Robin Rogers

robinrogers.org — This is a children's picture book featuring tiny Pippins who go on a journey. Detailed illustrations show the natural environment of the Pacific Northwest as the Pippins travel over land and water to arrive at the Never-Ending Sea. This is a gentle tale suitable for Waldorf education. Robin is the author and illustrator.

Yakima Herald-Republic — Where others might see junk or useless objects, Dale Peterson sees usefulness, art and repurposing. Nothing is expendable in his world. Maybe it comes from having worked with people for years, but Dale Peterson just can't let things go, either. Peterson creates his artistic curiosities from the discards of an over-productive market society.

Yakima Herald-Republic — Vigneron Gary Cox started Cox Canyon Vineyards and Ellensburg Canyon Winery in 1999 with a long-term goal of environmental sustainability, becoming the first sustainable vineyard and winery in Kittitas County.

solaripedia.com — In the economically distressed Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh sits a new greenhouse that is mere feet from city utilities infrastructure, but there are no city utility connections in this building. Powered exclusively by energy from the sun through a pioneering direct current (DC) micro grid (as opposed to the standard AC or alternating current), the Homewood greenhouse requires no supplementary heat, energy, or water. Inside the greenhouse, Oasis Farms and Fishery is perfecting the state-of-the-art agricultural technology called aquaponics, where plants are combined with aquatic life to create a sustainable, diverse system of food growth and cultivation.

lafayette.edu — Gravity pulls raindrops and snowflakes from the sky into the Catskill Mountains of New York, into stands of ash trees that spawned Louisville Slugger baseball bats, into dense conifer forests that provided the first Christmas trees sold on a New York City street corner in the 1800s, and onto sandstone and shale from ancient seas. The rain and melting snow drain down the western mountain slopes to form the Delaware River Basin. The watershed supplies more than 15 million people with water.

solaripedia.com — Where Luxury Meets Ecology: Over the past couple centuries in the secluded, forested and rugged hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Virginia, moonshiners set up remote stills (distilleries) to brew illegal alcoholic beverages - away from the prying eyes of tax collectors or the sheriff. Today, the same woodlands offer similar seclusion and clear fishing waters to visitors of Primland, a luxury wilderness and golf resort that sits on 12,000 acres of pristine forest in former moonshining territory.

solaripedia.com — It seems like a good time to revisit the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center near Seattle that recently achieved a Green Globes green building certification for its five-level parking structure. It is significant that this uninhabited building could even achieve a certification as other rating programs exempt parking structures from their programs. Green Globes, however, takes the approach that all buildings, no matter their uses, could qualify as a green building. In the case of the Mountlake Transit Center, it is not simply a parking deck but rather a park-and-ride for commuters.

solaripedia.com — Tani Creek Farm in the Pacific Northwest uses sunlight for more than just growing vegetables. In the misty hills of Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound from Seattle, Washington, a 25-acre biodynamic farm uses solar power for all its agricultural needs such as irrigation, water movement (pumped from ponds to other uses) and food production, as well as for residential purposes.

Environmental Design + Construction — Beneath the veneer of many newly crafted homes and crusty old dwellings, hidden dangers often lurk, undetected, in the folds of our daily lives, including icky biological stuff such as mold and dust mites and scary chemicals like invisible radon gas, volatile organic compounds and formaldehyde. Homeowners Bryan and Tricia Smith uncovered such villains after a remodeling project in their former Yakima, Wash., home.

eco-intel.com — According to the US Energy Information Administration, 76 percent of all power plant-generated electricity is used just to operate buildings and half of US energy production is from coal. EPA estimates that carbon emissions from the US electric power sector are equal to 40 percent of all CO2 emissions in the US. In comparison to coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined, the amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet in one year is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from those non-renewable resources. And the sun is highly unlikely to extinguish, at least not for another five billionplus years (so I’ve heard) and it provides a cleaner, viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Environmental Design + Construction — Anna and Dave Porter were like so many others inspired by the green movement, making efforts but falling short of their ideal personal values to help end global warming and its deleterious effects. For years, Dave, a senior executive with Countrywide Home Loans, has spoken on sustainable building topics at national home building conventions, and he’s well-known in Seattle’s builder community for promoting energy-efficient homes and “green” mortgages. The couple recycled, used green cleaning products, salvaged “beautiful junk” for “art,” ate organic food and taught their kids the meaning of conservation. But three years ago, they had an epiphany: “We can do even more on a personal level.”

EcoStructure Magazine — A few years ago, Brenda Nunes and her husband, Art, purchased a plot of land in Roslyn, an up-and-coming resort community in rural, dry, central Washington, a big leap over the Cascade Mountains from rainy Seattle. Where others may have seen a getaway from city life, Nunes saw a way to realize her dream of building a sustainable home and possibly inspiring other homeowners in the resort to pursue a similar idea.

Urban Land Magazine —