Showcasing a growing movement throughout Milwaukee
Thank you so much for being a part of our MMS experience! This project began with many “what if” statements, and we couldn’t be more stoked that they all came together to form this beautiful room. Sustainability is such a huge goal that we need to focus on in our world, and our goal with this experience is to bring awareness to people and places in the greater Milwaukee area that are already making a difference in the fight towards a more sustainable world. We hope to inspire and educate anyone who enters this museum to begin to think about the way in which you live your life. Are you using resources efficiently? Are you leaving the world in a better condition than when you came into it? What will the world look like for your children and grandchildren? Our group urges you to take a step back and examine your habits and lifestyle. There is so much hope for our world, and it is visible in the faces and places on the walls of this room. As high schoolers and members of the generation that will soon lead the world, we feel that this project is our chance to use our voices and begin to make our dent on the world. We hope you enjoy this museum and have learned a little something about sustainability.
Sustainable businesses and people
Glenna Holstein- Urban Ecology Center
Glenna Holstein is the Menomonee Valley Branch Manager at the Urban Ecology Center. Her love for the environment developed quite naturally, as she grew up in Shorewood and was playing around in the woods all the time as a kid. However, it was not until she took the class Watershed Wisdom, offered at Shorewood High School, that she realized it was something that she wanted to pursue a career in. After high school, Holstein attended Pomona College, in California, to study sustainability and environmental analysis.
The Urban Ecology Center is an environmental education organization, with three facilities in Milwaukee county. Its mission is to “connect people in cities to nature and each other.” It offers programs that educate people on the importance of caring for the environment, provides the community with engagement opportunities, and takes care of and maintains parks.
“One of the biggest way the Urban Ecology Center contributes to sustainability is through caring for our parks, and educating people to care for our parks. The green spaces in cities are a huge part of what can make cities sustainable,” said Holstein.
As a branch manager, Holstein’s job varies day to day. She thinks of her job as having two main parts: connecting and empowering. For the connection piece, Holstein is connecting the work that Urban Ecology Center is doing to both the community and the organizational vision. And the empowerment piece comes in through providing those who work with her the resources they need to succeed.
Robin Mastera - The Farmers Wife
Robin Mastera is the owner and head chef of The Farmer’s Wife, a local, sustainable restaurant in West Allis, WI. Her husband was born on a fifth generation dairy farm, which is where she got the name “The Farmer’s Wife” from. Mastera was taught by her mother, who was raised on a corn farm, the importance of sustainability. She was canning and preserving from a young age, and learned “if it’s in a package, you don’t know how it was handled.” That, along with her love for both cooking and people, is what inspired her to open a restaurant with a focus on sustainability.
The Farmer’s Wife practices sustainability in many different ways. They use all local farmers and purveyors, they recycle, and they even grow some of their own food when it’s warm out.
Mastera believes that “Food should be produced in ways that are helping our local economics to thrive … and keep the livelihood in our area thriving. We need to protect both plants and animals … and keep the natural resources balance.”
Additionally, she thinks that the way she handles food, as well as her constant efforts to be sustainable, make her restaurant stand out. And as far as the food and restaurant industry as a whole, she thinks it is drifting in the right direction, but slowly. “I think it’s coming along, I think it’s got a long way to go. Not enough people are doing it, a lot of people are still opening up cans and they don’t care where they came from or what plant process their food … I wanna make sure that my food is safe. I had four farmers delivered today, [and] I think that makes me stand out in a big way.
A few of Mastera’s goals for the future include creating a community garden up the road and teaching both young people and adults fresh and safe food practices.
Kate Nelson - UWM office of sustainability
Kate Nelson is the Chief Sustainability Officer at UWM, which involves running and coordinating various sustainability-related work. The Office of Sustainability is a part of Facilities Planning and Management, so the whole team is on the administrative side of how operations work. Being housed in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning allows for lots of interaction between the office and the nearby classes. The work that the Office of Sustainability does each week really depends on the students. Altering the agenda and catering to the wants and needs at hand catalyzes real life connection to research, curriculum, while integrating sustainable choices into the students lives.
The office is only 11 years old, but continues to evolve with the needs of not only the student body, but also the community. The team’s focus remains on energy, waste reduction, alternative transportation, and stormwater management (MMSD provided stormwater management funding for the Shorewood High School and UWM). The student involvement in each of these issues is majorly impactful. Nelson mentioned that collectively the Office of Sustainability and the passionate students “compost and create all the soil for UWM’s rooftop gardens.” She continued by saying that “the students come to me with their ideas and we create internships paid and unpaid”. On top of that, Nelson was excited to share about one of the larger projects UWM entertains each year: “We run something called Learn Earn Grow for high school students where we teach life skills on microfarms. Students learn the skills behind urban agriculture and the science behind it and we work with MATC which gives the students a foot in the door to higher education.”
As the years go by Nelson sees the programs getting deeper and richer. “There is something really intentional with student leadership here and I can really just sit back and watch things unfold. It's amazing.”
Nelson is the first sustainability director in the entire UW system, and in doing so, is paving the way for others.
Juli Kaufman- Fix Development
Juli Kaufmann is taking huge strides towards a more sustainable future through her company Fix Development. Fix Development is a Milwaukee-based real estate firm that centers around developing and constructing sustainable homes and businesses.
Kaufmann first realized her passion for environmental sustainability during her days at the University of Michigan. Rapid deforestation and the amount of garbage she saw on her college campus motivated Kaufmann to educate herself, and then later, motivated her to take action.
Fix Development worked closely with Clock Shadow Creamery on developing their building and including features like rainwater flush toilets, as well as motion sensor lights. Kaufmann is intentional about the businesses she partners with. She chooses to specifically work with businesses of similar ideology. “It’s kind of just like a house, you can build a super green house but if the people who live in it keep the lights on all day and run the water forever. It’s really about the use inside the building,” Kaufmann said.
Buildings by Fix Development that are similar to Clock Shadow Creamery include the Freshwater Fix building, the home of Purple Door Ice Cream and Float Milwaukee.
Kaufmann also incorporates sustainability in her home life. She has built and lived in multiple sustainable homes throughout the Milwaukee area and is currently building a new house for herself in the Riverwest area.
Eric Matthews - Shorewood highschool
Eric Mathews is a science teacher at Shorewood High School, whose passion for environmental sustainability is reflected through his teaching of environmental science, environmental literature, and Watershed Wisdom.
The goal of each of these classes is to enlighten youth on topics of sustainability in the environment, as well as to educate students on how to take care of and respect the environment.
Watershed Wisdom teaches students about the Milwaukee river watershed. As a part of the class, students take a ten day trip in the beginning of summer, hiking, canoeing, and biking.
Mathews, as someone who works in Shorewood and lives in close proximity to it, says he would give Shorewood a “B+” on environmental sustainability.
“I think that the community is working hard to consider … water issues, and how as a community, we can be more thoughtful in terms of protecting water quality. Also I think that the village becoming more involved in curbside composting … and there are more and more people who are making an effort to move away from lawn chemicals like herbicides and pesticides, fertilizers, things like that,” Mathews said.
However, he thinks Shorewood can improve in its efforts, specifically around becoming more energy self-sufficient and minimizing waste.
“All communities, Shorewood in particular, are going to have get really serious about waste production. Otherwise we’re gonna be swimming in garbage when we all get older. Energy and waste in my mind are two big hurdles that we’ll have to eventually tackle in Shorewood.”
Mathews believes that every individual can be taking small steps to make the planet a better place to live: finding alternatives to single-use plastics, choosing to say no to fertilizers and pesticides, walking and biking when possible, starting a home composting program, or planting native flowers in your garden. “You can do a lot. [These] problems are just the result of a lot of people doing little things maybe the wrong way. And if a lot of people start to do little things the right way, all of a sudden sustainability as a goal becomes a lot more achievable. It takes collective action, but it takes individual action too.”
Bioswale-MMSD
Bre Plier is the Manager of Sustainability at Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District (MMSD), a regional government agency. Working for MMSD, Plier helps to provide water reclamation and flood management services for about 1.1 million people in 28 communities in the Greater Milwaukee Area. She oversees a team of 3 project managers and 1 neighborhood outreach coordinator; they are known as the Sustainability Workgroup. At MMSD they work to capture rainwater and create green infrastructure all around the city of Milwaukee. This helps to reduce water pollution, which improves our rivers and Lake Michigan. 35 million people live in the Great Lakes watershed, so it is essential that we protect our lakes in order to allow future generations to share in the benefits we receive.
Green infrastructure exists in many different forms. MMSD issues rain barrels, plants trees, and uses porous pavers on roads and sidewalks which allows for the infiltration of water. Pictured is a bioswale, which is a sort of natural wetland which will capture pollutants and mitigate floods. However, the work doesn’t stop there. MMSD also diligently attends to Water Quality Research, Household Hazardous Waste, Medicine Collection, Green Infrastructure (funding, implementation, planning), Greenseams®, Planning and Engineering of our community, Laboratory Services, and Industrial Waste Monitoring.
MMSD has some big goals for the future. They want to increase green infrastructure all around the city and, as Plier says, “continue to build relationships with local partners to improve our regional understanding of water quality, climate change, and how the sewer system works.”
“I love knowing that I am a part of an organization that truly cares about the environment and outperforms most if not all of our peers in the industry.” - Bre Plier
Chris Pier - Goodwill
Chris Pier is the Director of Commercial Recycling Services at Goodwill. His job is to partner with large companies in the area and provide them with the resources they need to become more sustainable. He has worked for five different Goodwills in the United States, helping them with sustainability programs.
Through its numerous branches and initiatives, Goodwill touches on all three areas of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social.
When it comes to environmental sustainability Pier says, “Goodwill is the original recycler. Nobody has been recycling as long as we have, we’ve been doing it long before it was cool.” Goodwill is most well-known for its stores, where people drop-off items they no longer use and then Goodwill sells them for a lower price. This form of recycling prevents items that aren’t truly trash from going to waste. However, behind the scenes, Goodwill is doing a lot more than that. Through the Goodwill E-Cycle program, Goodwill safely recycles and refurbishes electronics, such as old computers, phones, and game consoles. Employees sort the parts, remove any materials that could be chemically dangerous, and then send them off so they can be reused. The E-Cycle program keeps electronics and electronic parts out of landfills and puts them back in use for many more years. Goodwill also does laundry for institutions such as hospitals. By doing laundry in mass loads, a huge amount of water and laundry detergent is saved.
Goodwill impacts economic sustainability, as Goodwill stores allow people to buy clothes, appliances, books, and much more at a cheaper, affordable price. The stores began when a minister noticed that the upper class was constantly getting rid of good material that they considered trash, yet at the same time, there were so many people who needed and would use that material.
The biggest way Goodwill creates social sustainability is by providing job opportunities. There are over 6,000 employees just in the southeastern Wisconsin and metropolitan Chicago. Goodwill focuses on helping and employing those with disabilities or disadvantages, and has training programs so students or unemployed people are able to get jobs, both at Goodwill and elsewhere.
Kensington home
This Shorewood home, built by Juli Kaufmann for her family, has a very sustainable design. It is incredibly energy efficient, as it was built facing north and east, which maximizes solar exposure. Builders were adamant about using minimal waste in the process of construction, making sure that no unnecessary materials were added to landfills. The entire home is heated hydronically; it relies on solar thermal renewable energy. The house features double paned, energy efficient windows that provide insulation through cold Wisconsin winters. Nearly all the lighting in the house is LED, builders using the most efficient bulbs on the market. Venting helps the house to filter fresh air in and out.
Water efficiency was also taken into consideration with the construction of the house. It contains low flow toilets (using only 1.28 gallons per flush!), a harvesting system on the exterior of the home, which captures water into four barrels, and a buried cistern providing irrigation. Surrounding the house are drought tolerant plants and permeable hardscapes. 100% of rainwater is captured on the grounds of this house, which helps improve water quality locally.
Ken Leinbach - Urban Ecology Center
An individual’s impact on their community can be constrained to personal choices or expanded to community outreach. Ken Leinbach has chosen to incorporate both ideas into his life.
Biking around town with a plate in his bag and his own utensils might seem small, but to Leinbach, the small things count. “I had it in my DNA from childhood, I was a nature nerd. I got involved in sustainability when I became really close to a piece of land … That lead me to studying the what was happening.” In his studies Leinbach said he realized that the state of the planet was in crisis, and most people didn’t have any inclination that was the case.
Leinbach’s self-directed learning got him doing what he could to counteract the problems. This lead to one of Milwaukee’s staples, the Urban Ecology Center. Leinbach, along with other individuals, created the Urban Ecology Center as an “experiment in answering the question of how can we get the word out about the health of the world?”
However, Leinbach is waiting for more. “Ideally I’d love to see an Urban Ecology Center in every city around the world. That's the dream.” And Leinbach may certainly have a shot at it. His book is on Amazon and he often will speak at conventions, trying to persuade change. Many people from around the world, in places as far away as Israel, travelled to Milwaukee this past summer to learn about the Urban Ecology Center, and in Leinbach’s words, “learn what we do and why we do it.”
Hittman Solar
Elizabeth Hittman, Sustainability Program Coordinator for Milwaukee Shines, the city of Milwaukee’s solar program, as well as a part of Mayor Barrett’s Water Centric City Program, certainly has her hands full with rewarding projects.
“I help homeowners and business owners find qualified solar installers, educate them on the costs and benefits of solar, talk to them about the tax credits and incentives that are available, and will look over any bids they get in case they have questions,” Hittman said. Hittman does a lot of public information sessions at coffee shops, libraries, and other fun spots throughout Milwaukee. And the reason why she does it is simple. “I like people to know as much about solar as they can so they feel confident and enthusiastic about solar.” Hittman helps also coordinate projects with the universities in town, water nonprofits like Milwaukee Riverkeeper and The Water Council for the Mayor’s Water Centric City program.
“We are working to increase the amount of clean and renewable energy used here in Milwaukee and have a goal of 25% of our energy being renewable energy by 2025,” Hittman said. “It would be amazing in the future if we could have 100% renewable energy here in Milwaukee [and] I’m excited to work towards that goal.”
Colectivo by the lake
Since 1993, Colectivo Coffee Roasters has been a huge part of Milwaukee culture. Founded by Lincoln Fowler and Paul Miller, Colectivo has made many commendable efforts towards sustainability. The United States Environmental Protection Agency recognized the coffee company for its efforts to expand green power awareness.
Colectivo gets 100% of its energy from wind power, biomass decomposition, solar energy, and small hydroelectric plants, an effort that has put them on the list of EPA Green Power Partners. The company also uses HVAC systems with pressure sensors that circulate the desired temperature of air depending on the time of year. There is also a timing circuit installed on the roast exhaust incineration that ensures the flame only burns when necessary, which conserves natural gas. All of these things help the company to produce their coffee in the most efficient and sustainable way possible.
Pictured on the front of this board is the lakefront location of Colectivo. In 1888, this location was home to a flushing station that, at the time, was the largest water pump in the world. This pump filtered river water which was then returned to the lake, which later would be drinken by many people in the greater Milwaukee area. Today, the pump does not run, but the building is an example of past sustainability in the city.
Brian Sales - Green Veterans
Green Veterans is a group focused on teaching sustainable efforts to former members of our nation's military. Brian Sales works diligently each day overseeing programs and projects that Green Veterans are engaged with, while also assisting other program managers if needed. Sales spends a ton of his time doing community outreach, letting folks know about Green Vets’ mission and programs. Sales said that the beginning of Green Vets was very natural to him. “The concept for Green Veterans started while I was in college studying alternative and renewable energy management. My military background combined with my newfound passion for sustainability lead me to start questioning, ‘Why isn’t anyone teaching Vets about sustainability?’” When Sales saw how fast the green movement was taking off and that there was a hole in the education, Green Vets was founded as an independent program in 2013.
Milwaukee is fairly new to the program, seeing as it only arrived here in 2017, becoming a part of Groundwork Milwaukee’s framework. Sales says: “The Milwaukee program concentrates its efforts towards urban gardening to create opportunities for healing through horticulture for Vets who suffer from PTSD and other mental ailments. This is through the Organic Therapy Project, where veteran participants grow, maintain, and harvest produce on Groundwork Milwaukee’s urban farming and agricultural sites. Program participants also study beekeeping and pollination, train in healthy eating, food preservation, and canning; enjoy outdoor recreation including camping and fishing; and engage local community partners.” The goal now is to grow. Wanting to support as many veterans as possible in the future, Green Veterans has many new programs they want to develop. With the resources available, they are excited to expand their reach and touch more lives.
Clock Shadow Creamery and Victory Garden Initiative
Clock Shadow Creamery is a cheese manufacturer located on 138 W Bruce Street in Milwaukee. The store, as well as the factory, is housed in a building that is uniquely sustainable. Built by Juli Kaufmann’s Fix Development company a little more than six years ago, it is zero-waste with many eco-friendly features. There is geothermal heating and cooling, a rooftop garden, a power generating elevator, flush toilets, and the wood that is on the outside of the building was taken from pickle barrels and then straightened and cleaned. Additionally, many of the plumbing fixtures, as well as the light fixtures, are repurposed from other buildings. However, Clock Shadow Creamery is not only located in a sustainable building, it also incorporates sustainability its cheese production. “There’s a lot of waste water that happens because they’re constantly cleaning when they make cheese … So that water, the wastewater, goes to being used in geothermal heat,” said Patty Peterson, employee at Clock Shadow Creamery. “We also do try to use a lot of other sustainable products.”
The vibrant colors used for the building’s mural are stunning, but the beauty of Victory Garden Initiative doesn’t end there. VGI, a Milwaukee nonprofit, strives to build a community that interacts with the food system and understands sustainable food growth.
Through VGI’s Garden Blitz program, both staff and volunteers help build 500 raised garden beds every year for anyone that wants to participate. Public outreach programs like the Blitz keep VGI closely connected with the community. Additionally, countless educational programs for kids are offered year-round. In these programs, students are taught about how to take food from a garden and integrate it into meals. Gretchen Mead, executive director and founder of Victory Garden Initiative, wants to remind everyone that “Sustainability is really related to that long term resilience of a system, where you continue to take things out, but you continue to put things in.” Gretchen is supported by programs manager at VGI, Christine Kuhn, who said that VGI is focuses on “permaculture (permanent agriculture) and on growing food in a way that works with the environment not against it”
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