April 22, 2020

Fifty years ago, today, the first Earth Day was held as “a unified response to an environment in crisis”, according to earthday.org. Cuhaci Peterson Vice President of Design, Steven Duffy recalled his participation in the inaugural event,  “I remember planting a tree on the 1^st Earth Day.”Over the years, Cuhaci Peterson has had some fun celebrating Earth Day. In 2014, NASA encouraged people to submit #GlobalSelfies.

Half a century later, the leaps and bounds that the world has made influence how we all live and work on a daily basis. Architecture and Engineering is no exception. One of our LEED Certified professionals, Director of Architecture, Chris Renegar, gave his insights on what this day means to him each year.

“Earth Day marks a time to reflect on our environmental heritage and responsibility to both maintain and enhance our environment at a local, national, and global scale. As a Design Professional that has studied and practiced sustainable design for buildings in the retail environment, it is good to see that many of the sustainable elements of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes program are being implemented into mainstream practice through new building code requirements along with state and local incentive programs. Therefore, today we are witnessing broader and ever-increasing participation incorporating sustainable design into both new and existing buildings than ever before. An important and necessary transformation as residential and commercial buildings are responsible for approximately 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption*.”

Each year our industry and our world make progress. We are working within our firm to lessen our carbon footprint in our office buildings (that are currently missing as we telework) and we will continue to be a resource to our clients as they incorporate more and more green into the projects we work on moving forward. Step by step, we’ll make a difference!