Earth Angels
Six local heroes whose work is having ripple effects - at home and far away - in making the world a better place.
(Photograph by Laura Barisonzi)
Running a bikes-only delivery service, Wenzday Jane is spreading the message of pedal power on Boston's
streets.
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The ENVIRONMENTAL EPICURE
For nearly 20 years, Michael Oshman has been turning up the heat on the restaurant industry.
When Michael Oshman was 16, a friend suggested they not eat at a particular restaurant because it used Styrofoam. He thought it was a great idea, but soon became impatient with the impact he could make only one meal at a time on one of the most resource-ravenous industries in the United States. So in 1990, as a 19-year-old student at the University of California, San Diego, Oshman founded the Green Restaurant Association.
The nonprofit GRA, now located in Boston, does all the legwork - from basic research to cost analysis - to help restaurants go green without sacrificing profit or convenience. "My belief was that it wasn't that restaurateurs were bad people, but that they lacked a clear and easy way to go green," says the 37-year-old Oshman, who lives in Sharon. "They needed a bridge." Oshman stepped in, showing them how to compost, where to buy eco-friendly paper and cleaning products, and how to reduce energy and water use. Restaurants that take enough green steps earn the GRA green seal, which identifies them to consumers.
The GRA has certified 260 restaurants in 30 states - everything from the Boloco chain to Tavern on the Green in New York - and expects to have at least 400 members by year's end. The organization has also partnered with some of the biggest food distributors in the country. "Michael's mission is to save the world, but his genius is that he never asks you to think like he does," says Jim Solomon, chef-owner of GRA-certified The Fireplace in Brookline. "He comes in and tells you he can help you save some money. And he does."
-Catherine Elton
The FOOT SOLDIER
Running a bikes-only delivery service, Wenzday Jane is spreading the message of pedal power on Boston's streets.
New Amsterdam Project, a Charlestown-based delivery service, grew out of a trip its founder took to Amsterdam, the Dutch metropolis where cycling couldn't be more mainstream. Now Wenzday Jane has become the manager and public face - and an operator herself - of a small fleet of "trucks" powered by souped-up bicycles (there are small electric motors in addition to gears and pedals).
Drivers don't just make deliveries without traditional trucks; they hit the streets, in every kind of weather, showing Boston that it's possible to make deliveries in an environmentally sound way. "It's about bringing that mind-set to the US," says Jane, who runs the company. "I think cars have their place, but it would be nice if bikes were embraced. I think it's happening, I really do." Jane, 35, an Everett native who lives in Somerville, is happy that the three-wheelers aren't spewing carbon dioxide, of course, but she's just as proud that they're not spewing noise and that drivers can interact with pedestrians while on their rounds.
Jane is clearly committed to the mission. Jeff Barry, owner of Boston Organics and a delivery client, recounts the time that he contracted for three drivers, but one got hurt and another didn't show. "She ended up doing all the deliveries, and I can't imagine how many miles she biked. She has a real can-do type of attitude."
-Michael Prager
The PERSUADER
Mindy Lubber aims to prove to corporations that sustainability is not just the right thing to do - it's also a good investment.
Mindy Lubber wants the private sector to invest more, and act faster, in slashing greenhouse-gas emissions. As president of the Boston-based nonprofit Ceres - she's been there since 2003 - Lubber, 54, launched and has nurtured the group's Investor Network on Climate Risk, which coordinates the efforts of 70 institutional investors (with $7 trillion in assets) pushing corporations to take action on climate change. This year, she led an investor summit at the United Nations, bringing together CEOs and Wall Street leaders to zero in on the business risks from climate change, the actions investors and companies need to take, and the economic opportunities associated with investing in clean power and energy efficiency.
Though she doesn't discount government's role, says Lubber, "there is enormous capital, enormous clout, and enormous ability to move quickly and make things happen in the private sector." A Brookline resident with two teenage children, Lubber is a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator. Earlier in her career, at the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, she helped pass the state's 1981 bottle bill. "Given her deep background, she understands the regulatory framework, but she also has done a terrific job showing the way markets themselves can lead to the right result," says Abby Joseph Cohen, president of Global Markets Institute at
-David Talbot
The TEACHER
Sajed Kamal has energized a generation of students, not to mention all those solar panels.
Sajed Kamal makes connections: between learning and teaching, between global and local, and - perhaps most fatefully for him - between peace and sustainable alternative energy. As a student at Northeastern in the Vietnam era, Kamal, now 64, says he started to wonder, "What do we have to do to avoid going to war for oil?" For him, "it became a reason to learn about alternative options."
Forty years later, he is a lecturer on sustainability at Brandeis University and has spent his career leading renewable-energy projects around the world, including his native India and his childhood home of Bangladesh, as well as in the Fenway, where he now lives. Recently, two solar electric systems were installed in his neighborhood - one at Boston Arts Academy and another at a mixed-use complex of affordable housing and condominiums run by the Fenway Community Development Corporation - thanks to his efforts with Solar Fenway, a committee of the CDC.
"It's almost like a celebration of the neighborhood and joining it with a vision of sustainable living," says Ross Gelbspan, a Brookline writer specializing in global-warming issues. Stephen Lee, a former student now working on infrastructure projects in Guatemala, has a similar take: "He approaches even the most technical issues from a human perspective, with sincerity, warmth, and creativity."
- Michael Prager
The INVENTOR-INVESTOR
David Berry's hottest new company is pumping out "renewable petroleum."
Today's dominant biofuel - ethanol - is far from an ideal environmental solution. Among its other shortcomings, ethanol holds only about two-thirds as much energy as fuels like diesel or gasoline, and distilling it consumes a great deal of energy. But what if fermenting corn (or other sources of plant sugars) could be converted directly into, say, diesel fuel? It would be far more efficient, which is why David Berry, an inventor and venture capitalist who's a partner at Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, was so interested in helping create a start-up company to work on exactly that. The company, LS9 in South San Francisco, uses tricks of genetic engineering to produce microbes with metabolic systems that convert sugar into hydrocarbons that "look like, smell like, act like, and are chemically identical" to fuels such as jet and diesel, says Berry, an MIT-trained PhD. And it could be producing fuels at a commercial scale by 2010.
Flagship managing partner Noubar Afeyan says Berry, 30, played a key role both in "developing the enabling intellectual property" and in putting together LS9's initial team. Other green companies getting Berry's attention include one that would use carbon dioxide as an ingredient for making more environment-friendly plastics and chemicals. - David Talbot
The ORGANIZER
Janie Katz-Christy helped start Cambridge Walk/Ride days. Then she really hit the road.
Janie Katz-Christy practices what she preaches, and then some. In March 2006, she and some friends launched Walk/Ride days - a day each month when people in her hometown of Cambridge are encouraged to walk, bike, or ride the T to school or work instead of driving. Through Green Streets Initiative, a grass-roots organization she runs, 51-year-old Katz-Christy has promoted Walk/Ride days at school meetings, business association meetings, and just about anywhere anyone will listen to her. The effort paid off, with Walk/Ride days also in place in Boston, Somerville, Medford, and Portland, Maine. Then earlier this year, every day became Walk/Ride day for the Katz-Christy household - two parents and three kids. They gave up their car for good.
Katz-Christy isn't advocating that everyone do what she has done, but she says she has seen how participating in Walk/Ride days has motivated many people to forgo driving more than just once a month. "I am not insensitive to people's needs, and I drove my share in my lifetime," she says. "But I think we have options, and I am encouraging people to explore their options."
"Janie Katz-Christy has single-handedly put us on a greener path," says Cambridge mayor E. Denise Simmons, who bikes to work on Walk/Ride days. "She has changed the way we think and, in doing so, changed the way we act." - Catherine Elton
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