Author: Ethan Gallagher

Ethan Gallagher

1/31/2020

This past year, I got to travel to Nashville for a school event, and one of the places on our itinerary was the city’s music city center. With this beautiful architectural piece being “1.2 million square feet” (nashvillemusiccitycenter.com) and home to many unique art pieces that would make an art gallery in and of itself, the awe-inspiring building does not stop at that. More impressively, this building “has been awarded LEED¬Æ Gold certification for New Construction by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building rating system is a globally recognized symbol of excellence in green buildings” (nashvillemusiccitycenter.com). This impressive accomplishment is not only a huge deal for architecture but for the sustainability community and environmentalists. 

As we dug more and more into this building throughout the day, I saw a lot of aspects that really made this building stand out and live up to its LEED Gold certification. One of the really impressive parts of the building was the green roof which “is the largest in the Southeastern United States, is composed of 14 types of vegetation which slow rainwater runoff and direct it to a 360,000-gallon collection tank. Harvested rainwater is used to flush over 500 toilets and irrigate outdoor landscaping. The vegetated roof also cools the exhibit hall below and the air around it, reducing HVAC loads and initial equipment size” (clarkconstruction.com). This had to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen in a building. I had never seen anything remotely like it before.

                                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a part of this certification, we were told that this certification recognizes five key areas of environmental health being, “sustainable site development, water efficiency, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality” (nashvillemusiccitycenter.com). With these accomplishments, the facility is able to save a lot of money on resources and do so by creating as little of a carbon footprint as possible. Some other key pieces to this are that the building is successful in, “Reducing portable water use by using high-efficiency flush and low-plumbing fixtures, implementing LED fixtures to promote interior lighting energy savings […] using low-emitting materials for adhesives, sealants, paints, coatings, flooring products, and composite wood products and furniture, and using recycled content in materials (Zork).

Along with the LEED Gold Certification, the Nashville Music City Center has also been Eat REAL Certified, a member of Corporate Sustainability Roundtable, Get Food Smart, Nashville’s Food Waste Initiative, and is a recipient of the Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award (nashvillemusiccitycenter.com). This stop on our trip was definitely my favorite, and it is so inspiring to see a highly successful center of such a large size achieve these outstanding sustainability goals. Being that I want to one day pursue commercial real estate and development, this initiative inspires me to reach the same goals in future projects across the U.S. I hope to see the success of this building start a trend for developers to start in many cities around the world, and help produce a more green and eco-friendly city environment.

 

Sources:

 

“Creating Noteworthy Experiences.” Nashvillemusiccitycenter.com, www.nashvillemusiccitycenter.com/.

“Music City Center Earns LEED Gold Certification.” Music City Center Earns LEED Gold Certification | Clark Construction, 22 July 2011, www.clarkconstruction.com/news/music-city-center-earns-leed-gold-certification.

Zork, Condy. “Nashville’s Bridgestone Tower Achieves LEED Gold (USGBC Tennessee).” U.S. Green Building Council, 8 Jan. 2019, www.usgbc.org/articles/nashville%E2%80%99s-bridgestone-tower-achieves-leed-gold-usgbc-tennessee. 

Pictures from www.nashvillemusiccitycenter.com as well as my own

Ethan Gallagher

Often when thinking about protein in our daily diets, the first things that come to mind are chicken and beef. While these are the traditional ways that we often get our protein, it comes with a big environmental cost that has a much better alternative.

That alternative is crickets! While you may be thinking that there is no way that this could be a potential supplement for protein and that it would be gross to eat, let me explain.

To start, crickets have double the protein then beef does, it contains more calcium than milk, and it has more vitamin B12 than salmon or beef. On a sustainable side, crickets grow 13 times faster than do cows, they require 2000 times less land than livestock and require 2000 times less water than cows do. To put that in perspective, it takes 2000 gallons of water for a cow to produce 1 pound of beef. For crickets, it only takes them 1 gallon of water to produce the same amount of protein as 1 pound of beef. Also, cows give off around 100 times more greenhouse gas then crickets do, and also cows require 10 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of beef, whereas crickets only require 1.7 pounds. Not to mention, only 40% of a cow is used as consumed meat, whereas 100% of the crickets are used by being dried and ground up, leaving around 80% of its original body weight. There is no waste!

This form of obtaining protein is relatively new in the past few years and hasn’t really been able to develop for many years. With this industry still developing, there is still much room for how crickets are harvested and how this process can be done as cost-efficiently as possible.

There are various companies taking advantage of this emerging food trend, such as Crik and Chirps. Chirps was a company started by three college students that discovered the value of cricket protein and began making products such as cricket protein powders, baked good mixes, and there most popular, cricket chips. Chirps have been featured on Shark Tank, successfully making a deal with Mark Cuban, and also is on Forbes 30 under 30.

While this industry is still in its beginning stages, there has been much progress made, and surely there should be a larger future market for this source of protein as it is more sustainable, nutritious, and delicious!

 

Sources:

“Chips Made with Cricket Flour – As Seen on Shark Tank.” Chirps Chips, eatchirps.com/.

Knapp, Alex. “Farming The Next Big Food Source: Crickets.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 Jan. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/01/30/farming-the-next-big-food-source-crickets/#355910fa1168.

“Why Cricket Protein?” CRIK Nutrition, criknutrition.com/pages/why-cricket-protein-powder.