PlanetReuse at Great Lakes Reuse Conference & Greenbuid

What a great week!

The Great Lakes Reuse Conference in Buffalo, NY featured many great speakers and discussions on deconstruction. The perfect size for these discussions, one-on-one dialogs with others on how to best address the ever-increasing vacant building stock in the Northeast and all over the country, was inspiring. There are so many great people and outstanding organizations, all with common goals. BuffaloReuse did an outstanding job of pulling the conference together- they even got us our first snow for the year! They have great leadership in Michael and his team – one that is helping in so many ways with deconstruction and in the community. BMRA as always was a great foundation for bringing so many leaders in this field together.

Greenbuild 2008 in Boston more than lived up to the hype that has echoed through the design and construction communities since last year’s conference! It was cold outside but the energy inside had things heated up. Common themes were heard throughout the week all related to the economy where it is, the new administration coming in DC, with the “green movement” growing at an exponential rate and an increasing need to educate our youth to continue to push for change. Rick Fedrizzi summarized things well in the opening address "Revolution is a powerful word," he said, and it can be measured in many ways, "but what counts the most is that we are changing people's minds about what matters." He said we have gone beyond the revolution of ideas and achieved a revolution of values. Congratulating Americans on the election outcome, keynote speaker Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, "you have helped to usher in a new era....you are one of the craziest countries I know.... an incredible nation, incredible people... he's an incredible guy! I'm not jealous, no!"

We are in a unique time that we can all work together to help. Looking at building certification is a good start, but we also need to look beyond by thinking outside of the LEED scorecard and follow-up by verifying that buildings are performing as designed. It was great to meet with so many like-minded vendors and architects throughout the event; we look forward to helping you grow your business. Please let us know how we can help you on your next project, and we look forward to seeing you over the next year and at our booth in Phoenix at Greenbuild 2009!

Thank you to all of the new friends of PlanetReuse I met, and if I missed you this week, thanks for visiting our website and please let us know how we can help you out.

Thanks for joining the removement!
Nathan