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By Gary Anzalone, February 2008
I am inspired by what I have seen – in a few short years the building
industry has been transformed. The result is less waste to our landfill,
reduced energy usage and healthy places to live, work and learn.
As one of the founding members of the Long Island Chapter, I had no idea
how much impact we would have. We
all knew that we were doing the right thing, it was driving us all and that was
enough.
Even though the year ahead of us is packed with
challenges and continued growth I can not help think back to the
beginning of this “Start-up” chapter.
Interested parties met at a diner to talk about our vision for
the future, and how we were going to commit our time and energy to
making
Long Island
a better place to live and work. We
all wanted to make a difference, but it had to be sustainable.
I remember hearing the following phrase that has stayed in my
head, “We don’t own the land we are just borrowing it from our
children." This is the
attitude that we all shared.
In this past year alone we have accomplished so much, it’s hard
to imagine how it was before. We
are now very organized. Just look at our website: It did not even exist a year ago. The
Calendar is packed with regular meetings, including weekly executive board
meetings, monthly board meetings, regular committee meetings and regular
educational and social functions. We
have formed the following committees to help get the word out:
Communication, Education, Advocacy, Programs, Membership, Green
Incentives, Sponsorship, Financial, and more forming as the need arises.
Also, from our website you can learn about the LEED Rating
system, find a LEED AP, register to attend a program, see our green
sponsors and join our chapter.
The result of our collective efforts is that municipalities have
begun to adopt the USGBC rating system into their building code.
Schools are asking for support for educational programs.
Individuals and companies are seeing the benefit to our cause –
we are up and running! There
are so many people to thank that I can not begin to name them all; rest
assured that this is a well organized group effort of dedicated and
talented volunteers.
With all that said we are still on the ground floor, it’s not
time to rest, in a world of excess and mass consumption – we are the
voice of reason. Now that we
have been made aware of a better way it’s impossible to go back to the
days of excessive waste.
The dramatic change in the industry can best be illustrated by the
questions that are being asked. We
have come from, “What do you mean build a green building?” to
today’s question, “What level LEED Project should we go for?"
Finally, we are all looking forward with great excitement to our
first Gala, on March 19th.
We are giving out scholarships and celebrating the green building
movement – look for the details on our website!
In the coming months and years, my greatest hope for this
organization is that we continue to grow and make a difference. |