Nei­ther a drench­ing down­pour nor a tem­per­a­ture of 90 degrees on a July after­noon could deter thirty stu­dents in grades 3–5 intent on sand­ing and paint­ing 30 rain bar­rels for their vaca­tion bible school (VBS) ser­vice project at First Pres­by­ter­ian Church of Howard County. The chil­dren worked dili­gently to sand, wash, and prime 55 gal­lon [more…]

We are in our house for the long haul.  It is 95 years old, with past remod­el­ing efforts giv­ing lit­tle thought to energy per­for­mance.  Con­se­quently, I became a seri­ous stu­dent of air seal­ing and insu­la­tion, spend­ing the sum­mer of 2009 in the attic, the base­ment, and the crawl space under the kitchen.  The tools of [more…]

This post will likely end up a bit wonkier than our usual posts but I thought it might be worth­while to explain exactly what the Office of Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­ity is and tell its “ori­gin story”.  In the early months of 2007 newly elected County Exec­u­tive Ulman put together a Com­mis­sion on the Envi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­abil­ity [more…]

This blog entry is from Elissa Rei­neck – I’m a part-time Howard County employee and one thing I do is orga­nize com­mu­nity cleanup events.  Awhile ago, I was check­ing out the Sav­age Mill Trail because the area has been hav­ing some trash and other issues lately, and I had been con­tacted about doing a com­mu­nity [more…]

This past spring, my extended fam­ily and I learned of a then soon-to-be new addi­tion to the fam­ily.  Ella Rose would be arriv­ing from China with her par­ents (my sis­ter and brother-in-law) in May after more than four very long years of wait­ing.  For valid rea­sons, my other sis­ter and mother were not going to [more…]

“What in the world is this?”  My hus­band asked as we opened our Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture (CSA) cooler to explore our weekly pro­duce share.  As we began search­ing for recipes online about what to do with this week’s unique item: kohlrabi (Do you cook it?  Eat it raw? What burst of fla­vor should we expect [more…]

As evi­denced by the County’s recent give-away, 2010 Trees in 2010, plant­ing trees is a high pri­or­ity for the County.  What is the return on invest­ment for such a pro­gram?  I’ll tell you…Trees: -          Remove car­bon diox­ide from the air and  pro­duce oxy­gen; -          Pro­vide food and habi­tat for wildlife; -          Inter­cept water, store some [more…]

The con­cept of an energy man­ager is elu­sive to most peo­ple.  Orga­ni­za­tions are exposed to the risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties of energy use sim­ply by open­ing their doors in the morn­ing.  For starters, it is NOT sim­ply chas­ing after peo­ple to get them to turn lights off.  Energy rep­re­sents value that can be con­sumed, saved, invested, [more…]

It all started with Ash­leigh walk­ing her dog.  She was fed up with see­ing trash every­where she looked and decided to do some­thing about it.  A few emails and phone calls later, a com­mu­nity cleanup was on the agenda of the next neigh­bor­hood meet­ing in Cedar Villa Heights, a diverse com­mu­nity in Jes­sup.  A lot [more…]

So … a new blog huh?  Indeed the Office of Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­ity will be oper­at­ing this Live­G­reen­Howard Blog to talk about envi­ron­men­tal issues through­out Howard County and the work to cre­ate a cul­ture of sus­tain­abil­ity through­out.  My name is Joshua Feld­mark – I am the Direc­tor of this Office and one of five writ­ers for [more…]