DEVENS ECO-EFFICIENCY CENTER

Helping area businesses and organizations reduce their environmental impacts and operating costs through education, collaboration and technical assistance.
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Q Tour of Devens
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Tour of Devens

Devens, a former Military base is being redeveloped as an eco-industrial park with the guiding principle of sustainability and a triple-bottom line approach to development—economy, ecology and community.  Below is a snapshot of some of the businesses, industries, non-profits and governmental organizations and future planning projects at Devens and how they are or will contribute to the sustainability movement.  Devens is envisioned to become a self sustaining community for the future where residents can live work and play in a safe, healthy and well planned accessible community.

1   Devens Common:

· Hotel, working to become EcoStar Achiever.  Gently-used linens donated for reuse by families in need, homeless shelters, and pet shelters. Donates use of Conference Center's kitchen facilities to local charity that makes cookies from troops abroad..

· All buildings in complex - roof run-off goes into cistern for reuse for irrigation

· All services within ½ mile of all residents in Devens

2   Guild of St Agnes:

· Day care with slots reserved for working mothers in local companies.

· Receipt of exchange materials for art projects

· Social equity component

3   Transitions:

· Social Equity - 13 unit home for battered women with children

· LEED for Homes (Sustainable building design and construction)

· Reduced parking footprint

· Walking distance to local services

10  Rock Tenn: 

· Product take back, deploying roll-offs at their clients facilities to capture waste corrugated for reuse.

· Introduced to EID when we discussed exchange with WEBVAN corrugated from 7 grocery stores

· Shared employee discussions with Horn Packaging for driver and with Parker Hannifin for machinists

· WPI interns-boiler efficiency study

8   Devens Dept. of Public Works:

· Free recycling for business & residents(3 tons/month)

· Negotiated recycling contract for all businesses

· HHW Disposal for business & residents

· Shared equipment & vehicle maintenance for Fire, Police, Municipality, neighboring towns

· State of the art wash water recycling unit

· On EcoStar Steering committee

Community

 

Sustainable
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11   Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry:

· Food pantry offering food, clothing and necessities to those in need.

· Partners with local businesses to do food drives that benefit hundreds of local families in need.

· Reuses large plastic bags that originally protected incoming inventory of a local business.

· Low-Impact Landscaping—no mow zones.
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22 Rogers Field Landscaping Practices:

· Sandy terrain difficult for grass growth—solution:  Biocompost—decomposed wood chips, yard waste, gelatin and other biosolids that absorb and retain water

· Creates a stress-resistant surface friendly to grass & earthworms but not weeds.

· Saves 2,400,000 gal of water/yr and reduces chemical fertilizer use by $43,000/yr

14 Magne-motion:

· Magnetic levitation systems development— trains float over a guideway using basic principles of magnets to replace the old steel wheel and track trains

· Alternative transportation mode - non-fossil fuel-based

· Magnetic field created by the electrified coils in the guideway walls & the track combine to propel train down the track.
a Maglev train

From: Railway Technical Research Institute

4   Sustainable Housing Project:

· 8—Zero-Net Energy Single Family Homes (super-insulated, renewable energy, efficient HVAC, passive solar) with LID and reduced development footprint.

· Affordable workforce housing.

· Model for future housing.

· 12-unit multi family sustainable housing demonstration project across the street.