Dow Chemical pushing for sustainable Olympic Games

The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW), chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced today that the Company has become an official Worldwide Olympic Partner as part of The Olympic Partners Program (TOP).

As the official “Chemistry Company” of the Olympic Movement, Dow will partner with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and National Olympic Committees around the world through 2020.

“With our long-standing commitment to global sustainability, innovation, scientific excellence and addressing world challenges, we believe Dow is perfectly matched to the vision of the Olympic Movement, which is about peace, progress and the world coming together to celebrate our common humanity,” said Liveris. “In addition, our association with the Olympics will present Dow with tremendous new business opportunities, making this partnership a powerful growth catalyst that comes at the right time in our Company's strategic transformation.”

IOC president Dr. Jacques Rogge joined Liveris at today's press conference to unveil the joint logo - joining Dow's red diamond with the Olympic rings - and to welcome Dow as the newest member of the TOP program.

“We are delighted to welcome Dow to the TOP Program,” said Dr. Rogge. “As a global leader in the chemical industry and an innovator in sustainability, Dow will provide much more than critical financial support to the Olympic Movement. They will also bring industry-leading expertise and innovation to the Games themselves. Dow will be an important partner in making our vision for sustainability and global cooperation a reality.” …

The Dow Chemical Company Becomes Worldwide Olympic Partner via Shades of Green

Technorati Tags: sustainable development

Discovering the North American Afterculture: An Anthropology of the Future

Via reader cduhamel:

Discovering the North American Afterculture is a glimpse of a future being shaped, and even lived, right now.

It imagines the culture that might emerge if we fully embraced a completely sustainable, sacred world-outlook. A diorama, crafted artifacts, paintings and photomurals show a New Native American people whose life-patterns are healing to a damaged land. They look like us: a mixture of races and backgrounds, and there are hints that much of the knowledge gathered in our time remains alive in oral tradition. But they are also profoundly unlike us. They know themselves as part of the web of life. Seeing the natural world as an expression of the sacred, they have simplified their lives the better to move in balance with it. …

This is not your usual end-of-the-century jitters. Future Shock has unnerved the planet. The great tectonic plates of civilization are adrift now, and the widening fault lines can be seen on the evening news every night. The Old Order still rumbles down the track, but it’s a train out of fuel. Staying the course now only guarantees disaster, because up ahead the bridge is out: Capitalism has mutated into vast, uncontrollable multinationals, while Big Science diverts our attention from its disasters with illusions of cool breakthrough-fixes just-around-the-corner. And a young, aggressive techno-elite is fastforwarding us into an information/genetic revolution which will have absolutely apocalyptic consequences if played out. …

Discovering the North American Afterculture

Technorati Tags: environmental restoration,sustainable development

"Memphis takes first step in retrofitting shopping areas"

 

By Tom Bailey, Memphis Commercial Appeal

"Abandoned strip centers, malls can be reborn, says architecture professor Ellen Dunham-Jones"

Architecture professor Ellen Dunham-Jones comes to Memphis this week to speak on a topic she tackled in her new book, "Retrofitting Suburbia."

It includes 80 or so examples of communities nationwide turning dead malls, underperforming strip centers and pedestrian-repellant streets into more vibrant, walkable, livable and sustainable places.

None of the book's examples, however, come from Memphis suburbs.

"But we didn't have the most sophisticated" search of projects, said Dunham-Jones, who speaks at 6:15 p.m. Thursday at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Her appearance is among the Architecture Month events organized by AIA (American Institute of Architects) Memphis.

With no major database to tap into, the authors searched newspaper articles and contacted architects and developers looking for projects in which old suburban structures and infrastructure had been redeveloped in a new urbanism way.

There may not have been much retrofitting to find among Memphis suburbs, anyway.

Charles "Chooch" Pickard, executive director of the Memphis Regional Design Center, is unaware of any Memphis-area examples.

"I think bringing in Ellen Dunham-Jones is a great first step," he said. …

"Memphis takes first step in retrofitting shopping areas" via Dead Malls

Technorati Tags: green construction,sustainable development