Jeffrey Berg

Currently I am designing lighting and controls for a series of new bus rapid transit stations.  The project will make bus transportation more appealing by creating dedicated lanes, enhanced fare collection, and stations with benches, information screens and lighting.

This week we are working on a proposal to provide lighting energy conservation design services to a prospective client.

A canvasser working for the City of Cambridge came by Saturday to evaluate participation in the food waste composting program. For us, so far, so good. We're getting used to putting food scraps, used napkins and paper towel waste in the compost bin instead of the trash can. The greater challenge may come in the warmer, more humid weather of summer when the food waste attracts flies. We might refrigerate waste until collection day! 

Discussed updates to Recommended Practice for Daylighting Buildings as an advisory member of the Illuminating Engineering Society Daylighting Committee, in committee conference call yesterday.

I gave a presentation today on a brief history of Active Core Sunlighting, to the Boston Society of Architects Sustainability Education Committee. This topic includes the use of tracking devices such as heliostats to collect sunlight, and then transport and distribute it to interior spaces far from windows in a building. Natural light is the most efficient renewable resource because it is used without conversion to another form of energy, but it needs to be manipulated for optimum effect.  As cities become ever more dense this technique becomes more desirable.

Put out food scraps for curbside composting collection in the City of Cambridge for the first time last week (along with yard waste to be composted, recyclables, and plain old trash).

I planted bamboo with the office Green Team yesterday, and took the plant home. As part of Green Team activities I won a cilantro grow kit, which I'll also take home, my wife being a landscape architect and the better gardener. 

We're getting used to handling food waste for composting in the City of Cambridge system. The scraps go into a compostable bag in the kitchen counter bin. So far the weather has been cool and there have been no flies and very little odor.