When we think about the carbon emissions of buildings so far we’ve focused largely on two things: the emissions involved in operating the buildings and those involved in the building materials and construction. But there’s a third piece that we’ve largely overlooked, which is all the stuff inside the buildings: furniture, carpet, the lights, the seats. All that stuff puts greenhouse gases in the air when it’s made, when it’s transported, installed, and eventually discarded.

Now consider a company like Salesforce, which designs and develops enterprise software and operates 59 offices around the world. Every time one of those offices is renovated, it means carbon emissions, which is a problem for a company that’s committed to sustainable practices. But through some consistent efforts, Salesforce has been chipping away at the carbon emissions of its workplaces.

In this episode, brought to you in partnership with Interface, we discuss those efforts with Amanda von Almen, senior manager of sustainability and head of sustainable business environments at Salesforce, and Lisa Conway, vice president of sustainability, Americas, at Interface, who supplies all of the flooring solutions at Salesforce—and explore why workplaces are really an important factor in the fight against climate change.

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2002, the architect William McDonough and the chemist Michael Braungart came up with a rather revolutionary idea. The duo had recently published their groundbreaking book, "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things," and would go on to become leaders in the sustainability movement, In fact, they anticipated many aspects of what we today call the circular economy. But back in 2002, the architect and the chemist wrote an essay titled Buildings Like Trees, Cities Like Forests for a book called "The Catalog of the Future."

Today, 20 years later, we return to that idea: Can buildings be like trees? This episode includes two segments. First, Metropolis editor in chief Avinash Rajagopal reads the introduction to Braungart and McDonough's essay. Then, we dive into Urban Sequoia, a proposal by the architecture firm SOM that takes giant redwood trees as the inspiration for carbon-capturing skyscrapers and cities.

Resources:

Urban Sequoia Raises the Bar on Carbon Neutral Urban Design: metropolismag.com/projects/urban-sequoia-responsible-disruptors/

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Even if you don't care about technology, it's likely you've heard something about the metaverse. It's a sort of 3-dimensional, immersive internet that would take lots of technologies that exist already today, like video games, VR, and NFTs, and find a way to connect all of them.

While our team was reporting on this new phenomenon for our January/February 2022 issue, we began to wonder about the carbon footprint of the metaverse. There is no metaverse without the cloud, which actually lives in buildings—steel and concrete buildings called data centers. If more people get in the metaverse, more stuff gets on the cloud, more data centers—you get the picture. There's got to be a way to start addressing this before the problem gets out of hand.

Can we build an online world that doesn't destroy the real one? In this episode, reporter Audrey Grey speaks to Drs. Julie Kriegh and Hyun Woo "Chris" Lee, UW College of Built Environments colleagues, who were part of a team imagining a completely different future for data centers.

Resources:

The Design Guide to the Metaverse: metropolismag.com/viewpoints/metaverse-design-guide/

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Deep Green is back for Season 2 on March 1!

Can we build an online world that doesn't destroy the real one? Check your feed on March 1 for our debut episode of season 2, which will explore the carbon footprint of the metaverse. Then join us every other Tuesday for future episodes covering topics like buildings as trees, water bodies as batteries, and a whole lot more.

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Waste is a complex issue. How we generate waste, what kinds of chemicals and materials are in our garbage, where we choose to dispose of it, and who is affected the most by the trash we generate—all of these things make waste reduction and management very challenging.But one thing is clear: if we think of our trash as simply worthless and dirty, we've pretty much lost the battle against climate change. So maybe that's our starting point—our mindset about what we value and what we throw away.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Aquafil, synthetic materials producer of Econyl.

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Aquafil, synthetic materials producer of Econyl.

A couple of weeks ago, British prime minister Boris Johnson got into a bit of a pickle with some remarks ahead of the UN climate change conference, also known as COP26, which happened in Glasgow. A group of 8- to 12-year-olds met the prime minister at 10 Downing Street this week and asked him, ‘What will you do to make sure less plastic gets into the oceans?” He got a lot of plastics manufacturers and associations really upset when he said recycling isn't the answer. Is he right? That's the question we're going to try and answer today. What is the problem with recycling plastics?

In segment one, materials guru Dr. Andrew Dent, who consults with big global brands on what their products should be made of, takes us through the ins and outs of how we can address our plastics problem. Then, in segment two, we hear a success story from Giulio Bonazzi, CEO of plastics manufacturer Aquafil, who managed to wean an entire division of his company off of virgin plastic.

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, produced in partnership with global flooring manufacturer Interface, Metropolis Editor in Chief Avi Rajagopal sits down with Dr. Katharine Wilkinson and Lisa Conway to discuss how we can all fight the climate crisis—emphasis on all.

Dr. Wilkinson is an author, strategist, and teacher. Her books on climate include the best-selling anthology "All We Can Save" and "The Drawdown Review." She leads the All We Can Save Project, which she cofounded with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in support of women leading on climate. She also cohosts the podcast "A Matter of Degrees," telling stories for the climate curious with Dr. Leah Stokes.

As vice president of sustainability at Interface, Conway helps the company work toward their mission: climate take-back. She is also cofounder of the Materials Carbon Action Network and an incredible leader on climate change and sustainability within the architecture and design professions.

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced so many shifts and undercurrents in our world, and many are so subtle that historians will probably spend decades tracking and understanding them all. But some are not so subtle, if you know where to look at the data. Between April and June this year, construction of multifamily housing—apartment buildings and condos—grew by 25.5% in suburban areas. By contrast, construction of the same type of building declined by half a percentage point in major cities. There's no two ways about it. There's going to be a lot more Americans living in suburbs.

Every new building means more carbon emissions in the atmosphere, so if the suburbs continue to see as much new construction as they have this past year, we have to act fast. What can we do to A) use the buildings we already have in the suburbs and B) modify existing infrastructure to mitigate some of the negative effects of new construction? Luckily, there's plenty of good news out of the suburbs on that front. In this episode, Metropolis editor Ethan Tucker speaks with Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, who is co-author of the book Retrofitting Suburbia, a compendium of 32 case studies for how suburbs are building for better quality of life and a better impact on the planet.

Resources:

Can Underused Malls Help Build Healthy Communities?: https://metropolismag.com/viewpoints/underused-malls-dlr-group/

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this sequel to our last episode ("How Can We Create Green Affordable Housing?"), we continue the conversation with Shelley Halstead, executive director of the nonprofit Black Women Build. Conventional wisdom holds that the answer to America's housing crisis has been—how can we build new homes, build them cheaply, build them fast, and build them at scale? But every new building we put up is a carbon debt—tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We need other strategies. Metropolis editor speaks with Halstead about Black Women Build, which she founded to help Black women purchase rundown houses and learn the skills to rehab the buildings into homes they can live in. Through sheer dint of their labor, women have seen homes that they purchased for $6,000 or $11,000 now be valued at $80,000. It's a painstaking but thorough way of chipping away at racial and economic inequity, one person and one house at a time.

Resources:

How Recycling Buildings Could Solve the Urban Housing Crisis: metropolismag.com/sustainability/reuse-urban-housing-crisis

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Most low-wage workers in the United States don't currently make enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Millennials aren't able to buy homes because they are, on average, poorer than their parents were at the same age. However, the last thing we need is to worsen the climate crisis as we solve America's housing crisis. Every time we build a new structure, we put carbon emissions in the air. If we had to provide housing for every American by building new apartment blocks, that would put us deep in the red on carbon emissions. Now, if we could convert existing buildings into affordable housing, that would be something. To discuss that and other avenues to address both climate and housing security, senior editor Kelly Beamon sat down with two guests: Katie Swenson, senior principal at MASS Design Group and author of Design With Love: At Home in America, and Shelley Halstead, executive director of the nonprofit Black Women Build. 

Resources:

How Recycling Buildings Could Solve the Urban Housing Crisis: metropolismag.com/sustainability/reuse-urban-housing-crisis

Connect with Metropolis:

metropolismag.com

Instagram: @metropolismag

Facebook: facebook.com/MetropolisMag/

Deep Green is a production of SANDOW Design Group.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.