Green Garage Sustainability Labs
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Contents
What is It?
- The Green Garage Sustainability Labs lives in the Green Garage ecosystem as one of the five Seeds near the core of the ecosystem. Life emanates in all directions from each one of the Seeds.
- The Labs roots are far reaching, spreading from interactions within the building, creating relationships and partnerships through collaboration with other organizations and people, and reaching its new growth roots out into the virtual world.
- Much like the Sustainability Library, the Labs deals in information brokering but with an emphasis on the science behind things and using it to find the truth in things that are being done with the intent to become more sustainable.
- The Labs is the Truth Window into what this Community is trying to do to improve our triple bottom line and to develop One Earth patterns of living.
- Participation in the Labs' work may take on many forms, ranging from hands-on work within the building itself, to outreach in the local and regional communities, to virtual participation through electronic forms of media and communications.
- It is somewhat uniquely positioned to tap the power of the World collective.
- Sustainability Labs Wiki is devoted to development of the Labs Community, the Work, and the Fun.
- Also known as:
- The Labs
- GG Labs
- Sustainability Labs
- GGSL
- The MADD Scientists (Making a Difference Daily)
Why is it Important?
- Finding the Truth through Science to verify that what we think is true about our decisions and actions in the sustainable community
- Stewardship to our Community and Earth by measuring the Truth
- Designing and performing experiments the help us gather factual data to show us the truth
- Stages we see for our services:
- Identify a question, opportunity, or decision that needs to be made
- Perform experiment or study to collect data related to the experiment
- Analyze the data to create truthful and meaningful information that may be used by others
- Report the data and findings from the analysis to the collective to inform decisions and actions made by interested parties
- There are different levels of understanding, interest, and potential intimidation that people feel when thinking and talking about Science. We feel that some element of science understanding is necessary to be more mindful of how we are treating the Earth and all of the resources we use from the Earth so that we can truly understand how we are impacting Earth with our existence. GG Labs seeks to help make science less "scary" so that our communities can adopt some level of science as a language to observe, test, and redesign how we live our lives to decrease our impact on the Earth to a One Earth existence.
- The Labs provide real world information that helps to:
- strengthen our relationship to the earth...all are connected (sun, wind, water, plants and animals)
- restore the planet's eco-systems (plant, animal, water, air)
- builds strong communities.
- creates equal economic opportunities and energy.
- creates One Earth patterns of living
When to Use It?
- List the important considerations when to use this pattern.
- When would it be sustainable?
- To prove that an idea really is more sustainable than other alternatives.
- To confirm that something has been optimized or find out where more improvements could be made.
- When would it not be sustainable?
- When just taking measurements for the sake of measurements without a specific purpose for why the readings are being taken.
Green Garage Use of Sustainability Labs
Sustainability Goals
- For better or for worse, the Labs strives to find the truth by measuring what we are doing.
- The Labs strives to quantify if at all possible. Measurements add perspective and help us make better decisions.
- It doesn't describe how...just the outcomes.
- Green Garage foundation elements:
- strengthens our relationship to the earth
- moves us towards a sustainable future
- environmental integrity
- community wellbeing
- economic energy and justice
- creates a One Earth pattern of living for others to use
Strategy and Conceptual Design
- Describe how we plan to achieve these goals
- Explain why we chose this specific strategy and design (our rationale)
- Include pictures, drawings or videos(flickr)
Supporting Science:
Proposed Materials / Suppliers
- Identify (via links and short description) the materials and suppliers we propose to use.
- Refer to construction information and individual lab pages.
Development Story
The Sustainability Labs page contains many images and videos documenting the process used at the Green Garage to design, build and operate our Sustainability Labs.
Related Internal Links
- Help people find other related Green Garage pages that may help them. Keep it tight.
Resources
- Provide valuable links to help make it easier for others to pursue this pattern.
To Do's
- Finish this pattern
- Develop brief description of what Labs is
- Scientific Study of Sustainability
- Scientific study to support sustainable stewardship of our Community and Earth.
