Avid readers of Circular Philadelphia’s blog know that our staff likes to get out and travel to learn about all of the amazing circular economy work happening around the US. If you haven’t enjoyed these travel dispatches, please check out our Circular Cities blog posts. But each time we visit another city, our hosts express how much they can’t wait to come visit us. So it was a treat that we finally had a chance to host our circular friends and colleagues when the Greenbuild conference came to Philadelphia November 12th-15th.
Greenbuild is the marquee conference organized by the U.S. Green Building Council, which has a mission to support green building professionals to meet the urgent needs of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening resilience, protecting human and ecosystem health, and advancing equity across the entire built environment. Being that much of the USGBC’s coordinating work happens asynchronously and virtually across the country, the conference is a chance for green building practitioners, policy makers and educators to get together in person to progress a circular built environment. This year’s theme was “Built to Scale” and spotlighted the green building community’s commitment to wholesale market transformation, bringing proven solutions and strategies to global communities.
“Built to Scale” could not be more aligned with Circular Philadelphia’s mission to scale the circular economy across the greater Philadelphia region and beyond. So we took full advantage of having all of these brilliant green building minds in Philadelphia.
Throughout the week, Circular Philadelphia’s Nic Esposito attended great sessions such as the Reuse Ecosystem Development Summit organized by our friends Andrew Ellsworth and Yarden Harari of All for Reuse as well as their other colleagues. This session had a focus on the great work that is happening in Boston’s built environment sector, which definitely sparked Nic’s interest in engaging Boston in the Circular Cities Network. But it also brought together an incredible group of people from across the country to discuss the challenges and solutions to increasing reuse in the building sector. Nic also had the pleasure to attend the Mindful Materials meet-up on the expo floor where he connected with conference attendees and saw some familiar faces, such as Circular Philadelphia members Josh Mastromatto from REGO and Fern Gookin and Jon Wybar from Revolution Recovery.
All of this networking was the perfect lead up to the main event of the night – a happy hour hosted by Circular Philadelphia and our partner organizations Burns Recycling and Turner Construction. When we started planning for Greenbuild being in Philly at our built environment working group summer meeting, we were told by our colleagues at Turner that a major highlight of every Greenbuild are the happy hours. As we learned, these aren’t just parties. These are critical opportunities to bring people together to foster collaborations and connections that last well beyond the conference and result in projects and business relationships.
This was perfect timing because we had just come off a successful tour and happy hour with our new member organization Burns Recycling where we witnessed the same level of meaningful connections result from that event, which you can read about here. Plus we knew that the crew at Burns knew how to throw a good party.
So Nic sat down with Ryan Fitzpatrick from Burns Recycling and Nelson Russom from Turner Construction, and they got to planning. First, they knew they needed to find a venue that was uniquely Philadelphian and would leave an imprint on the attendees. After a bit of searching, we were fortunate to book the Graffiti Bar in the Gayborhood. Not only would the Sampan catered food show off Philly’s food scene, but the atmosphere would meet Philly’s vibe of cool grit.
The second, and more important, aspect was the meaningful connections and conversations. Circular Philadelphia’s Director of Programs and Operations Sam Wittchen had a great conversation with Chase Hochstetler from Turner. Chase is based in Nashville, and they talked about how Chase and others can jumpstart an organization like Circular Philadelphia in the Nashville area. Chase was very interested to hear about how Circular Philadelphia was formed and was also really interested to hear about the Circular Cities Network. Sam was pleased to see long-time colleagues like Bob Beaty (of member business Beaty American) as well as others that work on our built environment working group.
Circular Philadelphia’s Communications and Outreach Coordinator Ash Tryba had great conversations on the importance of outreach, education and advocacy when it comes to reuse and deconstruction in the architecture, engineering, building and demolition industries. Ash’s big takeaway was that it’s important to have these conversations at large conferences like Greenbuild, but also everyday with practitioners in these fields, both in the boardroom and on the job-site. Being that the happy hour drew such a diverse group of people, Ash also had really insightful conversations of the lived experience of being a woman/non-male in the built environment sector from leadership down to frontline staff.
To Ash’s point, even though Greenbuild is over, Circular Philadelphia looks forward to continuing these conversations throughout the year through our built environment working group and with our partners. And speaking of partners, we want to extend another thank you to the teams at Burns Recycling and Turner Construction. This was an impactful night and put Philly on display as a vibrant ecosystem for a more circular built environment.
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