West '92 has added a little green to the dusty brown Santa Fe desert. Last year she built a home with solar panels, recycled blue jean insulation, bamboo floors, and other environmentally friendly materials. West has long thought about environmental issues and the sustainability of this planet. "It's worth preserving," she says. "I look out my windows and there are coyotes, red tail hawks, and bunnies. I want to respect that. We're all part of this natural world."
A Santa Fe native who was living in Austin, Texas, she embarked on the green building process after investing with family members in a 15-acre plot that had once belonged to her grandfather and was near property owned by her family in New Mexico. So when the parcel came up for sale, West realized a long held dream to return to the Southwest from Austin, where she had started a photography business and worked in radio and film for 12 years.
But before breaking ground in February 2007, West spent a lot of time getting a feel for the property, researching her options, investigating incentives, and considering what she wanted and could afford. For example, she decided that keeping the footprint to 900-square-feet allowed her to invest in solar panels, which generates all the electricity and heats the water and floors in the house.
She also made the decision to stay on the grid, not only because the cost of additional batteries exceeded her budget, but she believes in the idea of more homeowners becoming power generators. "By my participation I am changing the paradigm of the grid," says West, who receives a rebate from the local utility company for contributing power. "Whatever I don't use in my little house goes to the general grid. We have it in us as a world to try these things."
Building the house turned into a family affair. Her uncle transformed her sketches in blueprints, helped with general contracting and painting, and even planted an apricot tree on the property. While West's father mixed the mud plaster for the interior adobe brick walls with her assistance, she enlisted her brother to help with the solar electric installation. A company owned by two cousins built the walls and poured the concrete slab.
As the one-bedroom, one-bathroom house went up over the next 10 months, she made an effort to keep the materials as natural and energy efficient as possible. Although West spent much of her childhood in an old adobe ranch house with no indoor plumbing or telephone, she wanted to combine modern elements, like electric appliances, with older materials and traditions of her grandparents' generation, such as planting a kitchen garden. "I'm excited about new and old materials and working with natural forms," she says. "It's not a new way to think, but we're returning to a pre-World War II way of thinking."
Eventually, West hopes to add on a second bedroom and photography studio. She still travels to Austin for her photography work, an interest that developed in high school and continued to grow at Lake Forest College, where she majored in English, worked as features editor for the Stentor, and took advantage of cultural opportunities in Chicago.
But she is building her business and getting used to her new home in Santa Fe — enjoying sunlit rooms, its environmental aesthetic, and views of the Ortiz Mountains, where a protest by citizens recently led to a government moratorium on oil and gas exploration. "Right now we have the momentum to change direction," she says.
CARBON CALCULATOR | CRAIG COLEMAN '96
As a graduate student in oceanography, Craig Coleman '96 sees how increasing greenhouse gas emissions are damaging oceans. He is involved with a research project that investigates how a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to more acidity in the water, which impacts even the smallest organisms. "If you mess up the lowest level, it's going to have a ripple effect up the chain and large-scale implications for the ocean ecosystem," he says.
Armed with an understanding of the science behind global warming, Coleman believes the first step in addressing the challenges of climate change starts on dry land. He recently led efforts at the University of Hawaii at Manoa to calculate the school's carbon footprint and determine ways to reduce energy use.
Starting in 2007 he headed up the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Project, a university initiative established to catalogue emissions on campus and to serve as a model for other institutions who want to do the same. With help from a $25,000 grant that he secured from the local utility company and following standards for measuring emissions set forth by the Climate Registry, Coleman collected such data as the amount of fuel used in school vehicles, utility bills, and information about university air travel.
The push to conduct the inventory came after the university signed on to the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, which charges schools to develop and follow through with plans to become carbon neutral. (This initiative was organized by ecoAmerica, an environmental marketing non-profit founded by Bob Perkowitz '80. Read about him on page 25.)
While the inventory was completed in September, Coleman's interest was sparked in 2006 when the Hawaiian legislature wanted to explore ways to increase renewable energy and asked his advisor, Professor Lorenz Magaard, to assess whether the state should join the Chicago Climate Exchange. Coleman researched the program, which promotes a voluntary cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He supported the idea that public and private institutions agree to a maximum limit of emissions but may purchase or trade credits with each other to comply with the cap.
But when the state disagreed, Coleman realized the importance of documenting emissions in the right way. "I got involved because I saw these environmental financial tools would be a big part of addressing the problem," he says. "I wanted to ensure there were real reductions. I wanted to make sure that measurement of carbon was real."
Following the completion of the inventory, Coleman sees a business niche to measure greenhouse gases for other organizations. This shouldn't come as a surprise to those who knew Coleman at Lake Forest College, where he managed the campus coffee shop and developed a marketing plan to improve sales. Although he had planned to study the sciences, he changed his major to French and pursued other interests instead. After graduation, he owned a moving company and managed several Starbucks before deciding to give science another go.
Coleman is now analyzing energy and greenhouse gas emissions for the state of Hawaii, but considers himself a social entrepreneur. "I see a great opportunity to put into action the idea that I can learn the ecology and then try to find ways to address challenges with my business background because something has got to be done," he says. "As a society, we need to address this issue."
RECYCLING RESOURCE | NORM CRAMPTON '54
Disposing of human ashes in the ocean is alright, but don't throw them into a body of fresh water because that is considered pollution, cautions Norm Crampton '54 in his new book that features an A-to-Z list of how to dispose of or recycle household items.
The book, Green House: Eco-friendly Disposal and Recycling at Home (M. Evans & Company, 2008), offers practical and often irreverent advice on what to do with more than 100 waste items around the house. The list includes everything from car batteries "(return them to the dealer when you buy new or sell to a scrap metals dealer) to oven cleaner (flush down the toilet, rinse empty container, throw in the trash) to magazines (leave them in your doctor's waiting room, where old magazines never die).
In a reflection of the times, it also includes an extensive section on e-waste, such as cell phones, computers, and fax machines. This is the fastest growing problem for recycling and for the planet, Crampton writes, because electronics are filled with dangerous chemicals like lead and lithium. Mercury is equally dangerous, especially with an increase in the more energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), which consumers are buying more of as incandescent lights become phased out of the marketplace.
Crampton has written three books on the subject but jokes that he wasn't always into trash. Growing up in Lake Forest, he had his first experience with recycling while sorting glass bottles in the basement of the local A&P. But after serving as the Stentor editor at Lake Forest College, he pursued a writing career and earned a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University, worked as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, and wrote for magazines and associations.
By the mid-1980s, Crampton landed at the American Public Works Association, where he served as secretary of the Institute for Solid Wastes, just as national interest in recycling was skyrocketing. "There was a worry that "we were running out of places to dump the garbage," he says. "Everyone was paranoid that we'd be living in swamps of trash."
This inspired him to write his first book Complete Trash: The Best Way to Get Rid of Practically Everything Around the House (M. Evans & Company, 1989). In 1990, he became executive director of the Indiana Institute of Recycling, which moved him from Chicago to Bloomington, a city which he commends for its commitment to recycling.
Good municipal programs, costs, and convenience are all factors that affect individual recycling habits, he says, although current concerns about environmental and energy issues have become a motivator as well. "Twenty years ago recycling was a good thing to do," Crampton says. "Today it's a matter of energy. People are seeing the connection between reducing waste and conserving energy."
Out on the lecture circuit for his book, he'll often exchange ideas for reusing items with the audience, like returning hangers to the dry cleaner or donating plastic bags to a neighbor with a dog. He also sees manufacturers coming out with packaging that is more recyclable. But perhaps his best advice comes at the end of his book, where he writes, "Consumers (that's us, folks we're two-thirds of the national economy) can exercise the simple power of choice to reduce trash."
Lindsay Beller is the editor of Spectrum.