News

Green Drinks Cape Cod

John Todd Ecological Design hosts:

Green Drinks - Cape Cod
August 25 from 6-8pm
1 School Street, 1st Floor Woods Hole, MA 02543

Solutions Journal
Dr. John Todd, John Todd Ecological Design’s Founder, board chair and acting CEO recently published an essay called "Back to Our Roots" in the Solutions Journal Online presence. From the article:

"What if we used carbon as a universal currency? What if people around the world were paid to capture and sequester carbon, particularly in soils? What if enterprises that emit carbon into the atmosphere, including, for example, coal-fired power plants, had to pay for the right to pollute based upon every ton of carbon they emitted? A tectonic shift in the way the world conducts its business, from farming to aerospace, might ensue. Let’s continue the conversation. The stakes are too important not to."
Read the article here.

Media Alert!
John Todd Ecological Design’s Founder and board chair John Todd will be in attendance for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum “National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?” press preview and invitation-only opening reception in New York City on May 12th & 13th, 2010.
Download the Media Alert PDF

Media Alert!
Jonathan Todd will attend the Bright Green Conference in Copenhagen Denmark on December 12 and 13, 2009. Mr. Todd and John Todd Ecological Design senior staff can be found in the Cities section, stand 49.
Download the Media Alert PDF

Dr. Todd to Speak at Bioneers 2009 - Geodesic / Synergetic / Dymaxion Trimtabs - Friday, October 16th - 4:30-6:00PM, 2009 - San Rafael, CA

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, launched in 2007, is an annual global design competition whose $100,000 prize supports the development and implementation of a bold, visionary, tangible initiative that has significant potential to help solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Learn about the prize’s Bucky-inspired design criteria, goals and impacts.
With: BFI executive director Elizabeth Thompson; John Todd, the prize’s first winner, visionary biomimic and ecological design elder; Greg Watson, senior advisor for clean energy technology for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs and Bioneers board member; and a representative from the 2009 Challenge Winner—an MIT Media Lab student team working on visionary urban transportation and mobility.

Here is a link to the event listing.

E/The Environmental Magazine

One feature of the project will solve Omega’s wastewater infrastructure challenge while fulfilling the LBC prerequisite to treat and purify a building’s wastewater with a chemical-free process. An Eco Machine, designed by John Todd, a pioneer in ecological design, will treat all of the campus wastewater. Omega, founded in 1978, currently has about 23,000 people pass through their campus each year attending wellness and personal-growth workshops and retreats, so on-site wastewater treatment is no small task. This past Earth Day, a couple hundred people planted 12,000 reeds, cattails and ferns in constructed wetlands. The wetlands are part of the Eco Machine, which can process 52,000 gallons of water in a day and meet advanced wastewater standards for nonpotable use.
Here is a link to the article

Fast Company Magazine

The Omega Center for Sustainable Living is designed to make a LEED Gold structure look like a Superfund site. The $3.2 million Rhinebeck, New York, structure, which opens in July, will be the nation's first certified "living building," having no negative environmental effects. The centerpiece of the project -- designed by Kansas City, Missouri-based BNIM and John Todd Ecological Design of Woods Hole, Massachusetts -- is a revolutionary system that will clean 5 million gallons of wastewater a year. The facility also doubles as an education center focusing on -- what else? -- sustainable living.
Here is a link to the article

Chronogram Magazine

Designed by John Todd Ecological Design, winner of the 2008 Buckminster Fuller challenge award, OCSL’s Eco-Machine will generate all its own energy, heat and cool the building via geothermal systems, use solar and photovoltaic power, and collect and utilize rainwater. It is completely pollution free and carbon neutral. “OSCL represents Omega’s 30-plus years of commitment to modeling an integrated way of looking at the world and our place in it,” says Backus.
Here is a link to the article

Media Alert!
Dr. John Todd will keynote the opening of the Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OCSL), a state-of-the art education center and natural waste water treatment facility located in central New York. The opening ceremony begins at 3:00 P.M. on July 16th, 2009.
Download the Media Alert PDF

June 2009 Environmental Building News
Featuring commentary on the Omega Center for Sustainable Living's work with John Todd Ecological Design.
The Living Building Challenge

March 2009 Sustainable Industries Supplimental - Plants At Work
Feature commentary by Jonathan Todd, COO John Todd Ecological Design
Restoring Ecological Systems Through Technology

John Todd, PhD, David Benjamin, PhD and Jonathan Todd to Present at Climate Change Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions Conference

Copenhagen 2009, 10 – 12 March, University of Copenhagen and the International Association of Research Universities

The authors will discuss the theoretical basis for the concept, including a brief literature review of relevant work on the subject and the existence of carbon equivalent neutral or zero energy balance landscapes in the archaeological record. We will put forward suggestions for possible directions and programs for RD & D concerning the design and construction of such landscapes in the near and long term future, based on a recent paper by John Todd detailing the regeneration of the coal mining landscape of Appalachia into a low carbon region. The paper was judged as the winner of the first annual Buckminster Fuller award. http://climatecongress.ku.dk

Visit From Mr. Paolo Lugari

While on a rare visit to the United States, Mr. Paolo Lugari, of the famed Los Gaviotas eco village in Colombia made a visit to John Todd Ecological Design in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

For more information on Mr. Lugari and Los Gaviotas eco village visit http://www.friendsofgaviotas.org