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Sustainable Tulsa Newsletter                          October 2012
In This Issue
2013 Henry Bellmon Award Winners
First Thursdays!
Guthrie Greens
Our Sponsors

Ihloff Salon and Day Spa Employees 'Jeans Day Program'

 

Southside Rotary Club of Tulsa
 

Covanta
 

PSO/AEP

 

Jenkins Consulting Group

 

Green Star

 

Become a member today!

Click here and become a member of Sustainable Tulsa today!

  

Sustainable Tulsa members receive our free updates and can request a free copy of the 2010 Tulsa Area Green Directory. Your membershiphelps support:

  • Sustainability education in the Tulsa area
  • Henry Bellmon Sustainability Awards
  •  Elote SalsaFest
  •  McLain Renewable Energy Program
  • CNG School Bus Partnership
  •  "First Thursdays!'
  •  Launching Sustainable Tulsa Business Program
Green Tips

Mushrooms  

Mushrooms are useful not only as food and medicine; some are also being used in bioremediation; a method to absorb and digest dangerous substances like oil, pesticides, and industrial waste in places where they threaten the environment. 

Green Jobs

 

For Information on Green Jobs in Oklahoma visit:

http://oklahoma.greenjobs.net/

 

Click here  for the OSU Stillwater Extension Assistant, with emphasis on solid waste, job opening summary.

Who We Are

Director

Corey Williams

  

Newsletter Editor

Will Huffman

  

Board of Directors

 

President: Marilyn Ihloff

Vice President: Denise Reid

Treasurer/Secretary: Connie Cohea

 

Members:

Libby Auld

Jessica John-Bowman

Dan Cameron

Brett Fidler

Richard Gajan

Brandon Perkins

 

Leadership Tulsa Board Interns

Kenton Grant

Joanne Ferguson

About Us

 

Sustainable Tulsa aims to educate and share in the process of developing a sustainability force through our volunteer program. Please see the list below of the many Sustainable Tulsa volunteer opportunities.

 

Volunteer opportunities include: 

  • Elote SalsaFest
  • Henry Bellmon Sustainability Awards
  • Green Directory
  • 'First Thursdays!'
  • Website Champion
  • Green Mentor

'First Thursdays!'

 

Sustainable Tulsa also meets the first Thursday of each month at Elote Cafe and Catering, 514 S. Boston Ave., in downtown Tulsa. You will find us all the way in the back. We meet at 12:30 PM for lunch and from 1:00-2:00 PM we have a guest speaker and networking. Please join us!!

 

For more information, please contact Corey Williams at [email protected]

918.808.6576 

Contact Us

 

Phone: 918.808.6576

[email protected]

www.sustainabletulsa.org

Facebook:

Sustainable Tulsa (Official) 

 

Mailing Address:

Sustainable Tulsa

P.O. Box 3543

Tulsa, OK 74101-3543

Fall Activities
First Thursdays! with Guest Speaker Green Country Permaculture

Concert Series

 

Follow us on facebook to learn about more events and opportunities

Save the Date


Sustainable Tulsa

Business Panel

Thursday,

November 15th

8:30 am to 10:00 am

OSU-Tulsa

 

Look for more information in our November Newsletter. 

 

Contact Corey Williams at

918-808-6576

 for more information.

 

Sustainable Tulsa promotes responsible economic growth, environmental stewardship, and quality of life for all. Sustainable Tulsa is working toward Tulsa being recognized as the leader in sustainability of the Midwest. Sustainability is the triple bottom line; the balance of people, profit, and planet.

Henry Bellmon Sustainability Award Winners

by Ashley Fuller 

2013 Henry Bellmon Awards

Susan Savage, Former mayor of Tulsa and Oklahoma Secretary of State,  State, Ann  McFerron, Bellmon   Daughter and  Co-Owner of Turtle Rock Farms, Tom Wilson, Henry Bellmon Sustainability Awards Co-chair, and Matt Newman, Director of Business Management of Covanta Energy

              

 

Covanta Energy received the overall 2012 Henry Bellmon Sustainability Award during the third annual statewide competition. The energy-from-waste facility was honored along with three other organizations at an awards gala September 13 at Southern Hills Country Club.

 

The Indian Nation Council of Governments' Ozone Alert! program won the 2012 Quality of Life for All Award while Tulsa Community College's Center for Energy Excellence and Innovation won this year's Responsible Economic Growth Award for its Oklahoma Project Green. The 2012 Environmental Stewardship Award went to the Oklahoma Conservation Commission for its Oklahoma Carbon Program. "

Covanta is an outstanding corporate citizen in many ways," says Corey Williams, executive director of Sustainable Tulsa. "Its commitment to sustainability is clear in the way it operates and its focus on protecting air quality far above EPA standards. The company also reaches out to benefit Tulsans in interesting and unexpected ways, which set it apart from the competition this year. "

Tulsa's Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility processes municipal solid waste into clean energy and steam. Energy-from-Waste facilities provide a sustainable, safe alternative to landfills, recycle metal and reduce greenhouse gases.

All of the Bellmon winners exhibited success in four key areas, including developing innovative solutions in targeted areas of sustainability; adaptation/implementation of sustainable practices; integration of all three aspects of sustainability: quality of life, responsible economic growth, and environmental stewardship; and demonstrated leadership in sustainability practices for Oklahoma.

Former Tulsa mayor and former Oklahoma Secretary of State Susan Savage addressed the capacity crowd about Henry Bellmon's legacy saying, "Henry Bellmon practiced what he preached to broaden the possibilities for people from all walks of life in Oklahoma. " Savage noted the importance of collaborative work between the many corporate entities, government agencies and community advocates who are leading the way in sustainability issues, saying that "developing long-range sustainability strategies will ensure livability in our state for generations to come."  Read More 

 

To see pictures from the event click hereFor questions, please contact Corey Williams at [email protected] and 918-808-6576.

 

     

First Thursdays!

Permaculture planting for the future

 

So what is permaculture?  Many of you have heard about this new approach to gardening, but what defines it and how can you begin this process in your garden and home?  Permaculture is more that just a garden, but a "design discipline for productive systems such as gardens, farms, homesteads, and urban sites utilizing ecological principles found in natural systems." according to James Spicer and Sam Sneller with Green Country Permaculture. Our next guest speakers, James Spicer and Sam Sneller, will share about the the ecological principles combined with a design method that "help to create sustainable, healthy abundant landscapes while meeting basic human needs."  Come learn the basic principals of permaculture, trees and shrubs to consider this fall and start planting for the future at Sustainable Tulsa's next First Thursdays! on October 4th at Elote Cafe, 514 S Boston in downtown Tulsa.  (Lunch 12:30 and guest speaker and networking from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm.)

 

Green Country Permaculture (GCP) was started by Sam Sneller and James Spicer in the Spring of 2012. GCP has provided educational consulting with 6 public schools in Tulsa. They also currently works with 15 individuals and families helping to design and establish resilient and ecologically functional landscapes. GCP values, environmental quality, local food production and access, entrepreneurial opportunity, and education for the public. James and Sam see now as a great time for Tulsans to reevaluate landscape practices and move towards stewardship, function and abundance.     

James Spicer  is a Tulsa native, studied Agro-ecology at Prescott College in Arizona. He continued onto Cottage Grove, Oregon to complete a Permaculture Design Course and Internship through Humboldt State at the Aprovecho Research Institute. Sam Sneller, went to Arizona to study Agro-ecology and Natural History at Prescott College. He continued to learn about permaculture and received his Permaculture Design Certificate from Aprovecho Research Center in Oregon.

 

First Thursdays! with Sustainable Tulsa are free and open to the public and chance for you to network with your community and learn about sustainability happening in the Tulsa area. We have guest speaker each month on a variety of topics. This is also an opportunity to let others know about what you are working on! Come learn and share! We meet the first Thursday of each month at Elot� Caf� and Catering, 514 S Boston, Tulsa, OK. We gather at 12:30 for lunch and 1:00 to 2:00 for the guest speaker and networking. For more information click here or contact Corey Williams, 918-808-6576. Join us!

 

Thank you to Covant Energy

and Jenkins Consulting Group

for their sponsorship of First Thursdays!

Guthrie Green is Green!

For the next month Sustainable Tulsa will be enjoying the free Tulsa Roots Music Concert Series each Sunday from 2:30 to 6:15 at the Guthrie Green. We will have a booth with information from around the community on all kinds of sustainability issues and opportunities. Come out and join us and enjoy the music and the people! When you come out to the Guthrie Green you will be amazed and proud of Tulsa. The George Kaiser Family Foundation purchased the property in 2007 with the vision for the site to be a "green, gathering space for The Brady Arts District."
 

 

So what is green? The park is a Brownsfield reclamation project and they have performed environmentally friendly removal of twelve fuel tanks left over from previous industrial uses. The park and surrounding area has one hundred and twenty High Performance Goe Exchange wells, which offers renewable energy source to eight local Non-profits. They have included bio swells that help catch nonpoint source water pollution. The water is then filter by the native plants in the swells before entering the storm drain. Guthrie Green has LED lighting, low energy use lighting, around the park. And recycling, well the trash is hauled by a company that will pick through the trash and recycle the local recyclables.  So yeah for Tulsa and a big thank you to the George Kaiser Family Foundation for helping to raise the sustainability index in Tulsa.

If you would like to learn more about the green components of Guthrie Greens and the parks use visit their website at guthriegreen.com. To learn more about the Tulsa Roots Music, bringing great free concerts to downtown Tulsa visit them at tulsarootsmusic.org. We hope to see you this Sunday!