It’s that time of year again; one I think we can justly refer to it as October Madness.

Kick-off with some workshops. I participated in the workshop on sustainable design lead by Andrew Shaw.  With between 30 and 35 attendees, the presentations were good and the discussion lively.

One issue that came up is what do we mean by sustainability and the tendency to slap the name on everything these days. One of the fellows was from Saudi Arabia, and, during an interval, we discussed sustainable oil production when someone pointed out that their oil production has a much lower carbon footprint than Canadian oil from the oil sands. 

While discussing a “sustainable design” for a project in King County, WA, at a price of $ 1.8 billion, there were some eyes rolling especially when the speaker told us in the name of sustainability, how they saved $39,000 by recycling old concrete.  The plants had MBRs but blended that effluent with stormwater overflow before discharging to Puget Sound.  Another emotional point was that regulators should be introduced to the concept of sustainability.