At the Virginia Beach oceanfront, Laura Habr of Croc’s Eco Bistro Resturant is in high gear before the tourist season begins. Starting this month, she’s participating in an EPA study, recycling pre- and post-consumer food waste.

Every week hundreds of people flow in and out of the most energy-efficient, large-scale building in this region: the Virginia Beach Convention Center. It’s the nation’s first convention center to receive LEED Gold Certification for existing buildings.

What does it mean to “go green” in Tidewater? Starting gardens, planting trees, and using environmentally safe cleaning products are part of the answer. Beyond those efforts, builders, designers, city planners, and business owners are realizing how smart it is to be energy efficient—and how necessary for our earth, air, water, and health. Being green includes sustainable practices in our houses as well as our buildings. And in this region, many women are leading the way.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Rebekah Burke is the chair and co-founder of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the National Green Building Council (HRGBC), head of the Green Homes committee, and an architect with Clark-Nexsen. She says builders in our region are turning to greener practices because of a desire to be more energy efficient and cost conscious. While big green projects like Virginia Beach’s Platinum LEED Certified Renaissance Academy draw applause, the green scene is becoming part of more families’ conversations.

“I find that people are really taking a look at what’s going on in their own homes,” Rebekah said. Some of that is prompted by students coming home from school and asking their parents, ‘Why aren’t we recycling? Why don’t we try to do an energy audit?’”

The young architect grew up in Campbell County, Wyoming, where clean water and air were birthrights. When Rebekah graduated from the University of Wyoming, and moved east, she became distressed by what was happening to the Chesapeake Bay. Her education in architectural engineering was filled with math and computer models. Yet she began to concentrate on the environmental impact buildings have on the planet and shifted her focus to the human beings inside.

“We do a lot of work for the federal government, and there are tremendous energy-saving policies right now,” Rebekah said. “Once federal does it, nobody else has an excuse. It’s great to see that transformation, and there’s still a lot of education that goes along with it.”

The HRGBC is in the early stages of planning its fall Solar Homes tours on the Southside and the Peninsula. Rebekah and her committee are adjusting things this year.

“We’re really reaching out to everybody who has done any kind of green technology and expanding the tour to become a ‘Green Homes’ tour,” she added.

IMPROVING EFFICIENCY

Being green doesn’t always mean tearing down an old structure and building a new one. In the case of an existing home, it may take the form of repair and restoration. That’s what happened when Claire Liebert hired contractor Gayle Johnson, who owns EcoBuilders of Virginia. You could say Gayle has recycled her life by following her passions. She is a classically trained harpsichordist and former director of the early music group Capriole based in Williamsburg in the 80s and 90s.

“When I was in college, I went to Prince Edward Island and visited a home that was off the grid. I was very inspired,” Gayle said. “Then, in Seattle when I was becoming a proficient harpsichordist, I did a passive solar addition to a 1920s bungalow because I always wanted to live in a passive solar house.”

Gayle worked for a while for a non-profit called “Citizens for a Solar Seattle” and continued pursuing her music studies. Twenty years later, she is taking the skills she employed in directing Capriole to managing life-changing house projects, beginning in 2006 when she did a complete rehab of her mother’s older home. All her subcontractors were impressed with Gayle’s organizational skills and encouraged her to become a contractor herself. She did.

“You have a vision of what you’re going to do, and then step by step you get there. You pick the right people, the right materials, value people’s time, and put the puzzle together, and just like a concert, you know it has to be ready, that day.” she said.

“This is holistic work,” she added. “It’s not just someone coming in an putting insulation in your attic. We come and look at the energy system as a whole.”

Gayle is a LEED accredited professional with the U.S. Green Building Council. Claire Siebert’s home is the first project EcoBuilders completed as part of a program called Next Step, which helps seniors stay in their homes. The program is funded partially by the federal government under the auspices of the Green Jobs Alliance, which is seeking to create new, green jobs. The federal government pays one fourth of the cost of renovations, once the contractor turns in evidence that energy use in the home has declined at least 15 per cent. The homeowner only pays 75 percent to the contractor.

In addition, the government pays $250 towards a home energy audit, in this case conducted by a company called Star Energy, which performed tests of all the ducts and evaluated the furnace in Claire’s home. The furnace was only working at 67 percent efficiency.

To expedite the changes needed to help Claire’s house, Gayle hired Leisha Bond, a former federal procurement agent for the military. “On Ms. Seibert’s house, I’ve crawled in, under, and over it,” Leisha said. “I did all the ducts, the insulation, some electrical work, the crawlspaces under the attic, and the hot water heater.”

Because of the repairs, which took only four days, Claire’s house has been re-evaluated. According to the airflow tests, her house is very energy efficient, with all air circulating as it should. Claire was overjoyed.

“They’re great. They clean up,” she said, laughing. “I think anyone who can do it should do it. I can’t wait to see the changes in my power bills!”

SAVING MONEY

When the city of Virginia Beach built the new convention center in 2007, it used state-of-the-art materials and design and the “footprint” of the old Pavilion. An early client in the new building suggested that the system could be greener. It is now.

At first, the Convention Center’s former assistant general manager, Lori Herrick, now the energy administrator for the city, worked to get the building rated with various LEED systems.

“When I first got into the building, I created a review plan and we partnered with Energy Star, a free program with the EPA,” Lori said. “We were charged with saving at least 10 percent of our energy costs and tracking consumption.”

Lori learned how to switch to more energy-efficient practices and found it cost less to recycle than to dump trash. The convention center saved paper and postage charges by switching to Adobe software for communications and saved over 400 thousand dollars in the first two years the building followed the Energy Star guidelines.

“It was a win-win situation,” Lori said.

Now Lori has taken her passion for energy efficiency to the entire city, looking at where the city’s kilowatt hours are being spent, learning about off shore wind energy, and meeting with representatives of cities all over the state. She wants Virginia Beach to be the greenest city on the East Coast.

At the convention center, Kimberlee Dobbins, who worked hand in hand with Lori, is the sustainability coordinator. She’s proud of the fact that the center is one of a hundred state-certified “Virginia Green” locations in the city. The Shamrock Marathon was designated the first “green” event in the state.

“It includes how they market the event online as well as how they deal with waste,” she said. “We have all the recycle bins set up, and they capture all those paper cups and water bottles from the runners and then we recycle them.”

The Convention Center saw some increases in gas and electric costs this very cold winter, following one of the hottest summers. But the HVAC equipment can monitor internal temperatures and make minimal changes, saving energy. This year, lights are being converted to compact fluorescents, and parking lot lighting is on a seasonally adjusted schedule.

It’s a big job, and it comes with lots of learning and upgrading of data. But Kimberlee says sustainability is very important to her, a mother of two.

“Sustainability is all about conserving our resources so they’re still here for future generations,” Kimberlee said. “I love what I’m doing here, and the people I work with are great. They get it.”

QUEEN OF GREEN

If you want to visit the epicenter of green living near the oceanfront, go no further than cozy one-story, Croc’s 19th Street Bistro. That’s where you’ll find owners Laura Wood Habr and her husband, Kal, exploring new ways for their business and the city to become environmentally friendly.

Not only did the restaurant go through a green facelift several years ago—installing low-flow toilets and new carpeting made from recycled materials—they also feature local seafood and produce, organic beverages, and Virginia wines. Croc’s is also home of the Old Beach Farmer’s Market in its fourth year. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, farmers and food vendors sell local goods. Croc’s is also host for gatherings of eco-conscious folks at monthly Green Drinks events.

Croc’s also participated in an energy audit, discovered where the building needed energy saving repairs, and received funding towards the purchase of a new Energy Star rated air conditioner. They’ve also applied for funding for a solar hot water heater and hope that comes through this year.

But Laura sees a bigger picture beyond the dining room of her family’s restaurant. She’s a member of the Resort Advisory Commission, which advises Virginia Beach City Council.

“We were a grass roots group—including Kimberlee and Lori at the convention center—and now we have been invited to have a place at the table,” Laura explained. “And we have recommended to the council that we expand recycling beyond the boardwalk onto the beach.”

Laura and her team made the case by doing two “waste audits” last year, donning protective gear and sorting through trash. They found that more than 50 percent of oceanfront trash was recyclable.

Tourists get a positive impression of the city when they see the recycling containers along the streets, Laura noted.

Starting this month, Laura and several other restaurants are partnering with the Virginia Aquarium in a grant from the EPA, sorting and collecting the pre- and post consumer food waste and having it delivered to a composting site outside Waverly.

Laura mentioned one more green practice at her restaurant: the Chesapeake Bay Stingray is now on the menu. Local stingrays—not an endangered species—feed on oysters and clams, so catching them will result in an upswing in the mollusk population.

“Have you heard the commercial ‘Eat a ray, save the Bay?’” asked Laura. “They taste like catfish!”

GREEN UPGRADES

Beyond the beach, the whole region is ramping up. The Ernie Morgan Environmental Action Center at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk—the home of “Keep Norfolk Beautiful” and the Norfolk Environmental Commission—serves as a model for green building techniques.

At Old Dominion University, new dormitories are using 25 percent less energy for cooling, and government buildings throughout the region are performing energy audits and seeking LEED certification as we realize the benefits of saving energy. School gardens are cropping up at our elementary schools.

Communities of seniors are enjoying green upgrades, like Russell House Senior Apartments on First Colonial Road, where all the bathrooms and kitchens have recently been upgraded to ensure water saving. Everywhere you look, it’s getting easier to be green!

Coming up April 21: Green Drinks at Croc’s features Gayle Johnson and other “Green” women from this article