Profiles in Green - Locals doing their part

By Travis Hill

Give her credit
Sarah Owen (who is not pictured at left. At left is one of the models from the enviro-fashion show Panache is putting on. But that’s later in this article…) is a lot of things. She is in the St. Augustine Rotary Club. She heads up the Northeast Florida office of the Florida Wildlife Federation. But right now, she is a bride-to-be. And that is taking some serious work.

“We’re having an eco-chic wedding,” Owen said with a laugh.

It is a goofy term, but what it means is very cool: Owen is trying to cut out as much waste as she can from the typical wedding. Among many things, that means no sprawling, 8-page invitations (just simple postcards), trying to use all local vendors and having the event during the day (to cut down on using massive electricity on things like lighting).

It also means she is doing some serious math homework.

“Instead of favors, we’re trying to purchase carbon credits for them,” she said. “People are going to be traveling here from all over in all different ways – cars, planes, etc. So, I’m trying to figure out how everyone is getting here and then buying carbon credits to offset that.”

So, Owen is on a carbon credits Web site frequently, calculating how far her guests are coming, and then buying the appropriate credits. The credits she buys will go to renewable energy resources.

It should be no surprise that Owen is going eco-chic. She gets her paychecks with eco-work.

“I love the outdoors,” she said. “So I might as well be working out there.”

As the head of the Northeast Florida office of the Florida Wildlife Federation, she tends to the growth-management issues of seven counties. Basically, it’s her job to protect their natural resources from urban sprawl. So, she works with state and local agencies as well as with businesses, constantly trying to find solutions both parties.

“I have no normal days,” she said. “They’re always different. I’m traveling probably 60 percent of the time meeting with all kinds of interesting people.”

She was inspired to get into this work during her time at the University of Florida, where she received a master’s degree in urban and regional planning.

“We were doing a study of the restoration of the Everglades,” she said. “And I was shocked at how human decisions could completely destroy something so important.”

And that explains why she is trying to be part of the decision-making process – even in her private life. She and her fiancé try to eat locally-grown and produced food. They bike everywhere they can. They barely turn on their air-conditioning, preferring to keep windows open instead.

One of their latest projects is their yard. They are removing all the St. Augustine grass and replacing it with native plants, including wax myrtles, pines and magnolias.

“Every little thing you can do will help,” she said.

Like Father, like son
If you have been involved in any kind of environmental issue in St. Augustine, chances are you’ve met a Hamilton.

Bill and his brother Pat own Southern Horticulture, a landscape/irrigation contracting company that also has a garden center. It is a company with a massive social conscious. Decisions are made with a better environment in mind – down to the fact that pesticides, despite their large profit margin, are not sold.

That philosophy drives Bill when he isn’t at work.

“My life revolves around it,” he said.

And he is encouraging other people to adopt it.

“There are no bystanders,” he said. “We’re all involved. There are some big problems [with the environment] that aren’t going away. It’s going to require a lot of effort.”

To that end, Bill Hamilton has extended considerable effort. He is active politically, going to meetings and filing lawsuits against development in the area.

The family even owns a plot of land where they allow friends to have their own organic garden. They show them how to grow their own food, so they can be more self-sufficient.

“We grow a lot of what we eat,” Hamilton said. “And we try to give whatever we don’t eat away.”

Bill’s son Jacob, is a big believer in the garden.

“On a personal level, I think it’s the best thing you can do [for the environment],” he said.

Despite that belief, Jacob is well-known around town for being the guy who got his truck to run on vegetable oil.

Considering that it feels like gas is approaching $9,457 a gallon these days, anyone who can break free of that chain is going to be talked about.

“I never want to own a gas engine again,” Jacob said.

Yeah, well, neither do we. Jacob is just the rare person who actually did something about it. When he was playing in a band in 2004, they traveled to Allentown, Penn. It just so happened that they ended up meeting the guys who started fossilfreefuel.com, a site dedicated to helping people convert diesel engines to vegetable oil. They showed him how to do it, and the rest is history.

Jacob drives a Dodge Ram 2500, and on veggie oil he reports that getting 26 miles per gallon.

“My buddy has a 1500,” Jacob said with a sly smile. “He gets 13.”

Interestingly, the oil must be processed, so he gets it from restaurants. But not just any old McDonald’s – the higher the quality, the better it is for your engine. So, Jacob is now a frequent visitor to Japanese steakhouses.

“I don’t know why, but they have the best oil,” he said.

And the Hamiltons have the best intentions. The cool thing is that they’re also the rare breed with the drive to make them happen.

The happy hippie
Cindy Wilson smiles a lot. Of course, she has plenty to smile about. Wilson, who describes herself as “an old hippie,” recently moved into a house on 13 acres that she and her husband have spent the last five years building by themselves.

“It’s a little dream of ours,” she said.

Lots of people build their own homes. But what separates the Wilsons is that they built their house in order to be as self-sufficient as possible in the kitchen.

They planted a garden. They have an orange tree. They have grapes. And figs. Needless to say, that saves them lots of trips to Publix.

“It’s a really nice feeling to be living off the land,” said Wilson, whose graphic design company, Cindy Wilson Design, has been thriving in St. Augustine for nearly two decades. “It’s pretty cool to just go out to your garden and pick a few things, then go into your kitchen and cook it. Tastes better too.”

They have even gone so far as to have their own chicken coop at their new house. Wilson says the eggs she gets from their chickens are dramatically better than what she buys at the store, and she gets a few extra laughs too.

“I’ve never had chickens before,” she said. “They are funny, bizarre animals. There’s just no thinking involved with them.”

Recently, they have worked with a local farmer to provide them with all of their beef as well.

“You need a big cooler if you’re going to do that,” she said.

The Wilsons are members of the local chapter of Slow Food, an organization dedicated to helping people eat foods grown and produced locally. Wilson knows that by eating food they grow and supporting local producers, it dramatically reduces their carbon footprint on the environment. And for this old hippie, that might be the best benefit of all.

Making it happen
Bill Lazar had been wanting to build “green” for years and never could. Suddenly, it’s all he seems to be doing.

With Hancock Place and the Sunnyside house, Lazar, the director of the St. Johns Housing Partnership, is meeting his goal in a big way.

“It makes me feel good,” he said. “It feels like we’re making a difference.”

The Housing Partnership is a non-profit agency that links the public and private sector on projects to create affordable housing.

At Hancock Place, Lazar and his organization did that, but threw in a nice bonus: They are also some of the first “green-certified” homes in St. Johns County.

It’s a sub-division in West Augustine that is striking at first because of its landscaping. By scrapping the traditional, water-sucking St. Augustine grass lawn and replacing it with drought-resistant native plants and mulch, Lazar and his team created both an attractive look and more importantly, a water-efficient yard that requires far less fertilizer.

The houses themselves are made of concrete block and are a comfortable 1280 square feet. Lazar and his lead designer, Robert Marshall, also built more efficient energy systems inside the houses, down to water-saving toilets. All the homes meet the state’s Energy and Water Star standards.

“[The toilets] are a little more expensive up front, but you save half the water,” Lazar said. “ … And it’s hard to beat electric bills that are under $100 a month.”

Understandably, Lazar is proud.

“They ought to be teaching building practices like this in schools,” he said. “It’s the future.”

The future of the Housing Partnership lies in the Sunnyside house, a 132-year-old building that Lazar and his staff have completely restored and turned into their new offices.

Lazar employed many of the same water and energy saving tactics from Hancock Place at Sunnyside, from native-plant landscaping down to the low-flow toilets. Then the coup de gras: Lazar came across some very old, 24-by-24 inch beams that had been used in the construction of the New York subway system. They now make up Sunnyside’s floor.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Lazar said. “That’s how you recycle.”

Panache – Couture with a Cause
It’s the enviro-geek’s ultimate dream: a fashion show where the ladies are rocking clothes made of completely recycled materials.

“It’s going to be a hot show,” said Kristy Weeks, the owner of Panache and one of the main organizers behind “Couture with a Cause, Rock the Runway.”

This will be the fourth annual recycled goods fashion show put on by Panache, a salon with two locations in St. Augustine. The Casa Monica has donated its ballroom for the April 27 production, and teams of Panache employees will be creating clothes made of things like soda can fliptops, magazine pages, paint samples, leftover salon supplies and egg cartons. Even the runway’s backdrop will be made of recycled materials.

This year’s cause is very close to Weeks’ heart. Over the years, Weeks and her husband Len have made frequent humanitarian visits to Cuba. On a recent trip, they met Irania Martínez García, a woman whose daughter died from complications of chemical poisoning she contracted because they live so close to a toxic dump.

Martínez García has since made it her life’s mission to turn that dump into an organic fertilizer-producing garden. Against serious financial odds, she has in part succeeded and has managed to help hundreds in her community learn how to grow their own food in a safe, self-sustained way.

Weeks nominated Martínez García for CNN’s Heroes program in the “Defending the Planet” category and she won. Unfortunately, CNN donated the $10,000 prize to UNICEF instead of Martínez García because of the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba.

Weeks and her friends at Panache decided to take matters into their own hands. All the proceeds from this event will be donated to their non-profit organization, The St. Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association. Then that organization will take the money and use to purchase all of the materials it can to support Martínez García.

“She’s doing important work,” Weeks said. “But she still needs things like machetes and rubber boots. Most of the work they do is just by hand.”

For Weeks, this event marries three of her passions: fashion, helping a good cause and promoting a better environment.

“This show is great because it encourages people to recycle and re-use their materials instead of just being huge consumers and throwing things away,” Weeks said. “We save materials all year at the salon for the show, and try to recycle whatever we can.”

So, will attendees be able to see Weeks strutting her stuff in a paint-sample skirt?

“Oh, no way,” Weeks said with a laugh. “Actually, I’m very shy. I wouldn’t get up there. But I’m glad that so many people do. It’s going to be a great event.”

For more information, call 904.824.2771 or 904.461.9552. Visit the websites at getpanache.com and stauqustine-baracoa.org.