Live Green or Die?

The last 12 months have been the year of living green. GO Magazine jumps on the bandwagon this month to tackle some of the local environmental problems, and what you can do to fix them.

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Setting the curve

These local trendsetters are leading Springfield’s fledgling Green revolution

PHOTO Melissa Pedersen Curtis Millsap and his greens: Community supported agriculture is on its way.

Amanda Owen & Curtis Millsap

Three important letters are about to grace local lips: CSA. Community Supported Agriculture may be new around here, but the idea has taken off in the rest of the country.

It basically works like this: People buy into a farm and get an allocated amount of food each week. The CSA movement is not just about eating organically, but about eating locally and saving the energy it takes to transport strawberries from California or green onions from Mexico.

Amanda Owen and Curtis Millsap are a brother-and-sister team who are moving their Millsap Farm to Highway H, (north of town on Glenstone Avenue). They hope to promote the fledgling CSA this summer at farmer’s markets on Commercial Street and at Battlefield Mall.

Owen moved back to Springfield last August from Nashville, where she was studying environmental geology. She believes that Springfield is ready for such a concept, because people are starting to care where their food comes from. After all, she says, it’s the most intimate thing we buy. It goes straight into our bodies.

The Millsap Farm CSA will cost no more than $25 a month, says Owen, and will run from May until October. The use of greenhouses may extend the growing season. Participants can also pitch in on the farm to work off the cost of their produce.

One of the best parts about participating, says Owen, is discovering new vegetables in your basket each week that you might never buy in a grocery store. Never baked a purple eggplant? Now might be your chance.

Jason Mitchell & Michael Mardis

Photo Melissa Pedersen This table at Workshop 308 show that even old doors don't have to go to waste.

These two forward thinkers, good friends and architects have opened theworkshop 308, a furniture and residential design company on Commercial Street.

The mission of Jason Mitchell and Michael Mardis, 2001 Hammons School of Architecture graduates, is to design houses that have a low impact on the environment by using alternative materials and technologies.

The Web site for theworkshop 308 puts it best: “In the midst of beige strip malls, billboards, fields of asphalt, suburban sprawl, pollution and clutter, our goal is to offer designs and products with lasting quality and meaning for our clients and environment.”
The hope is that in Springfield, design concepts like radiant heat and water, wind and solar collection become less alternative and more mainstream.

After graduation from Drury, Mitchell moved to Chicago and Mardis to Columbia, South Carolina where they were exposed to these ideas at big design firms. When they came back to the area a year ago, they followed their passion. Currently, they have three residential clients, and will be licensed to design “green” commercial buildings by this summer.

In the short term, their contemporary custom design furniture is made from reclaimed materials from historic buildings and woods such as bamboo, which is a more rapidly renewable tree than, say, oak. The furniture is available online at theworkshop308.com or, you can check it out in person at Staxx downtown or at theworkshop 308 studio at—you guessed it—308 W. Commercial St.

Courtesy Think Green! Drury's Think Green! club strives to clean up the world beginning with DU's campus.

Drury University

Drury University recycles everything from clothing to printer cartridges through its campus-wide recycling program, which is headed up by students. The university serves fair trade coffee and school officials are encouraging students to walk or bike instead of drive across the small campus, and to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs.

The President’s Council on Sustainability is looking for sustainable practices in building renovation and construction and promoting change on campus and in the community. Drury was among 25 colleges and universities in the nation invited to become founding members of the Climate Commitment Leadership Circle, a statement of the university’s commitment to help reduce the effects of global warming.

These successes came from a grassroots effort by faculty, students and staff who have long wanted Drury to make more of an environmental commitment, says Heather Mansfield, the university’s web editor and a member of the Sustainability Council.
When President John Sellars came to campus, the student group Think Green! put the heat on by creating an online petition. President Sellars was responsive, says Mansfield, not only because teaching environmental sustainability and conservation is the right thing to do, but also because it just makes good business sense. It saves Drury money on energy costs and helps spotlight the university’s environmental studies programs.

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