Sustainability primary goal for DNC's Robinson

By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Linda McConnell / Special To The Rocky

Andrea Robinson conducts a workshop Wednesday with the kitchen staff at the Colorado Convention Center about how to make the DNC a green experience for about 50,000 people.

When the Democratic National Convention says it wants its nominating party to be the most sustainable ever, here's what it means: Compost the food waste from each meal, 5,000 dinners here, 3,000 breakfasts there and a few cocktail parties in between.

Then find enough biodegradable trash bags to haul tons and tons of garbage, and test a new brand of biodegradable rubber gloves to see if they really decompose as advertised.

The DNCC wants garbage sent to landfills trimmed to a spartan 15 percent, all with the aim of making the 2008 nominating event the greenest ever, one that produces virtually no waste and that offsets most of the carbon its jet-setting delegates produce - all on a volunteer basis.

Presiding over this idealistic undertaking is Andrea Robinson, the DNC's first director of greening.

A high-energy, blond speedster from Orange County, Calif., Robinson arrived in Denver last fall armed with a mental encyclopedia of carbon-neutral quick tips and a year of experience greening one other high-profile political event - the Live Earth concerts.

Live Earth provided an important primer for her on people, culture and details. There were nine events in nine countries in 24 hours, all geared to raising money to combat climate change. It took 10 months to plan. Early on, Robinson coordinated the work of 650 environmental nonprofit organizations. She urged rock stars to fly commercially and leave their private jets at home.

On the big day, she was in charge of greening two giant venues, Giants Stadium in New York City and a stadium in Shanghai.

"Live Earth created a megaphone for environmental issues around the world," Robinson said. "In some similar fashion, I'm doing the same thing here in Denver."

Sustainability isn't hard

On a sweltering Wednesday in June, Robinson, a thirtysomething who's worked on environmental initiatives for the Clintons and Al Gore, already has switched off the power strips in her Denver apartment, walked to work, trotted down the 16th Street Mall to two meetings, declined a plastic foam container for her vegetarian lunch burrito (recyclable foil is preferred) and confessed to one sin: drinking her afternoon tea from a paper cup. Normally, she carries her own drink container.

"Sustainability isn't that hard to do," she said. "It's taking maybe one more millisecond of thought about where you put something or what you use."

Robinson graduated with a degree in environmental science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She's worked for the Sierra Club and Environment Colorado at different points in her career.

John Rego, environmental director for Live Earth, says it is Robinson's energy that helped win her the high-profile DNC job.

Greening the Democratic National Convention, he said, "is a complicated process, and it's going to be difficult to achieve. But Andrea's fantastic. She has the key aspects everyone in her position needs - energy for the environmental program; the ability to make people understand how it affects us all and the ability not to alienate people. It's a large personality-based job."

This summer, Robinson is spending hours indoors, roaming the backstage of each DNC facility, choosing superefficient light fixtures and Earth-friendly paints. She's helping Pepsi Center staffers find toilet paper and napkins made from 100 percent recycled paper, starch-based trash bags that don't tear apart when filled, and a fleet of trucks to haul compost.

She's learning that life under the big tent, with a very old political machine, is often slow and messy, despite everyone's good intentions and all those slogans about change.

"Within the DNCC, this is new to them. It hasn't always been easy to get people to accept this or even to understand what we're trying to accomplish," she said. "But . . . they want to do something."

And they don't have much time.

At the Colorado Convention Center, for instance, just 6 percent of trash was recycled last year. This year, the number has risen to 12 percent. For the DNCC, they're pushing to hit the 85 percent mark.

"That's ambitious," said Lee Avery, manager of Centerplate, the concessionaire that cooks and runs the gift shops at the city-owned convention center. "But with all the support we're getting, we think it's attainable."

Powered with wind

Some things have come quickly for the sustainability effort. Xcel Energy anteed up $30,000 to make sure the Democratic and Republican conventions could be powered with wind.

But another effort, to persuade 50 state delegations to buy carbon offsets to cover their trips, has been slow to catch on.

At a recent meeting with convention planners, Robinson is looking at a United States map. It shows that roughly two- thirds of the state delegations have yet to embrace the carbon-neutral challenge.

"Maine," she said, "it's white (the color for states that haven't met the challenge). Should we call them? I mean what should we do? Shame them or charm them?"

If state delegations have moved more slowly than the fast-moving Robinson would like, city officials have been working overtime to lay the community groundwork for the convention.

Last fall, longtime Denver environmentalist Parry Burnap, now director of greening for the Denver host committee, said staffers began making sure Robinson circulated among the city's longtime green advocates, helping her make connections.

"We wanted her to be able to tap into our local resources," Burnap said.

And national Democratic Party leaders wanted her to have a spot in the convention's inner circle.

"Howard Dean wanted her on staff," Burnap said. "In Boston (in 2004), they used an outside consultant. Andrea has the benefit of sitting at the table at DNC staff meetings. That gives her a huge leg up."

Still, this massive greening is largely a volunteer undertaking. Robinson has one paid deputy, Jaime Nack, and a handful of college interns.

This small green band and about 900 volunteers will be sorting trash, garbage and pounds and pounds of sticky, smelly food waste coming from the kitchens of the Pepsi and Colorado Convention centers.

Their hope: that someone finds the biodegradable rubber gloves the sustainability plan calls for them to use.

With just 50 days before the convention opens, Robinson and convention planners haven't been willing to release their own estimates of how effective their efforts to make the DNC carbon neutral will be.

Still, she hopes the work she and dozens of others have been doing this summer will continue after the big tent folds.

"Obviously, the main focus is to nominate the next president of the United States," she said. "But I hope no convention is ever done any other way."

smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5474

About Robinson

* Born: Orange County, Calif.

* At 13: Formed first environmental nonprofit

* Education: Bachelor's degree in environmental science from the University of California at Santa Barbara

* Politics: Volunteer for Clinton, Kerry-Edwards

* History: Worked for Sierra Club, Environment Colorado

* Contributing author: Live Earth Greening Manual and Live Earth Green Artist handbook

Food for thought

1 It takes 13 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef. The same amount of grain would produce 6.5 pounds of chicken. Lesson: Chicken has a smaller carbon footprint than beef.

2 Appliances use power even when they're not turned on. Lesson: Unplug them.

3 Plastic foam containers are difficult to recycle. Lesson: Use alternatives for takeout food, such as paper or foil.

4 Plastic silverware clogs landfills. Lesson: Carry your own.

5 Dry-cleaning solvents add to the atmosphere's greenhouse gas load. Lesson: Use new, environmentally friendly dry cleaners, especially those that pick up and deliver clothes in hybrid vehicles.

• July 6, 2008

  12:51 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  sutherix writes:

  "Xcel Energy anteed up $30,000 to make sure the Democratic and Republican conventions could be powered with wind."

  This statement itself requires some explanation. Xcel energy has been playing it straight about their renewable energy program for the most part, but this statement makes me wonder.

  Xcel leads the nation in the percentage of energy generated by renewable sources that it delivers to its customers. However, they have also been able to capitalize on very generous federal tax incentives in the process. In effect, the federal taxpayer has been footing the bill for the new energy economy.

  If Xcel "donated" $30k of wind power to the DNC, it likely retired $30k worth of renewable energy credits that it either generated or purchased from one of its suppliers in a bundled power/REC agreement. The question then becomes "how does one value the cost of the REC when the power it represents was made possible by a federal subsidy."

  It is maddening that the DNC and their fashionista green guru can not provide any transparency into this and other questionable practices. This is the age of the internet, after all, and it should be very easy to report the quality information that is required to provide credibility to "green" claims.

  Please excuse my cynicism, but the insincerity of the "green" movement is beginning to rival the propaganda that led the US into its latest disasterous military excursion in the middle east or the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

  Also, I am not trying to be overly critical of the existing tax structure that incentivizes RE generation. It is one of the few things our nation has done right over the past decade. However, for many reasons, the status quo needs to be re-examined as part of an overhaul of our energy policy. It is time for the Federal Production Tax Credit to be replaced with a new mechanism that taxes GHG emissions and diverts the revenue to clean energy sources and improved transit systems.