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By SHASTA KEARNS MOORE
For Pamplin Media Group
Wherever you are right
now, take a look around.
Chances are, you’ll see a
plastic bottle nearby.
Laura Kutner would like you
to stop seeing that plastic bottle
as trash. Stop thinking of it as
recycling even. Start thinking of
it as a durable good — a long-
lasting, modular component to
just about any kind of furniture
you need.
“Plastic is actually extremely
hard to recycle,” Kutner says.
“It takes much less energy for
us to drill a hole in it and make
something out of it than to truck
it to the recycling center, chop it
into little bits, ship it to China,
process it into something else,
and then ship it to consumers.”
And that’s just for the plastic
that is recycled. According to a
2011 study by Columbia Univer-
sity’s Earth Engineering Coun-
cil, most Americans don’t even
bother. More than 85 percent of
plastics just sit in a landfill.
In developing countries, the
issue is even worse.
It was the mountains of plas-
tic trash littering the streets of
Guatemala that gave Kutner her
first idea to make something
useful from old bottles. She
spearheaded a process of build-
ing schools there, using wire
framing, cement and plastic
bottles that children collected
and stuffed with plastic trash. A
partner organization has since
built 25 of these durable and
well-insulated schools in Guate-
mala. In the process, communi-
ties came together to rid their
town of plastic trash that clogs
their streets and waterways,
and causes real damage during
floods and hurricanes.
Bringing it home
When the Portland native re-
turned home from her Peace
Corps mission and got a job at
the Forest Heights Starbucks,
Kutner was appalled at how
many people were just throw-
ing away what she had come to
see as very useful plastic. So on
Earth Day 2011, she and her
By JENNIFER ANDERSON
Pamplin Media Group
Travis Williams stands in
front of a razor-wire fence
on the east bank of the Wil-
lamette River in North Port-
land, a vestige of the indus-
trial wasteland the site used
to be.
“Do you smell that? You can
still smell the creosote,” Wil-
liams says, describing it as a
mix of gasoline and motor oil,
something you might catch a
whiff of at a railroad track.
As recently as 1990, the Mc-
Cormick and Baxter Creosot-
ing Co. dumped toxic chemi-
cals into the river at its plant a
mile south of the St. Johns
Bridge — everything from the
wood-treatment substance cre-
osote to pentachlorophenol,
arsenic, copper, chromium,
zinc and other contaminants
— which subsequently seeped
into the soil and riverbed.
Today the McCormick and
Baxter site is one of the few
Portland Harbor Superfund
sites that has been trans-
formed by an early voluntary
cleanup, a $30 million process
that began in the 1990s.
Wi l l iams admi res the
meadow and riverbank now re-
vegetated with native plants
— such as cottonwoods, wil-
lows and spiraea — and sees it
as an example of the potential
for the other Superfund clean-
ups still to come.
As if to prove a point, a brown
bunny hopped out of hiding as
he spoke. “Good for him, trying
to survive out here,” Williams
says.
“It’s representative of what’s
possible, not perfect — but it’s
so much better than it was.”
The 13-year-old Superfund
effort has been a long and con-
voluted political process, in-
volving dozens of public and
private agencies, a frightening
laundry list of toxins, and a
price tag that could soar to $2.2
billion.
There have been lots of stops
and starts, but the Superfund
process is finally coming to a
head. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency is expected
to announce its proposed
cleanup plan next year, solicit-
ing public feedback on how to
proceed before a final binding
order is rolled out.
By JIM REDDEN
Pamplin Media Group
Would you like someone to
guarantee how much the en-
ergy in your home will cost
— and pay you the difference
if it turns out to be higher?
Of course you would. And
now you can.
But like all things that sound
too good to be
true, there are
a few catches.
First, it has
to be a new
home built to
certain stan-
dards by cer-
tain builders.
Second, you have to agree to
a few conditions, including
how many people will live in
the home.
And third, the guarantee
will cost you a $1 consider-
ation, which activates the
agreement.
But if you qualify under
those terms, you can stop wor-
rying whether a hot summer or
a cold winter
will send your
energy bills
spiraling out
of control. If
your annual
bill is more
than prom-
ised, you’ll get
the difference
back for three
years.
That’s the
concept be-
hind the Ener-
gy Bill Guar-
antee Program
administered
by the Earth
Advantage In-
stitute, a Portland nonprofit
that works to increase building
energy efficiency.
“Nearly 40 percent of green-
house gas emissions are relat-
ed to buildings. If we can re-
duce them, we can go a long
ways towards reducing climate
change,” says Peter Brown, di-
rector of residential services at
Earth Advantage Institute.
The nonprofit operates sev-
eral programs aimed at in-
creasing the energy efficiency
of residential buildings, includ-
ing new and existing single-
family homes and multifamily
homes. Most involve research
and education to increase con-
struction standards.
One of its signature programs
is called Earth Advantage New
Homes, which uses third-party
inspectors to ensure newhomes
are constructed to energy-effi-
cient standards.
The standards were devel-
oped in cooperation with the
Energy Trust of Oregon. They
include such things as high in-
sulation levels in ceilings, walls
and floors, more efficient win-
dows, lighting and furnaces,
and tankless water heaters.
New homes that meet these
standards are certified as
Earth Advantage Homes.
Brown says over 13,700 homes
have received this certification
in Oregon over the past 13
years.
The new Energy Bill Guar-
antee Program is the Earth
Advantage Institute putting its
money where its mouth is.
It is confident that if new
homes are constructed to its
standards, an Energy Perfor-
mance Score can determine
how much energy the home
will use on an annual basis.
For example, the average pre-
dicted energy use for a
3,234-square-foot Earth Advan-
tage home in Lake Oswego is
Rebates offered if
homeowners spend
extra on utilities
Want a
cash-back
guarantee
on bills?
GREEN
HOME
See ENERGY / Page 6
See RIVER / Page 4
“We are
looking
forward to
seeing if
anyone paid
more than
expected by
the end of
this year.”
— Peter Brown,
Earth Advantage
Institute
No option ideal for
mitigating toxic
risk on Willamette
Superfund cleanup nearing pivotal stage
Peace Corps stint
inspires new group
Trash for Peace
Build with plastic, don’t trash it
PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP: NICK FOCHTMAN
Trash For Peace founder Laura Kutner puts the finishing touches on one
of the nonprofit’s signature trash bins.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2013 • WWW.PORTLANDTRIBUNE.COM
Sustainable
Northwest Wood
President Ryan
Temple says two
competing
certification
systems for
sustainably
harvested
wood cause
confusion
among
consumers.
PAMPLIN
MEDIA GROUP:
JONATHAN HOUSE
W
ant to buy sustainably
produced lumber for your
new deck or house?
It’s not as simple as
you’d think.
For years, a debate has raged among
supporters of two competing programs
that certify wood products were har-
vested and milled in a
sustainable manner.
The Forest Steward-
ship Council formed in
the early 1990s, when en-
vironmentalists alarmed
by deforestation of tropi-
cal forests teamedwith industry leaders
in Europe to set ecological standards for
the cutting and milling of timber. They
created the FSC product label to assure
consumers those standards were met.
In response, big timber companies in
theAmerican Forest and Paper Associa-
tion created a more lenient certification
system, enabling their products to be
stamped with the rival Sustainable Forestry
Initiative or SFI label.
Many environmentalists, especially the
advocacy group ForestEthics, denounce the
SFI as greenwashing — giving a green ve-
neer to timber-cutting practices that de-
grade forests. ForestEthics pressures retail
chains to stop carrying SFI-certified wood
and paper products.
The fight has ensnared the U.S. Green
Building Council and its widely used LEED
rating system.
Developers only earn LEED credits for us-
ing sustainably harvested wood if it meets or
beats FSC standards. Big timber companies,
partly shut out of the green building market,
have lobbied the Green Building Council —
in vain— to accept SFI certification. Turning
up the political heat, timber companies have
prodded Congress and some states to dump
the use of LEED rating systems altogether
for government buildings.
PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP FILE PHOTO
Large clear-cuts, such as this one in Polk County, are banned in Forest
Stewardship Council-certified forests. But they’re allowed in those
certified under the rival Sustainable Forestry Initiative, one of the
reasons critics label it as “greenwashing.”
See TRASH / Page 5
See WOOD / Page 2
■
Some eco-labels for wood are less green than they appear
STORY BY
STEVE
LAW
PULP FICTION?
GREEN LUMBER DILEMMA
PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP PHOTO: JAIME VALDEZ
The Arkema property, on the Willamette River shore near the St. Johns
Bridge, still contains carcinogens and has not been cleaned up.