Posts tagged "policy"

New Video: Green Leadership @ Seattle’s Professional Sports Stadiums

Fresh off our recently announced 3rd Emmy nomination, I again teamed up with friend and colleague Penny Legate to produce another story for The Seattle Channel program City Stream. In addition to my work with private clients, I continue to freelance with The Seattle Channel as a cameraman and editor, doing stories mainly about sustainability, the environment and overall people and organizations engaged in positive work in our community. Though the pay isn’t great, I enjoy doing work for broadcast and seeing my work on television. This year The Seattle Channel was nominated for overall station excellence and the broad spectrum of programming is a great reflection of the character of our city, far beyond just covering boring city council meetings.

For the last 2 years Cedar Grove Composting has been one of Pangeality Production’s best clients, and when I learned that they were composting all of the food scraps and packaging at the main sports stadiums here, I thought it’d make a great story for City Stream. I was especially impressed by their partnership with Safeco and Qwest Fields, the homes of Seattle’s MLB team the Mariners and NFL team the Seahawks.

Saving an Iconic Seqouia Tree in Downtown Seattle

I got a call late one afternoon recently from my client Cedar Grove Composting to ask me to come film some footage of a special project they were working on. Together with the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities, Cedar Grove Composting was involved in trying to save a very special tree. The giant Sequoia tree is in the heart of downtown Seattle at the corner of 4th and Stewart, that was originally planted on Aurora Avenue, but was relocated in 1972. The tree is also the official Christmas Tree downtown every year. Over the years, the tree continued to grow but recently, birds had infested it and their droppings were both damaging the soil below as well as the canopy was slowly becoming covering with their acidic poop. Not sure about how to save the tree, SDOT approached international tree specialist James Urban, author of the book Up By Roots who had been in Seattle recently and paid the tree a house call, diagnosing the problem and prescribing the solution that this group eventually implemented.

So using an air spade to blow out vertical holes and a giant sucker truck to take the dirt away, a number of 4 ft deep vertical columns were dug around the base of the tree, and filled with fresh compost donated by Cedar Grove. Better irrigation and gas flow to the roots was the goal to supplement the pruning they’d already done.

Here is the video I produced about the work.

From Aurora Ave N. to Downtown

Sequoia on Aurora before being transplanted, 1972

Placing the tree downtown at 4th and Stewart, Seattle

New Video for Network for Business Innovation & Sustainability, a Seattle nonprofit is live

I was happy to recently roll out this new video for the By-Product Synergy Northwest group, a project of the Seattle nonprofit Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability. Through my work with Cedar Grove Composting, their education coordinator had connecting me with a workshop that the group was putting on at Seattle City Hall that was attended by about 70 local participants, an interesting mix of people from government (The Washington Department of Ecology, Seattle Public Utilities and King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Solid Waste Division), the nonprofit environmental sector (Pollution Prevention Resource Center), and regional green business leaders from major industrial manufacturers (LaFarge Cement, Shell Puget Sound Refinery, & Sellen Construction Company) to other local businesses (Canyon Creek Cabinet Company, Cascade Designs, Grays Harbor Paper Company).  The focus on the meeting and the group in general is on turning waste into profit, and through the group and the larger networks of the organization creating the connections through forums and events that help to facilitate that. A handful of companies presented on how they’ve managed it within their own businesses. There was even a presentation from the Washington State Department of Corrections and how they’re turning waste into profit not just through programs that do things like recycling mattresses by extracting the reusable wood and metal in the frames and other materials, but through gardening and other employment training programs aimed at reducing recidivism.

Other businesses and organizations in the group include US Business Council for Sustainable Development, King County Department of Public Health, Impact Washington (formerly Washington Manufacturing Services) and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

I was excited to show how a video like this can make an event come to life online, in a way that still pictures and words simply can’t. With a video, folks who have an interest in the event but wonder whether it’ll be worth their time or not can get a real sense of what’s going on here, and see and hear the testimonials of the participants. Plus, I’ve been helping to educate the group about how to share the file with their members on their blogs and website to give the piece further exposure in attracting more members to the community. Based on what’s being said here, it’s clear this group is an effective place for networking and connecting both for learning around these issues and for business. It’s my hope to make some new connections with this community so that they can begin using video as a tool to share with their customers and community the green choices that they’re making in their businesses.

Networking for Business Innovation & Sustainability presents By-Products Synergy Northwest from Pangeality Productions on Vimeo.

Lecture & Film Screening at Wallingford Worldwide Books & Maps

On Tuesday night I had the pleasure of screening 4 of my films and giving a short talk at Wallingford Worldwide Books and Maps in Seattle. I showed the 3 films I produced last year for The Seattle Channel connecting Seattle and Nepal and one short piece about tea shop culture in Nepal. There was a crowd of about 25 folks, most over 50 years old and about half of whom had been to Nepal before. 3 of the films were about Dispelling the Stigma of Disability in Nepal, A young Tibetan boy who left his family in Seattle to be raised as a future lama and spiritual leader, and one about Bhutanese Refugees being resettled in Seattle’s Rainier Valley.

I spoke about how the stories came about, the stages of production and actually telling these stories, and the trip overall. The dialogue went great, and people seemed moved by the variety and depth of the stories. As I stood in back of the crowd watching along with them, I was impressed and proud at the quality of the stories and the variety of issues they dealt with. Being in a travel bookstore, it was the perfect mix of tourism and sharing of a destination with folks in a socio-cultural investigation that asks one to look at their understanding of both cultures. WWB&M holds similar lectures every Tuesday night.