Somerville’s Green All-Stars

Somerville resident Dan Delongchamp sells Agripods, which people use as portable urban kitchen gardens. Read all about them — and other green initiatives going on in Somerville — in the next Scout.

Green issues are not just green issues. When we talk about the environment, we’re also talking about health, wealth and quality of life.

In interviewing green Somervillians for the summer edition of the Scout, I quickly learned that none of these issues exists in isolation. One environmental hazard wreaks havoc on several fronts. One green solution attacks several problems at once, and one citizen’s actions affect the neighbors.

Here’s a preview of some the “Green All-Stars” we’re featuring:

Diesel Café (257 Elm St)

A coffee shop can be a sustainability nightmare: Plastic containers and utensils used once and then left somewhere to slowly break down over 1,000 years or tossed into an incinerator and converted to toxic fumes; mounds of uneaten food; constant scrubbing with toxic chemicals; gallons of water poured into rinsing, brewing and flushing; relentless fields of incandescent light; and an army of constantly humming appliances.

Then there’s Diesel Café, winner of the 2009 Green Business of the Year Award from the Somerville Chamber of Commerce. In 2008, the nonprofit Go Green Somerville helped move the Diesel Café to a “zero waste” model, drastically reducing Diesel’s usage of water and energy and eliminating its usage toxic chemicals.

Diaper Lab (201a Highland Ave)

Click the “learn” link on Diaper Lab’s Web site and your first lesson may startle you. “Disposable diapers generate 3.7 million tons of solid-waste in this country every year, with one baby in disposable diapers creating about one ton of refuse while in diapers.”

“There are people who would never have bought cloth diapers but their babies don’t feel well in disposable diapers because of all the chemicals in them,” says CEO Salina Gonzalez Frazier. “They switch and then realize it’s not that hard, and then suddenly they’re on a different path in terms of making small changes in their families that make big differences in the environment,” she says.

Apex Green Roofs (170 School St)

“When it comes to big green technologies, there are solar panels, wind turbines and green roofs,” says Dustin Brackney, 32. “But green roofs are by far the prettiest.”

Brackney, who along with his partner, Charles Sinckler, runs Apex Green Roofs, has a passion for this technology. “Most green [building] technologies have only one benefit: To reduce energy costs, to create energy or maybe to deal with storm water. Green roofs encompass all of those things,” he explains. Green roofs also sequester carbon, purifying the air, and attract pollinators like birds and bees which help fertilize crops. But the greatest value of green roofs is their ability to capture and utilize rainwater.

Pearl Emmons, 30 (Magoun Sq),  Farm Share Owner

Pearl Emmons is an urbanite with a root cellar. A Multimedia Specialist in the Department of Education at Tufts University, she and her roommate keep their apartment stocked year-round with locally grown produce.

“I have a small chest freezer in my basement in which I keep my meat,” she explains, “and I freeze my fish. I store a lot of my produce, like the root vegetables from the fall, in my makeshift root cellar. During farm season, I never buy produce from the grocery store.”

photo courtesy Dan Delongchamp