Eastern 'Burbs Sustainability Huddle!

Join us this coming Sunday, May 7, 2017 from 1:00 to 3:00 PM in the downstairs program room of the Monroeville Public Library in conjunction with the Eastern Burbs Huddle and Monica Joyner to learn about easy ways we can all move into our beyond Sustainable Future. YES.WE. ARE!

No worries, No R.S.V.P. necessary. Come on over with some family and friends, or by yourself!

Facebook Link to the event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1752078305122487/

May is exploding with Sustainability events at the Monroeville Public Library!

Please note, Sustainable Monroeville will NOT meet on Monday evening, May 8, 2017 as we will be collaborating with the Eastern Suburbs "Huddle". 

MPL sponsored programs in May, 2017 are listed below. I hope to see you in May:) Elisa Beck :)

Backyard Composting

7:00 p.m. - 8:15 p.m.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Cosponsored by the Garden Club of Monroeville

Join us for a presentation about turning your kitchen scraps and pesticide/herbicide-free lawn clippings into treasure! Since 1998 Ellen C. Keefe has been passionate about teaching others how to recycle and reduce waste by making healthy compost. She also discusses the microscopic structures of compost and recent research regarding the benefits of it.

Ellen Keefe is Executive Director of the nonprofit Westmoreland Cleanways and Recycling in Latrobe, PA. Ellen is also a Derry Township Municipal Authority Board Member and was Board Chair for the Latrobe Municipal Authority. She attended Robert Morris University’s School of General Business Administration and Management and is a Certified Recycling Professional. Last year Ellen spoke at Monroeville Library regarding the work of Westmoreland Cleanways and Recycling.

Gallery Space

Climate Change: Challenges and Responses

7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

The scientific community is essentially unanimous in its conclusion that human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels and release of other greenhouse gases, is responsible for a rapid and significant increase in the average global temperature. This warming is leading to retreating glaciers and melting polar ice sheets, phenomena that will threaten water supplies and put coastal regions at risk from rising sea levels. Other environmental changes will disrupt ecological systems and agriculture. We are already seeing more extreme storms, droughts, floods, and outbreaks of disease that only will become worse without a change in our collective behavior.

For the past six years, Dr. Bob Mitchell has been informally researching the science and politics of climate change. He has taught several short courses on the subject, including in the Pitt and CMU Osher programs, and is an active member of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. In this talk, Bob will review Earth’s remarkable climate history and provide insights into its likely future. He will then examine the human consequences of a changing climate. Finally, he will discuss technological and policy approaches that offer hope for the future, including meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accords.

Dr. Mitchell has an MS in physics and a PhD in electrical engineering from CMU. His early career work on gas lasers and circuit breakers used much of the same fundamental physics that applies to climate modeling. Later he managed engineering research on automated image analysis with applications in radar, sonar, medicine, and robotics. He retired in 2014 as the industry director of the Army’s collaborative research program in robotics.

Gallery Space

Meet the Beekeeper!

7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Come spend some time with Monroeville beekeeper John Yakim. John will show everyone inside a real beehive and answer questions about honeybees, including how they make honey and how the honeybee helps improve our community. We’ll also learn what we can all do to help the bees survive and thrive!

Gallery Space

Elisa Beck:) 

LIKE Living Building Challenge Collaborative-Pittsburgh, Sustainable Monroeville, and Transition Pittsburgh on Facebook!

December 2015, Sustainable Monroeville, and COP 21 in Paris

Hello and Happy December!

In honor of the COP 21 conference in Paris, we will not have a Sustainable Monroeville meeting in December, 2015. Why no meeting this month? No free movie? No talking about how to create and document a more Sustainable Monroeville and a more Sustainable Metro Pittsburgh and more Sustainable Western PA? Hey, we will save some greenhouse gases! There's never been a person in all the years we've been having these meetings at the Monroeville Public Library that has biked or walked to a meeting in these suburbs. Prove me wrong! Yes, there have been carpools....
How are we individually and collectively going to reduce our carbon footprints?

Take time to catch up with filmmaker Mark Dixon on his journey. Learn from him and all the others who have put amazing time and energy into creating our new reality!

Follow these links for day by day COP 21 updates:
on Facebook: Mark's Climate Journey to COP 21
on the Blog: https://markatcop21.wordpress.com

Here's the link to the climate lecture Mark presented at a recent meeting of Sustainable Monroeville and has presented all over the Pittsburgh region: https://plus.google.com/115412509729507569276/posts/QC5Jpj4jjtZ

Mark is THE representative lay person who has traveled to Paris from Pittsburgh. Follow Pittsburgh's amazing Mayor, Bill Peduto, to see what is going on during the talks and figure out how you can shift your awareness and consciousness and wrap your heart and spirit around the changes you can make as an individual. Think of how you can be involved in your community to shift awareness and make positive changes towards carbon neutrality!

And get ready for an amazing 2016 life changing time! Happy Holidays and Happy end of 2015 and 2016 and Way Way beyond!!

Blessings,

Elisa Beck:)

Join us this coming Monday evening, March 3, 2014, for a plant based pot luck dinner at 6:00 PM, and to see the movie The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil  starting at 7:00 PM. Film run time is 53 minutes."When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990's, the country faced an immediate crisis-feeding the population-and an ongoing challenge: how to create a new low energy society. Cuba transitioned from large, fossil-fuel intensive farming to small, less energy intensive organic farms and urban gardens, and from a highly industrial society to a more sustainable one.

This film tells the story of the Cuban people's hardship, ingenuity, and triumph over sudden adversity-through cooperation, conservation and community, told in their own words. " "As the world (is experiencing) approaches (is the word in this text), Peak Oil. Cuba provides a valuable example of how to successfully address the challenge of reducing our energy use."

"Everyone who is concerned about Peak Oil needs to see this film. Cuba survived an energy famine during the 1990's, and how it did so constitutes one of the most important and hopeful stories of the past few decades. It is the story not just of individual achievement, but of the collective mobilization of an entire society to meet an enormous challenge." Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over, Powerdown

The time is now y'all. Let's learn together! Following the film on the Power of Community, we will show a few short excerpts of next month's film on the Latest in Clinical Nutrition by Michael Greger, M.D. creator of NutritionFacts.org. Dr. Greger is an amazing resource and appears each year at the North American Vegetarian Society meeting and recaps all of the literature produced from the prior year regarding nutrition. I call him a comedian doctor!

Join us with a friend or two and some of your family! This meeting is free and open to the public and you can be from any community! We'd love for you to join us! 

Elisa Beck :)

Founder, Sustainable Monroeville 

Cross pollinating communities; Join us!

Laura Beck and Pam Barroso of Monroeville at Schwartz Living Market's Upcycle/ARTZ Market!

Pat Fulkerson and his lovely wife, of Monroeville, participating in the South Side Soup Contest at the Schwartz Living Market! 

 Last month's Fifth Anniversary Pot luck dinner party of Sustainable Monroeville!

 Happy Five Years Sustainable Monroeville~!

 Hal Saville of EIS Solar demonstrating a solar panel at last month's meeting of Sustainable Monroeville. Thanks Hal!

 Houses with solar panels and smiling faces!

Life is Good! On Route 376 traveling towards Pittsburgh, PA!

Schwartz Living Market Call for Vendors!

Schwartz Living Market at 1317 East Carson Street in the heart of Pittsburgh’s historic South Side will be opening this summer, 2012, on Saturdays from 10 AM to 5 PM. We are looking for vendors that are interested in selling delicious healthy foods and drinks, beautiful art and more! There will be 16 vendor booths and a kitchen with a  cafe. The fees for booth rental are $50.00 to $60.00/ day and between $200.00 and $240.00/month at first with three month leases for food vendors, and six month leases for artists and others. Contact Pam Barroso at 412-315-9319, pjs787@gmail.com for a vendor application. We are working towards forming a cooperative/collaborative among the vendors and plan to expand to six days/week. Join us in the adventure of a life time!

Inside the building we will be showcasing local environmental and other non-profits and educating and engaging the local community about what sustainability and regenerative design and living is all about. If you are involved in a non- profit that would like to display inside the market, please contact us!

If you are interested in speaking to the crowds of folks that will be shopping at the market, feel free to contact us, and let us know which Saturday you'd like, and we will find an available time slot for you! On opening day this summer, and every Saturday, we will have a lot of folks there talking and demonstrating a variety of topics related to how to eat well, get healthy and stay healthy at this most interesting moment in history.

This building project inside and out is one of creating sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of life. Join Us!

Our long term project of transforming the building into a Living Building of an Existing Historic Structure that is zero net energy and zero net water is in the works. As you may know, our project has been registered with the International Living Futures Institute for over a year! Pretty cool for the ‘ Burgh and Main Street USA, eh?

A Living Market. What does that mean? Well, how about a market where you can get food that is as close to having its life force as possible. Food that is as close to being picked as possible? Or maybe you can pick the food on-site. Gee whiz, that might be too lofty a goal for the short term project we are working on, but we shall see! What else could a Living Market have inside of it? Perhaps plants that are alive, fresh air to breathe, fresh water and green juice to drink, and fresh, bright walls to look at so you feel good when you walk inside? What does Living Market mean to you?

I often refer people to the Sustainable Monroeville web/blog as the "back story" of the Schwartz Market project. You see, I live in the Municipality of Monroeville and founded Sustainable Monroeville in February, 2009, before I had ever heard of the Transition Town work of Rob Hopkins or had even thought about working with our family building at 1317 East Carson Street in Pittsburgh's historic South Side. The Schwartz Living Market project is physically located in the South Side, but the project's reach goes far beyond. After all, connecting the idea of Food, Not Lawns and us suburbanites selling the food we grow on our front and back yards with the urban core through the Schwartz Market project is a dream I've been thinking about for quite a long time now. And it is happening! Think about who you know who is ready to have a business in the South Side flats of Pittsburgh, the historic district, one of the few long historic main streets in the USA. And send them our way! My husband Stan's grandfather, Morris Schwartz, who founded Schwartz Market in the early part of the century would be proud! Elisa Beck

Living Building Renovation

Check out this video by Kevin May of the Cultural Recyclists and learn something about a fascinating project in Pittsburgh's historic South Side. What can we learn from this work out here in the Pittsburgh suburbs?