today I’m going to share a story with
you about a solution to climate change I
helped create that integrates three
topics you’ve likely never heard in the
same sentence real estate development
school children and worms I promise you
they’re all deeply interconnected I’d
like to begin today by introducing you
to a problem that existed in my
community and from a small town in
Connecticut and near my former high
school is this old manufacturing
facility called the Gilbert embedded
wire mill site the wire mill was an
operation from 1848 to 1998
manufacturing various wire products
what’s really interesting about this
company was how innovative they were
they actually invented wire mesh there
so many people say that they invented
summer because their invention allowed
people to open up their windows and with
their brand new window screens enjoy the
warm summer air without letting
mosquitoes and other bugs into their
homes unfortunately today the mill lies
derelict
in the center of town it’s uh nopper a
tional and it’s contaminated from the
150 years of metal manufacturing that
happened there classifying the site as
what’s called a brownfield we’re not
creating jobs there we’re not generating
tax revenue and we’ve really lost our
heritage of the industrious working
spirit that once existed in georgetown
so five years ago recognizing this
problem a local artist for my community
Jayne Philbrick decided to work with
this problem in a really unconventional
way she decided to engage the town’s
most unlikely and most overlooked
constituents the local schoolchildren so
I arrived at my tenth grade math class a
few months later to find an invitation
on my desk
inviting me to apply for an internship
opportunity in art architecture and
future planning the sheet read that my
ideas would be examined developed
reworked and maybe even realized curious
it asked and I was especially when I met
the two really cute Swedish architecture
students that Jane had brought along to
work with us so I applied fast forward a
few months later and here is a photo of
a group of rewire interns from the local
middle and high schools I’m in the back
row on the left each high schooler was
assigned to be principal of a different
research vertical related to what we
envisioned for the site this included
food and farming architecture green
energies transportation and fashion and
we were encouraged to share knowledge
with each other and cross-pollinate
ideas as much as possible over the next
couple of years we’ve sketched and we
built models and we built even bigger
models and to bring it full circle the
studio that we performed all of this
working is actually the same building
that the owners of the wire mill had
constructed a year earlier as a
schoolhouse for the children of the mill
workers building on our research with
the younger children we the high
schoolers created a master plan of what
we envision for the site the most novel
part of this whole experience
is that we were asked for the first time
in our lives what we wanted to see built
in our community it would seem that this
is a sensible question to ask our young
people but we rarely ever ask in a
meaningful way from the two years of
work with the rewire school children and
many other experts that we engaged along
the way rewire led to the creation of a
real estate development company called
till of which I am co-founder
I encourage you to think about who is
meaningfully engaged in the real estate
development process do you have a
meaningful say and what’s built around
you our process works to engage all
stakeholders in the real estate
development process including architects
yes finance years yes politicians of
course but we also engage the future of
our societies the extensible
beneficiaries of what we’re going to
build our young people but from our four
years of pre development work one theme
emerged as particularly relevant to all
of us
there was one aspect of the building
process that we all felt uncomfortable
about and that we needed to find a
solution for before we moved forward
with our vision for the site and that
one fact is that currently 40 percent of
the world’s energy is used in buildings
this makes buildings the largest
contributor to global greenhouse gas
emissions contributing to this problem
we’re repeating conventional methods of
construction was not part of our vision
for the world we wanted to grow up in
you might be thinking Olivia can’t you
just solve that with some solar panels
in a wind farm in part yes and that’s
certainly part of our development model
but astoundingly what that 40% figure
does not include are what we call
embodied emissions and embodied
emissions are those created and the
manufacturing of construction materials
for example the steel and concrete that
we manufacture to pave over surfaces and
to build buildings on top of them
actually contribute many tons of co2
into our atmosphere every year and
beyond that when we use things like
concrete to pave over our surfaces we
actually cause biological death of the
soil under
meaning that we’re destroying the soils
capacity to capture excess carbon in our
atmosphere and store it deep underground
and really stable carbon stores called
carbon sinks and it’s actually our
earthworms that are most crucial and
bringing that carbon from the atmosphere
into the soil deep into the ground when
we pave over our soil we kill those
worms and all related microbial life
thereby destroying soils capacity to act
as these incredibly important carbon
sinks so if we’re to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and mitigate climate
change we need a two-part solution we
need to reduce energy consumption yes
especially in the built environment with
things like solar panels and wind farms
but we also need to find ways to create
additional carbon dioxide storage so the
central question for our team then
became wouldn’t it be great if we could
find a way to turn large-scale real
estate development into sites for carbon
dioxide storage as opposed to the carbon
factories that they currently are how
would one do that we’ll use a method
called phytoremediation which uses
plants to not only take out the toxins
in the soil but phytoremediation also
allows the soil to continue sequestering
carbon from the atmosphere and storing
it in the soil in addition to practicing
phytoremediation we won’t be relying on
steel or concrete to build in their
place we will use a material called
cross laminated timber or CLT and CLT is
just a fancy name for a type of
engineered wood that’s actually a strong
as steel but what’s unique about CLT is
that it’s 50% sequestered carbon to put
that into perspective
some estimates calculate that a single
five-story CLT building
is able to cut emissions by levels
equivalent to removing 600 cars from the
road for a year so by combining
phytoremediation and building raised
above the ground out of cross laminated
timber our team has created a model of
real estate development that isn’t
contributing to climate change at all in
fact our model is carbon negative
meaning that it buys us time in climate
change now you might be wondering Olivia
is it really safe to live above these
remediating landscapes and what I would
say in response is that this is about
shifting our focus from removing any
exposure to any hazard in our
environment to thinking about the
pathways by which were exposed to
contaminants a quick analogy is what if
I told you that you’re going to be
walking down the street and I was going
to send a two-ton hurtling object past
you at 40 miles per hour
Olivia you would say please don’t do
that put up a barrier and protect me
right and if you haven’t guessed yet
what I’d be describing is a sidewalk
just as sidewalks protect us from cars
living separate and above these
landscapes protects us from the
contaminants below and actually our
research demonstrates that living and
working in these fight over mediating
brownfields is not only safe and
possible but actually creates a
healthier atmosphere than is the norm in
urban conditions too close I’d like to
go back that original line that
encouraged me to apply to rewire in the
first place it said your ideas will be
examined developed reworked and maybe
even realized what began as a problem
specific to my community has transformed
into a solution that can be applied
globally
to help slow down climate change there
are two to three million brownfields in
the United States alone it’s likely that
there’s a brownfield not too far from
where you live what if we turned every
one of those two to three million
brownfields and to economically
productive carbon storage sites that’s a
world I want to live in thank you
[Applause]
you about a solution to climate change I
helped create that integrates three
topics you’ve likely never heard in the
same sentence real estate development
school children and worms I promise you
they’re all deeply interconnected I’d
like to begin today by introducing you
to a problem that existed in my
community and from a small town in
Connecticut and near my former high
school is this old manufacturing
facility called the Gilbert embedded
wire mill site the wire mill was an
operation from 1848 to 1998
manufacturing various wire products
what’s really interesting about this
company was how innovative they were
they actually invented wire mesh there
so many people say that they invented
summer because their invention allowed
people to open up their windows and with
their brand new window screens enjoy the
warm summer air without letting
mosquitoes and other bugs into their
homes unfortunately today the mill lies
derelict
in the center of town it’s uh nopper a
tional and it’s contaminated from the
150 years of metal manufacturing that
happened there classifying the site as
what’s called a brownfield we’re not
creating jobs there we’re not generating
tax revenue and we’ve really lost our
heritage of the industrious working
spirit that once existed in georgetown
so five years ago recognizing this
problem a local artist for my community
Jayne Philbrick decided to work with
this problem in a really unconventional
way she decided to engage the town’s
most unlikely and most overlooked
constituents the local schoolchildren so
I arrived at my tenth grade math class a
few months later to find an invitation
on my desk
inviting me to apply for an internship
opportunity in art architecture and
future planning the sheet read that my
ideas would be examined developed
reworked and maybe even realized curious
it asked and I was especially when I met
the two really cute Swedish architecture
students that Jane had brought along to
work with us so I applied fast forward a
few months later and here is a photo of
a group of rewire interns from the local
middle and high schools I’m in the back
row on the left each high schooler was
assigned to be principal of a different
research vertical related to what we
envisioned for the site this included
food and farming architecture green
energies transportation and fashion and
we were encouraged to share knowledge
with each other and cross-pollinate
ideas as much as possible over the next
couple of years we’ve sketched and we
built models and we built even bigger
models and to bring it full circle the
studio that we performed all of this
working is actually the same building
that the owners of the wire mill had
constructed a year earlier as a
schoolhouse for the children of the mill
workers building on our research with
the younger children we the high
schoolers created a master plan of what
we envision for the site the most novel
part of this whole experience
is that we were asked for the first time
in our lives what we wanted to see built
in our community it would seem that this
is a sensible question to ask our young
people but we rarely ever ask in a
meaningful way from the two years of
work with the rewire school children and
many other experts that we engaged along
the way rewire led to the creation of a
real estate development company called
till of which I am co-founder
I encourage you to think about who is
meaningfully engaged in the real estate
development process do you have a
meaningful say and what’s built around
you our process works to engage all
stakeholders in the real estate
development process including architects
yes finance years yes politicians of
course but we also engage the future of
our societies the extensible
beneficiaries of what we’re going to
build our young people but from our four
years of pre development work one theme
emerged as particularly relevant to all
of us
there was one aspect of the building
process that we all felt uncomfortable
about and that we needed to find a
solution for before we moved forward
with our vision for the site and that
one fact is that currently 40 percent of
the world’s energy is used in buildings
this makes buildings the largest
contributor to global greenhouse gas
emissions contributing to this problem
we’re repeating conventional methods of
construction was not part of our vision
for the world we wanted to grow up in
you might be thinking Olivia can’t you
just solve that with some solar panels
in a wind farm in part yes and that’s
certainly part of our development model
but astoundingly what that 40% figure
does not include are what we call
embodied emissions and embodied
emissions are those created and the
manufacturing of construction materials
for example the steel and concrete that
we manufacture to pave over surfaces and
to build buildings on top of them
actually contribute many tons of co2
into our atmosphere every year and
beyond that when we use things like
concrete to pave over our surfaces we
actually cause biological death of the
soil under
meaning that we’re destroying the soils
capacity to capture excess carbon in our
atmosphere and store it deep underground
and really stable carbon stores called
carbon sinks and it’s actually our
earthworms that are most crucial and
bringing that carbon from the atmosphere
into the soil deep into the ground when
we pave over our soil we kill those
worms and all related microbial life
thereby destroying soils capacity to act
as these incredibly important carbon
sinks so if we’re to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and mitigate climate
change we need a two-part solution we
need to reduce energy consumption yes
especially in the built environment with
things like solar panels and wind farms
but we also need to find ways to create
additional carbon dioxide storage so the
central question for our team then
became wouldn’t it be great if we could
find a way to turn large-scale real
estate development into sites for carbon
dioxide storage as opposed to the carbon
factories that they currently are how
would one do that we’ll use a method
called phytoremediation which uses
plants to not only take out the toxins
in the soil but phytoremediation also
allows the soil to continue sequestering
carbon from the atmosphere and storing
it in the soil in addition to practicing
phytoremediation we won’t be relying on
steel or concrete to build in their
place we will use a material called
cross laminated timber or CLT and CLT is
just a fancy name for a type of
engineered wood that’s actually a strong
as steel but what’s unique about CLT is
that it’s 50% sequestered carbon to put
that into perspective
some estimates calculate that a single
five-story CLT building
is able to cut emissions by levels
equivalent to removing 600 cars from the
road for a year so by combining
phytoremediation and building raised
above the ground out of cross laminated
timber our team has created a model of
real estate development that isn’t
contributing to climate change at all in
fact our model is carbon negative
meaning that it buys us time in climate
change now you might be wondering Olivia
is it really safe to live above these
remediating landscapes and what I would
say in response is that this is about
shifting our focus from removing any
exposure to any hazard in our
environment to thinking about the
pathways by which were exposed to
contaminants a quick analogy is what if
I told you that you’re going to be
walking down the street and I was going
to send a two-ton hurtling object past
you at 40 miles per hour
Olivia you would say please don’t do
that put up a barrier and protect me
right and if you haven’t guessed yet
what I’d be describing is a sidewalk
just as sidewalks protect us from cars
living separate and above these
landscapes protects us from the
contaminants below and actually our
research demonstrates that living and
working in these fight over mediating
brownfields is not only safe and
possible but actually creates a
healthier atmosphere than is the norm in
urban conditions too close I’d like to
go back that original line that
encouraged me to apply to rewire in the
first place it said your ideas will be
examined developed reworked and maybe
even realized what began as a problem
specific to my community has transformed
into a solution that can be applied
globally
to help slow down climate change there
are two to three million brownfields in
the United States alone it’s likely that
there’s a brownfield not too far from
where you live what if we turned every
one of those two to three million
brownfields and to economically
productive carbon storage sites that’s a
world I want to live in thank you
[Applause]
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