Sustainable Claire

by Mike Newall

Sustainable Claire was heading out to buy some eyeglasses the other day, and that's worth mentioning because Sustainable Claire recently completed her first semester of the masters in sustainable design program at Philadelphia University. The year-and-a-half-old program is dedicated to the emerging industries of eco-friendly architecture and engineering, and urban planning. Last year, there were only nine students. Now, there are 24, plus a waiting list. People are realizing that it's a good time to study sustainability, with President-elect Obama promising a "Green New Deal" and billions of dollars of investment going into the green economy.

A trip to the eyeglass store would shed some insight on her studies, explained Claire.

Inside the examination room, the optometrist studied Claire's chart. He was an older guy with a colorful sweater. Claire is young and pretty with blue eyes. Her blonde hair was tied up underneath a poofy knit hat.

"So, what do you do?" the doctor smiled.

Claire does not always tell people about her program, since people's eyes tend to glaze over when you start talking about sustainability. But this was a doctor.

"People think it's about being green and being a hippie," she began earnestly. "But it's all about cutting energy and about making smart choices at every ..."

"When I was in college I took a class, I guess you could call it ecology," the optometrist interrupted, without looking up from his chart. "One day the professor showed us some slides, and there was one of a field, and the professor said, 'This is where the cows get milked: It's the dairy area.'"

Except the doctor sounded dairy area out slowly so it sounded like derriere. He smiled when he did that.

It took Claire a few seconds to realize the doctor was making a joke.

Done with the exam, Claire perused the eyeglass racks.

"Generally," she said, "when I tell someone I'm going back to school for sustainable design, they just smile and, out of politeness, say something like, 'Oh, what can you do with that?'"

Claire already has an idea. As part of her studies, she came up with a business plan for her own consulting firm that will help local businesses and manufacturers reduce operating costs by minimizing wasted energy. This is a growing industry. A few new national firms are already raking in hundreds of millions helping Fortune 500 companies reduce their carbon footprints.

"It's like with these glasses," she said, holding a blue-and-gray pair imported from China. "I would do a life cycle analysis of all the different products they have, find out what their raw materials are made of, where they're coming from, where they're being made, how far the transportation is, if they have policies to take in old glasses and recycle them, and so on."

Claire has four semesters left. It's tough work, and she's still learning. As part of a lab course, she was assigned to build a nontoxic kitchen plate. She decided she'd make one out of recycled denim and plastic resin. Chemical catalysts were needed to harden the plastic. The chemicals are very toxic. So on Thanksgiving Day, Claire put on her gloves and goggles and stood in the cold outside her in-laws farmhouse, mixing the plastic, denim and resin. 

After the first two attempts, the plate was still as gooey as mashed potatoes. Figuring the cold was hindering the process, Claire moved her project into the front parlor, opening the window for ventilation. Soon, the whole house smelled like fumes. The parlor room is right above the furnace, and her father-in-law worried that the whole place would explode.

"You learn as much from your failures as you do your successes," Claire said with a smile.

Claire says the program offers an optimistic view of what America's role could be in a new, green world.

"More and more, people are realizing that sustainability needs to be ingrained into all facets of their lives," she said. "Hopefully, Obama will be successful in conveying this as a crisis situation, and that the time to act is now."

Still, Claire is careful not to be too preachy about her field, not wanting to scare people who might slowly be coming around to sustainable thought.

After picking out a few pairs of glasses, Claire sat down with the sales clerk. He was a young guy.

"It's hard for men to accessorize," he said, filling out the paperwork. "Eyeglasses help me accessorize. I have 16 pairs, one for every shirt."

"What do you do?" he asked.

Claire decided to pass on that one.

Dispatch is filed from all corners of Philadelphia. E-mail mike.newall@citypaper.net.