Folding Bikes

As is, riding a bike is a great alternative to driving in the city.  But FOLDING BIKES?!?! Too cool.  Convenient, stylish, and most importantly, very green.  Here are a few, small wheels and large wheels.

 

Genzyme

view of the glass roof from the first floor

Today we visited the Genzyme Corporation headquarters located in Kendal square. Despite being a major office building Genzyme is an LED platinum-certified building. One way the Genzyme building accomplishes this is by using 40% less energy than a standard building, by using 100% renewable energy sources, and by being very water-efficient. One cool way in which Genyzme uses reneable energy is by using the waste produced by a nearby powerplant to create energy. This waste would otherwise be carbon emmited into the atmosphere. The Genzyme building also recieved the platinum certification because it is very well insulated and lets in a lot of outside air and light creating a healthy work environment that does not feel indoors.

 

Bike Ride

On Monday, we started the day at the City Hall Annex at 9am. Today we planned to go on a bike ride at 10am, but before the fun could start we needed to come up with a list of all the things people use for transportation. Then we decided as a group what we thought were good uses of transportation, and what were bad. After our list was made, our tour guide, Jeff, told us what we would be doing on on our bike ride, and the different routes we would take. Later during the bike ride we learned about the different plans for certain streets to help give more access to bicycles. The problem that bike riders face is the fact that a lot of cars park on the right, and this forces bikes to go around the cars, without an actual bike path to ride on anymore. Overall, it was a fun, productive day. We headed back on our bikes to the City Hall Annex, and ended our day there.

 

A day in the life of team GreenSense

LEED Certified City Hall Annex

Our day started out pretty well with a late wake up for Team GreenSense, work started at 10 o clock today. We arrived at the City Hall annex and were given a tour of the building and its many green features by our friend Tim Boughner. We were given a tour of this specific building because it achieved a gold rating on the LEED rating system. This is done by the US Green Building department and it awards buildings for being or having green features. Gold is the second highest rating that you can achieve. Our tour took us to all of the buildings various floors and we were stoped along the way and given other spontaneous tours or talks by the friendly employees who work there. During our tour we even got to see the solar panels on the roof from almost the top of the annex and also from another building across the street. After our tour was over we met for the rest of the day and talked about how to market products, and different social behaviors. We did two examples one of marketing Vitamin Water to old people and another of trying to create and advertising scheme telling youth to turn off the lights when they leave a room. When we were finished with this final activity we all headed over to CRLS to pick up our paychecks for the weeks work.