Sustainability Award Winners 2018

Congratulations to all the individuals and organizations working to build sustainable communities. The award winners were honored at the 10th Annual Leadership in Sustainability Awards Gala on September 20th, 2018.

Category: Leadership in Sustainable Communities

North Richmond Watershed Connections Project

North Richmond is a historically underserved community located near several industrial facilities. It is also home to many natural features, including San Pablo Creek and Wildcat Creek. The North Richmond Watershed Connections Project is a partnership between the County’s Public Works Department and two community-based organizations: Urban Tilth and The Watershed Project, to meet the need for cleaner, greener, safer, and more walkable neighborhoods. The Project knits together a suite of green infrastructure projects along a 1.75 mile-long urban trail. Elements include construction of linear rain gardens, tree planting, volunteer opportunities, education programs and employment opportunities with the Green Collar Corps.

Category: Food System Innovation

The Bounty Garden

The Bounty Garden is a 100% non­profit food community program committed to providing a source of fresh, organic vegetables to the local Food Banks of Contra Costa and Solano Counties. It was conceived by the mother­-daughter team of Heidi and Amelia Abramson after they visited local food banks and learned that fresh produce was the scarcest and most valuable provision of all. Volunteers of all ages come together in a hands­-on program to learn about growing organic vegetables while becoming a part of the answer to hunger in our community. The founders also partnered with the City of Danville to initiate a compost program at the garden that incorporated landscape trimmings from the adjacent park.

Category: Leadership in Sustainable Resource Management

Diablo Valley College

The Sustainability Committee at Diablo Valley College, with the collaboration of Vice President John Nahlen and committee co-chairs Sharrie Bettencourt and Frank Ichigaya, hosts an annual campus Earth Day event and has coordinated various programs and speakers during Earth Month. The committee also advocates and advises on waste reduction and recycling, alternative transportation, energy and water efficiency, and pollution prevention. In 2016 , food waste composting was introduced to the cafeteria and culinary building. The Sustainability Committee members collaborate with students on creating a universal transit pass, closely track electric vehicle charging stations, and participate annually in Bike to Work Day. The campus utilizes recycled water from Central San for landscaping purposes. In 2017 the custodial department attained Green Business certification through the Contra Costa Green Business Program.

County Connection’s Downtown Trolley

County Connection’s Route 4, also known as the Downtown Trolley, is a bus route subsidized by the City of Walnut Creek that provides free fare bus service seven days a week, at 15-minute intervals on weekdays. The free route circulates through the city’s downtown core, with layovers at BART and Broadway Plaza, a large regional shopping center. The Downtown Trolley is one of the most successful routes in the entire bus system in terms of ridership, carrying 256,615 passengers in the short period between July 2017 and June 2018. The four-trolley replica electric buses all operate on Route 4 and replaced a fleet of diesel trolleys that had reached the end of their expected service life. The all-electric system eliminates the internal combustion engine, and the larger electric batteries store more energy. County Connection is one of the first public transit authorities in the nation to implement a fleet of in-route, inductively charged electric buses.

Category: Lifetime Achievement

Judith Adler

Judy has been involved in environmental education in the Bay Area for over two decades. She has taught thousands of schoolchildren about nature, and has helped them gain a sense of individual responsibility for caring for the earth. Through her business, Diablo Nature Adventures, she provides field experiences in such subjects such as geology, geography, aquatic biology, and the cultural and natural history of the Diablo region. Her “Tomorrow Land Garden”, a Certified Wildlife Habitat, includes a small farm with chickens, a rainwater harvesting system, a pond, and many California native and/or pollinator friendly plants. Judith is a water conservation and environmental advocate. As a committee member of the Walnut Creek Watershed Council, she introduced an earth-friendly maintenance paradigm for the Iron Horse Corridor that included development of educational signage and a creek guide. She also helped inspire the development of California Proposition 72 which encourages the widespread use of low-cost water capture and storage systems.

Category: Rising Stars

Alhambra High School’s Public Health Academy

Public Health Academy Students at Alhambra High School effectively promoted the Idle Free campaign in Martinez and Contra Costa County. The Idle Free campaign asks drivers to turn off their engines when stopped for 30 seconds or more. Pollutants in automobile exhaust affect the environment as well as our health, especially in children and the elderly. Over a two-year campaign using discussions with school leaders and teachers, Idle Free signs and banners, and conversations with parents, the students convinced the Martinez School Board and city council to endorse no idling policies. In addition, Jobette Jingco and Lindsey Osmer collaborated with the Contra Costa County Sustainability Coordinator and the Spare the Air Resource Team of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to develop and administer a survey of people who had taken the Idle Free Pledge. They presented their findings to the County Board of Supervisors and recommended Idle Free signage for county offices and fleet vehicles, more direct messaging to county employees, and a policy that prohibits idling in county vehicles.

Category: Sustainable Economics

MCE

As California’s first Community Choice Aggregation agency, MCE gives its customers the ability to choose affordable, renewable energy that promotes increased greenhouse-gas reduction, local generation and workforce development, and positive, sustainable, and transformative change in our energy markets that lead to a healthier future for our community. MCE’s local renewable energy sources include MCE Solar One, a 10.5 Megawatt solar farm located on a remediated brownfield site within the Chevron refinery in Richmond. It produces enough renewable energy to serve nearly six percent of Richmond’s electricity load, and will eliminate 3,234 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. To construct Solar One, MCE partnered with Richmond BUILD to train and hire skilled, local graduates. The project was partially funded by MCE’s Deep Green service-level customers, who pay a penny per kilowatt-hour premium for 100% renewable pollution-free wind and solar power produced in California.

Pierre Barlier/KeepCool Bags

Pierre Barlier’s reusable bag company, KeepCool, has been helping to encourage people to bring their reusable bags while shopping since long before it was a common habit. Pierre’s mission to “rid the planet of single-use bags — one bag at a time” was visionary, when he began pioneering the reusable bag movement over two decades ago. When Pierre first began presenting his reusable totes to a few of the nation’s top retailers, some of the more progressive retailers took a chance on working with him. Then, as now, he approached everything with a view for the long haul and sought to build a partnership over time, sacrificing short-term profits for long-term gains. Today, KeepCool employs 12 employees in Orinda, where they work out of the landmark Vintage House, after being located in Lafayette for more than ten years. His vision and ideals form the pillars of the company: innovation, affordability, honesty, and — above all — sustainability.