A technician checks the combustion efficiency and safety of a water heater—an important part of any home energy audit.

I hope I’m certifiable. I’ll find out in about a year when I’ve completed all the training and taken the written and field exams to become a Building Performance Institute (BPI) certified Building Analyst. The certification would allow me to perform energy audits on homes and maybe even get paid for it if I started an auditing business or joined an existing company. The certification would not prepare me to perform energy upgrade measures, such as air sealing and insulating an attic, only recommend the most cost effective ones. Many energy auditors work with a team of trusted contractors who can do the work the homeowner chooses.

My publisher Tom White and I decided that going through the kind of training that we have been pushing in our magazine will give me a more realistic view of the home performance industry, and the people who are just entering it now—the new weatherization workers, and newly minted technicians, contractors, and small business owners who will help build the new green economy. And it’s an excuse to get off my butt and out of the office more often. If I get certified, I’ll need to continue taking classes and have hands-on experience in the field to stay certified.

There are three kinds of certifications for a wannabe energy auditor to consider: certification as a Building Analyst through BPI; certification as a HERS (Home Energy Rating System) rater through the Residential Energy Services Network; or one of many “green builder” certifications that exist nationwide. I think the Building Analyst is the most basic. The training follows closely that of a HERS rater, but HERS raters need to become expert at rating software; it’s a bit more involved. I thought about being certified through Build It Green California as a Green Building Professional. But once I’m certified through BPI, I think it would be a small step to being certified by the other organizations.

Now I am asking what many people in the midst of career decisions are asking. Where do I go for the training and how much will it cost? BPI is in Malta, New York. (Might as well be Malta, the country.) Fortunately, BPI has hundreds of affiliates and approved trainers all over the country. There is also online training, and trainers who will travel to your hometown, as long as you have several people interested in the training. My plan so far is to complete an online training course through well-respected training organization, Saturn Online. That will prepare me for the Building Analyst written exam. I can even take the exam online. The course costs $595, plus about $70 for a book and field manual. Once you start the online course, you have about 8 weeks to complete it, so I can study and take the quizzes and final exam in my spare time—maybe over the holidays. The written exam fee is $225.

But you can’t get all the training you need online, nor would I want to. (Remember me wanting to get off my butt more often?) Saturn also offers three day intensive hands-on field seminars in locations in several locations around the country that culminate in the Building Analyst field exam. I have friends in Portland I haven’t seen in a while; maybe I’ll go there for my field training. The field seminar costs $950. If you want to take the exam at the end of the seminar, there is an additional $350 charge for proctoring. Total costs of going for BPI Building Analyst certification: $2,190. The value of certification: priceless.

According to Sunset Scavenger Spokesman Robert Reed, San Francisco residents should have nothing but "film plastics" (like plastic bags from stores and dry cleaners) and polystyrene, aka Styrofoam.

But the life of a recycling ascetic ain't easy. First of all, it means learning the rules of your particular community, since recycling practices vary depending on where you live. Probably, It means forgoing juice boxes, disposable diapers, complicated, multi-material packaging. It means you've scraped out your cat food cans ("contaminated" recyclables are often tossed). If you're a paper shredder, you've put all the scraps into a paper bag labeled "shredded paper." (Tiny pieces of paper are too hard to collect – sorters usually landfill them.) In short, you've earned a PhD in recycling. (And if you think that's complicated, consider the Japanese.)

Some experts have argued that this is all too much trouble – that instead of aiming for zero waste, we should accept a certain amount of landfilling. Others say that the more citizens recycle, the more efficient the program becomes – hence the movement toward mandatory recycling. One point that nearly everyone seems to agree on is that products on the shelves must be designed to be more easily recyclable than they are today.

Is This Recyclable?

On that note, we interviewed two recycling experts: Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, and Kurt Standen (no relation, amazingly to both of us), general manager of the Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station. We came armed with six recycling stumpers, including a rubber boot, a juice box, and that much-maligned item of transport, the plastic bag. See what Standen and Murray had to say by clicking on the images below.

Listen to the Getting to Zero Waste radio report online.

This 1928 home in Albemarle County, Virginia recently
underwent a renovation through the EarthCraft Virginia
existing homes renovation program. After the renovation,
electricity use dropped by 24% and energy costs dropped
by 42%.

Home Energy Magazine is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special May/June issue. We're taking the opportunity to look back at the past several decades of energy policy in America, and look ahead to what may come. Here's a sneak preview of some of what we're thinking.

Alan Meier, Senior Executive Editor, and Steve Greenberg, Technical Editor, among others, lived through the first energy crisis precipitated by the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and its aftermath. They remember the sudden interest in energy efficiency and renewable energy; the proliferation of solar water heaters on the roofs of homes that broke down quickly, had no one trained to fix them, and have become rusted monuments to the best of intentions gone wrong; the sudden and short lived gain in the average car’s fuel efficiency. They also recall some major successes: the huge and lasting increase in appliance efficiency, especially refrigerators; the success of the Energy Star program; and California’s progressive Title 24 building standards.

Alan, in a yet-to-be-published editorial, has been musing on what will happen after the billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have been spent on building and retrofitting more efficient and sustainable buildings. Will it be the same three steps forward, two steps back pattern that we’ve seen before? Not so, according to Alan, if we:

Steve came up with some powerful images to stimulate our thinking about the future of energy efficiency:

We've been on a ramp with a rather gradual (and usually upward, with notable exceptions) slope. Suddenly the ramp gets so steep it looks like a wall. If we make it to the new, much higher level, what does the terrain look like? Do we go off a cliff, completing a boom and bust cycle the likes of which we've never seen? Or is there a reasonable ramp down to a sustainable level?

I lived through the lines for gasoline, though I couldn’t yet drive. I've observed the resulting interest in miles per gallon instead of horsepower; the return to a horsepower-mentality; and the recent switch back to a concern about miles per gallon. My family had a great experience with our new-fangled heat pump in the early 70s. My Dad, an engineer and all-around handy man, first got me interested in how houses and cars work during that time. I guess I vote for a steep, but not impossible ramp up in efficiency, followed by a less intense, slow and gradual climb that continues for a long time, with sudden jumps due to new, undreamed of (or only just dreamed of) technology. The pressure will come from high energy prices and people starting to feel the real effects of global warming and unhealthy air. I don't think these things will change anytime soon.

This sushi is good enough to eat.
Photo credit: Andrea Kissack.

There is a new trend in town. Sustainable sushi. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, and two other ocean conservation groups (Blue Ocean Institute and Environmental Defense Fund), have come out with new advice for making better sushi choices. Modeled after the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s popular Seafood Watch Pocket Guide, the new sustainable sushi guide helps consumers make informed choices by categorizing seafood into three areas: Green (or best choice), Yellow (or good alternative) and Red (what to avoid). Just what kind of sushi you should avoid may surprise you. Until now, Unagi (bbq eel with avocado), seemed pretty harmless and a good choice for reluctant sushi eaters. Well, Unagi is farmed, freshwater juvenile eel so that definitely gets a red light from the Seafood Watch folks. You can try a sustainable alternative to Unagi at Tataki Sushi Bar in San Francisco. It may be the only restaurant of it’s kind in the country. The owners of the all sustainable sushi restaurant say they don’t want to become a niche as much as they want to influence the rest of the industry to change its’ practices. And with sushi a growing multibillion dollar industry, consumer preferences can have a big impact.

So how do you green your sushi? Try Pacific Halibut, farmed scallop or North American Albacore. Monterey Bay Aquarium biologists consider these among the “best” seafood because they come from abundant, well-managed fisheries or are raised using sustainable aquaculture methods.

To learn more about the travels of sewage, I took a tour of the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District treatment plant led by Plant Manager Matt Pierce. The plant has been in operation for about 50 years and serves over 30,000 residents in north San Rafael.

After leaving sinks and showers throughout the District, wastewater travels through a network of pipes and pump stations. Once the sewage arrives at Las Gallinas, it passes through an inlet screen and a grit chamber, which together remove much of the dense, inorganic material-"like diamond rings," Matt jokes.

A lot of what happens at the plant is not that different from what happens in your compost pile: "It's basically bacteria at work," Matt points out. (The much bigger challenge for sanitation districts these days are all the unnatural things we're putting down the drain: household chemicals, personal care products, pharmaceuticals.)

From the grit chamber the sewage heads into a series of clarifiers, where gravity causes the organic solids to settle out. The biosolids pass through a thickener and then an anaerobic digester-the most, ahem, aromatic stop on our tour. After further thickening in storage ponds, the sludge is injected into a disposal field.

Meanwhile, the liquid from the clarifiers travels through two biofilters, where rotating arms spray the water over rock beds. The organic matter in the wastewater is a feast for microbial slime living on the rocks. In the nitrification tower, more microorganisms break down the ammonia in the water. In the final stages of treatment, the wastewater is chlorinated to kill any remaining bacteria, then dechlorinated since the chlorine is toxic to many aquatic species. Finally, the treated water is sprayed onto District fields or discharged into Miller Creek where it flows to San Pablo Bay.

The District has done a lot to minimize the environmental impacts of its operations. The plant is powered by a field of solar panels. The methane released in the sludge treatment process is captured and used to generate power and heat the digester. Some of the treated wastewater supports acres of fresh and saltwater wetlands-in fact the District's land is a favorite local gem for walkers and birders. And in a partnership with the Marin Municipal Water District, more than a million gallons of treated wastewater are recycled daily for landscape irrigation and other projects.

There are plans to make even fuller use of the reclaimed water. The Bay Institute-in partnership with the Sonoma County Water Agency, Las Gallinas, and three other North Bay sanitation agencies-has developed a plan to use recycled water for wetland and creek restoration and for agricultural irrigation. Legislation sponsored by Congressman Mike Thompson to establish the program passed the House late last year; Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced similar legislation that we are hopeful will pass this year.

With California's growing demands for water, such creative means to conserve and recycle are critical to helping prevent this precious resource from just going "down the drain."


Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."

For The Bay Institute, this year's Wild & Scenic Film Festival was particularly exciting because it included the first public screening of "Taking Root," a film-in-progress about our STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) Project. I recently talked to David Donnenfield, who is co-producing the film with Kevin White (Kevin also has two films in this year's Ocean Film Festival: Restoring Balance: Removing the Black Rat from Anacapa Island and Returning Home: Bringing the Common Murre back to Devil's Slide Rock.) I asked David how the two came to be making a movie about kids working to save an endangered freshwater shrimp.

Taking Root is part of a larger project entitled How on Earth, which began with the goal to survey the spectrum of restoration work happening across the country. David and Kevin wanted to look at projects large and small, in different regions and involving different constituencies and different issues. They also were interested in documenting projects initiated by kids-one of the things that drew them to our STRAW Project, founded in 1992 by a class of fourth-graders.

David attended film school at UCLA (after he "got the bug" while starring in a high school film), but says he was always more interested in social issues than theatrical production. As to why he finds the topic of environmental restoration of particular interest, David points to the late environmentalist David Brower's 3-part concept of "Global CPR"– Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration. While we've all heard about conservation and preservation, David notes, "We felt that very little of the story of restoration had been told." That's a critical oversight, since "in the face of worldwide environmental decline, there is less and less to preserve but more to restore."

In talking about their process for making films, David explains that they do a lot of research up front to understand the issues, the players, and how the story fits into the "big picture." But there is also that sense of "serendipity and discovery" when they actually get out into the field, and that's a large part of what they bring back to the editing room.

And, in fact, editing is the next big challenge for Taking Root. Production on the full-length film (which will run about 1/2 hour) is nearly complete, but David and Kevin are still raising funds to complete the editing. Meanwhile, folks around our office are already looking forward to next year's Wild & Scenic Film Festival, where we hope to be nibbling organic popcorn and cheering the completed film's premiere.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."