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USA TODAY's spring/summer 2013 issue of 'Green Living' magazine, featuring eco-friendly fahions, companies and a small-town focus on Greensburg, Kansas.
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Green LivinGprinted on 90% recycled paper
A TeA BAG DressMore eco-Friendly Fashions
S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 3
& Hollywood’s Generation Green
Johnny Galecki
‘BIG BANG’s’
AMerICA
& companies Saving the planet
people 50
visit tHe Greenest smaLL town in
&2
• cars • cleaners • Groceries • Home décor
sHOP sMArT
DISPLAY UNTIL jUNe 15, 2013DISPLAY UNTIL jUNe 15, 2013
Joh
n M
cD
on
nel
l/G
etty
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Ges
Green LivinG
On the CoverPhotography by: odessy Barbu/Getty Images
FeaturesECO-GENERATION 22actor Johnny Galecki joins cast of activists
AMERICA’S ALL-GREEN TOWN 26Greensburg, Kan., rebuilds after twister
GOOD BUSINESS 36Wal-Mart proof – green works
GREEN COMPANIES 38Making a difference
UNIVERSITIES/BUILDERS 40supporting the cause
TEST YOUR RECYLING IQ 48separate fact from fiction
CORPORATE LEADERS 52offer energy solutions
STADIUMS AND HOTELS 56eco-friendly features
EARTHSHIP HOMES 58living off the grid
Up FrontGREEN GOODS 9Responsibility, luxury
TRAVEL 12eco-friendly options
GREEN GROCER 14Food labels, lunches
COMMUNITY 17schools, social media
GREEN ALMANAC 20news and notes
58
architect Mike Reynolds’ earthship homes typically are solar-heated and constructed of tires that reccyle water and are off the electric grid.
his model (above) in new Mexico looks like something out of oz.
spRInG/sUMMeR 2013
t
USA TODAY Green Living is printed on paper with at least 90% recycled content. please
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Recycle this! Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved herein, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or reproduced in a retrieval system,
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FINANCEFINANCE MANAGER
Nyime Fyne-Okorie
bIllING COORdINAtORsMelissa Appiah
Hazel borowsky
This is a product of
PRINtEd IN tHE UsA ON RECyClEd PAPER
AdVERtIsINGVP, AdVERtIsING
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INtERNsAline barrosjulia Rhault
Victoria Meyers
CONtRIbUtING WRItERsjoe bush , Claudia M. Caruana, Chris Colston , Nancy
dunham, dan Friedell , deborah R. Huso, , david Macaulay, Nancy Mills, judith Nemes, Mellisa F.
Pheterson, Patrick Quinn, Maridel Reyes, denise schipani, Celia shatzman, lisa troshinsky,
Matt Villano
CONtRIbUtING PHOtOGRAPHERs Odessy barbu, Ricardo deAratanha,
jay Calderon, jaime Green
LifestyleWOLFGANG PUCK 64lives the green life
URBAN FARMING 66takes root across U.s.
WHALE OF AN ISSUE 70sustainable fishing
BRIGHT LIGHTS 74leDs’promising future
ENERGY UPGRADES 76 cost-effective options
ECO-CHIC 78 Mother earth’s decor
CLEANING GREEN 80natural home solutions
BEER TABS, TEA, SMOKES 84Intern turns trash into tailored treasures
ECO FASHION WEEK 86Runway designs
CAR GUIDE 90Best green wheels
BICYCLE PROGRAMS 92sharing stations roll out
TYLER CLIPPARD 94Relief pitcher’s hot wheels
PHOTO PAGE 962,500 desert windmillsdot california landscape
64
EdItORIAldIRECtOR
jim lenahanjlenahan@usatoday.com
MANAGING EdItORjeanette barrett-stokesjbstokes@usatoday.com
ARt dIRECtORjerald Council
jcouncil@usatoday.com
PREMIUM PUBLICATION
FolloW Us on tWItteR!@USATODAYMAGS
9286
dEsIGNERs Kathleen Rudell
jasmine Wiggins
EdItORsChris GarssonChristine Neff
Elizabeth Neus
GReen lIvInG
27 26 green living
JiM W
ATSO
n
USA TODAY’s ECO INNOVATORS
WELCOMEto Greensburg
KANSASMISSOURI
OKLAHOMA
NEBRASKA
COLO
RAD
OD
100 MILES
Wichita
Kansas City
GreensburgThe small town of
Greensburg straddles
U.S. Highway 54 in
south-central Kansas,
laid out in neat square
blocks. It is farm country.
If you look to your east
and west, wheat, soybeans and cattle
can be seen for miles. The seat of Kiowa
County is about 100 miles west of Wichita.
Greensburg’s claim to fame once came
from being home to the world’s largest
hand-dug well. The simply named Big Well
is 109 feet deep and more than 30 feet in
diameter. It’s an impressive structure and,
at the beginning of 2007, was the most
unusual aspect of this city of 1,600. But
what came next changed the community
forever.
On May 4, 2007, a tornado swept through
Greensburg, essentially destroying the
all-American town. The tornado killed 13
people and injured more than 60 oth-
ers. The twister razed 95 percent of the
structures in town, and the remaining five
percent were seriously damaged.
President George W. Bush and Kathleen
Sebelius, then state governor, immediately
declared the town a disaster area. More
than one Greensburg resident wondered
if the storm had flat-out killed the
community.
“We lost half the population [to reloca-
tion] right away,” recalls Greensburg Mayor
Bob Dixson, who was the postmaster at the
time. “They had no place to live. A lot of
older residents moved to neighboring com-
munities. But we were very blessed—2.8
million of our friends and neighbors came
to help us,” he says, referring to the popula-
tion of Kansas. “The Kansas Department of
Transportation, the Kansas
National Guard, many
cities, counties and towns
sent trucks and ambu-
From the rubble of a tornado, a Kansas town becomes a model for environmentally
friendly livingBY PATRICK QUINN
PhoTos BY JAIme gReeN
>Main Street in GreenSburG
in this block are sustainable features such as native plantings and a water catchment system used to capture and filter rainwater to be used in irriga-tion. Below is Kiowa City Commons.
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lances and equipment and volunteers.”
Work to clear the wreckage of
the town and care for the surviving
residents started immediately. The
U.S. Forest Service set up a base camp
and served more than 36,000 meals
in the four weeks after the tornado.
The Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) installed hundreds of
mobile homes that eventually housed
about 300 families.
Recovery from the wreckage and
planning for the future took place
amid scenes of almost unimaginable
devastation. Throughout the summer,
residents held weekly tent meetings
to discuss plans. Since the tornado
wiped out all communication systems,
residents depended on the “yellow
sheet,” a paper printed and distributed
twice a week to get the word out about
recovery efforts. “We had an 86-year-old
‘newsboy’ distributing the paper,” says
Ann Dixson, the mayor’s wife and a
municipal judge.
At sometimes-stormy public meet-
ings, Greensburg’s battered survivors
grappled with the complexities of
receiving federal disaster aid and the
daunting task of adopting a long-term
recovery plan. What would the future
hold for Greensburg, Kan.? Would the
town rebuild, and how?
From the swirling aftermath of
disaster came something amazing:
America’s greenest little town.
thinkinG in innovative wayS Today, six years after the tornado,
Greensburg is the world’s leading
community in LEED-certified buildings
per capita. The town is home to a
half-dozen LEED-platinum certified
buildings, including the new City Hall
and the new 48,500-square-foot Kiowa
County Memorial Hospital. Renewable
energy powers the entire community,
and the streetlights are all LED.
Reconstruction is nearly complete.
The new LEED-platinum K-12 school
is full. The 2010 census counted 777
residents, but Dixson thinks that
number is low. “Judging by the utility
hook-up reports I see at City Hall, I
think we’re at about 850,” he says. The
idea to go green was floated early on.
At the very first tent meeting, held
a week after the tornado, resident
Daniel Wallach proposed rebuilding
as a “model green community.” That
summer, he helped found Greensburg
GreenTown, a nonprofit organization
that became an information clearing-
house for the town’s environmentally
minded reconstruction.
Mayor Dixson concedes that some
residents “cringed a little bit” at all
the green talk. “For some people it
sounded very 1967-1968, you know,
powder-blue bell bottoms and tie-dyed
shirts. The number one topic at those
tent meetings was talking about who
we are—what are our values?” he says.
“There was a lot of hard work, a lot of
discussion. Some of it was positive,
some of it was less than positive.
Sometimes we agreed to disagree, but
USA TODAY’s ECO INNOVATORS
we were still civil to each other. And
let’s not forget that our ancestors were
stewards of the land. My ancestors
lived in the original green homes: sod
houses.”
breakinG GrounDAn environmentally minded Kansas
City design firm, BNIM, worked with
the town and FEMA to help create a
long-term recovery plan. Gradually,
the notion to go green gained traction
with town residents, and they came
to embrace the possibility of turning
the town into a living laboratory for
sustainable development. Eight months
after the tornado, the Greensburg City
Council adopted a resolution: All large
public buildings in Greensburg with a
footprint exceeding 4,000 square feet
must meet the LEED-platinum stan-
dards of the U.S. Green Building Council
and utilize renewable energy sources.
“This is groundbreaking stuff,” city
administrator Steve Hewitt told people
at the meeting.
One enormous infrastructure
change was Greensburg’s conversion
to “100 percent renewable energy,
100 percent of the time,” as Dixson
describes it. The happy outcome came
about from the storm’s destruction of
Bucklin Tractor and Implement (BTI),
the local John Deere dealership owned
by the Estes family.
Mark Estes, a representative of
the third generation of the family to
operate BTI, was among the leading
voices calling for a commitment to
save the town and restore the business
community in the days after the storm.
“After all, we were one of the biggest
businesses in town,” he says.
The family decided to rebuild their
Greensburg BTI dealership to LEED-
platinum standards, and to erect a
wind turbine on the new site. All of this
“green dealership” talk was new terri-
tory for John Deere, which nonetheless
supported the Estes brothers’ goals.
“We had to educate them about what
LEED was,” Mike Estes recalls. “Once
they understood, they decided we could
be a model of sustainability for other
dealerships.”
Today the Greensburg BTI dealer-
ship operates in a 33,000-square-foot
metal pre-fabricated building that
also contains a large maintenance
facility and is indeed LEED-platinum
>a worLD LeaDinG CoMMunity
Clockwise from top left: The 5.4.7 Arts Center is named after the date of the tornado that razed greensburg. it was designed and built by University of Kansas graduate architecture students in lawrence and was moved to greensburg in seven pieces in 2008; ruth Ann Wedel shows a tornado shelter made from a propane tank and on display at greensburg greenTown’s Silo eco-Home. greenTown, a nonprofit group, educates residents and business owners on how to live sustainably; wind turbines dot the city’s landscape; gardeners plant 26 sycamore trees in front of the Kiowa County School; the top floor of the Big Well Museum offers visitors a panoramic view of the city; former Kansas state treasurer Dennis McKinney holds a photo of the tornado devastation on Main Street in 2007.
What’s in a name?> DiD you know?
The town’s curiously prophetic name comes from one of its founders, D.r. “Cannonball” green. Cannonball oper-ated a stagecoach line and was Kiowa County’s first representative elected to the Kansas legislature.
30 green living
USA TODAY’s ECO INNOVATORS
certified—the first Deere dealership in
the country to be labeled as such. The
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
estimates that the sustainable construc-
tion techniques used in building the new
dealership have resulted in a “55 percent
annual energy savings compared to a
typical existing retail facility.”
Standing alongside the new dealer-
ship is an 8,000-square-foot steel ware-
house that houses the Estes brothers’
new venture—BTI Wind Energy. “We’re
in the business now,” Estes says with a
grin. He describes the new company’s
investment in “small wind” technology—
the use of a small turbine farm or even a
single turbine to meet the energy needs
of an individual farm or business.
Today the wind that nearly destroyed
Greensburg is what keeps the town’s
lights on. Turbines can be seen catch-
ing the wind throughout residential
neighborhoods and the business
community. The energy needs of the
larger Greensburg community are met
by a wind farm just south of town.
The decision to rebuild in green-
friendly ways added to the cost of the
town’s reconstruction by as much as 20
percent. The expense attracted attention
in Washington—the source of much of
the reconstruction money—and in June
2008, Hewitt was asked to testify before
Congress. His testimony was eloquent
and compelling. “Green starts in rural
America,” he said, and the committee
was convinced.
>winD Power
Wind turbines are scattered throughout greensburg.
big Well museum> better than beFore At 109 feet deep and 32 feet in diameter, greenburg’s Big Well is the world’s largest hand-dug well. The breathtaking masterpiece was completed in 1888 and served as the town’s main water supply until 1932. More than 3 million people have de-scended the metal stairwell since it was designated as a national museum in 1972.
31
32 green living
USA TODAY’s ECO INNOVATORS
buiLDinG a MoDeL townThe town’s unique story, one of devastation and
forward-thinking reconstruction, attracted media
attention, becoming the subject of two TV series
and several books. In 2007, Discovery Channel
reached out to Greensburg to film a TV series that
would document the green reconstruction of the
town. A deal was inked for Greensburg, and envi-
ronmental activist/actor Leonardo DiCaprio signed
on to the project. The series ran for three seasons
and documented the day-to-day struggle facing
residents. A second mini-series, the four-episode
Build It Bigger: Rebuilding Greensburg, premiered in
November 2008 on the Science Channel.
Several books have been published about the
storm and its aftermath, most notably The Green-
ing of Oz, by Robert Fraga, a semi-retired Kansas
academic with a longtime interest in sustainable
architecture. “The reconstruction is nearly
complete, and it’s a model for towns everywhere
in this country. A new town has grown up out of
the prairie with a spectacular collection of public
buildings,” Fraga says.
Other prairie towns have taken note. Since the
Greensburg storm, two more towns have faced
>rebuiLD
Bob Dixson, greensburg’s mayor since 2008, stands outside the City Council building, which was rebuilt with bricks found in the rubble.
builDing hOPe>PaSSinG it on The greensburg experience can be exported. The towns of Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., both flattened by tornados, are working to rebuild in green ways. “This approach might have seemed on the fringe 15 years ago, but today we haven’t got much choice,” says author robert Fraga.
– Bob Dixson, Greensburg mayor
USA TODAY’s ECO INNOVATORS
destruction from a tornado. An
EF4 twister struck Tuscaloosa, Ala.,
on April 27, 2011, killing 64 people
and injuring more than 1,500. The
following month a catastrophic
EF5 cyclone roared through Joplin,
Mo., killing 158 people and injuring
1,100. Both cities have reached out to
Greensburg for advice on rebuilding,
says Fraga.
Mayor Dixson sometimes waxes
philosophical about Greensburg’s
extraordinary rise from the rubble.
“You have to do the best you can
with the resources you have,” he
says. “We learned that the only true
green and sustainable things in life
are how we treat each other.”
He’s pleased that many of the
rebuilt homes in Greensburg feature
roomy front porches. “We need to get
back to being front-porch people.”
We learned that the only true green and sustainable things in life are how we treat each other.
Watch our video on greensburg’s rebirth. Scan with a QR reader on your mobile device.
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