Building Green Week, the seed of change
By Gastón Bensión February 13, 2009 San Miguel de Allende 

Building Green Week
Wed–Sat, Feb 18–21, 10am–4pm
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25

Building Green Week is coming to San Miguel de Allende. A group of builders involved in ecological businesses are creating a strong community of people, committed to ecological sustainability, by offering information on services and products that are available for ecological construction.

From February 18 to 21, the event will take place in the Biblioteca Pública, for the benefit of the library. There will be a space for exhibiting projects and technologies for a more sustainable world. Along with the exhibits of projects, there will be a presentation of practical cases, time for discussion, and experts giving their points of view to help to transform ideas into concrete realities. 

“Our intention is to gather the San Miguel builder community and to offer people, services and products for ecological construction,” said Arnulfo Mancera, organizer of the event.

 “The act of constructing, of building, generates a great impact on the environment. Bio-construction tries to minimize it as much as possible.” 

Mancera will exhibit his product, blocks for vaulted ceilings, made without contaminating the environment. He said that in the rural community of Pantoja, whose inhabitants live mainly from the production of bricks, all kinds of trash are burned in the brick ovens for traditional brick-making. “They burn garbage, car tires, which damage the environment and the workers themselves. There are even a lot of children here,” he said. “We wanted to do something to change this environment and we decided to make our own ecological brick, made of tepetate (hard subsoil), and to teach the Pantoja families to work with this technique.” This is how the project of the green cuña (special size brick for vaulted ceilings), The Seed of Change, Pantoja, Clean Skies, was born. The project consists in building vaults, with cuñas made of hard subsoil.

According to Mancera, the tepetate brick technique consists of an additive, designed by Architect Eduardo Obregón, which stabilizes the tepetate, infertile soil, abundant in the region.

 “With the collaboration of Eduardo Obregón and his product called MAXEH, we began to experiment with the “green” brick, which, because it is not burned, uses less labor, but we use the same molds.” 

According to Mancera, part of the project consists of showing the community that this material is profitable. “Our objective is to give them the opportunity to sell, to promote them in our events,” he said. “The traditional bricks are made with fertile soil, sawdust and manure, which can be used as compost. All these valuable materials are burned and the result is very toxic, causing a great deal of pollution.” 

A family of Pantoja agreed to try this material and this technique, and they are already making the “green” brick which, in addition, generates jobs. “We have already put the seed there,” said Mancera, adding that the tepetate brick could one day replace the traditional brick, although it may take some time. 

With this event, the organizer of Building Green Week joins the ongoing community dialogue about the environmental protection. 

Green Building conference

On Wednesday Feb 18th there will be a sponsored by the San Miguel Green Community Forum, the Institute for Sustainable Economics and Ecology, and the Sustainable San Miguel Organization.

The meeting will be held at 6pm at the Center for Global Justice Café de la Luz, Calzada de la Luz 42. The featured speaker will be Rick Kahn, an accredited LEED builder and green-building consultant, and a member of the US Green Building Council of Colorado. A follow-up meeting will be held on Saturday, February 21 (time and place to be announced.) For more info, call (415) 154-6397.

Audubon annual meeting

The annual membership meeting of Audubon de México is Tuesday, March 17, 3pm at Teatro Santa Ana at the Biblioteca. Members can vote on the 2009 slate of directors proposed by the nominating committee: Robert Haas, Pam Knoles and Bill Curra.


Officers

President Linda Whynman

Secretary Debe Moskowitz

Treasurer Leigh Gersnoviez



Committee Chairs/Directors

Membership Debe Moskowitz

Publicity Carol Wheeler

Field Trips Albert Lerner



Directors at Large

Continuing Directors

Walter Meagher

B.C. Graham

New Directors

Miguel Gil 

Bruce Janklow

Betsy January 

Kevin Murphy

Mary McBrier (Pinky)

Jeannie Schnakenberg