Bill Hanlon worked for more than 25 years to gain expertise in his career field; it took a tornado at Greensburg to get recognition for it.
Hanlon now is in charge of the new Sustainable Living Center at Flint Hills Technical College. The center is the first of its kind in the state. Already teachers and tradesmen are meeting there to talk about ideas and learn more about sustainable living.
“We’re kind of the benchmark in the state, but we’ve got a long way to go,” he said.
Hanlon, who has taught high-efficiency homebuilding at FHTC, has been working with a core group of energy leaders to turn Greensburg, Kansas, into a prototype town for energy efficiency. Some businesses have installed wind turbines to produce electricity at their stores, and the city itself will have two large wind turbines to meet most of the energy needs of the town.
Hanlon said that working on the Greensburg rebuilding gave him both contacts and credibility.
“That was the main thing,” he said. “I became credible. I sat down with people with all the letters behind their names, and added to it. … Probably the turning point was when I offered teachers classes across the state. They were so hungry for it.”
The potential usefulness of the center also appealed officials at the Flint Hills Technical College.
“Administration really saw it as an opportunity for the tech college to be (able) to meet not only local needs, but statewide needs,” said Lisa Kirmer, dean of student services. “This just seemed like a logical next step for us, to try to develop this center for green building and green technology.”
Hanlon said the center will provide green building techniques and sustainable development training.
“Sustainable living, it’s the idea of taking a more environmentally friendly approach to our actions,” he said. “It’s kind of a philosophy of walking lightly.”
The Sustainable Living Center here will have three primary areas of interest:
• The food system
• Stepping up recycling efforts
• Energy-efficient construction and buildings
The goal is to “try to help communities by offering training in several areas, conferences, and workshops,” Hanlon said. “They’ll all be pertaining to sustainable future.”
The center will encourage more local food production and commerce, such as the Farmers Market, which Hanlon helped develop 26 years ago.
The ability to buy many locally grown and produced foods not only will help the area’s economy and eliminate the cost of shipping foods hundreds or thousands of miles cross-country or up from Mexico, it will provide the public with tastier, more nutritious food, he said.
An adjunct benefit is a better sense of community and expanded circles of friends that come from meeting face-to-face at marketplaces, he added.
“When you buy local food, not every time but the general gist of it, you get better food,” Hanlon said. “You help save genetic food we’re losing so rapidly.
“I can see this environmental crisis and it looks to me the way we can beat it is to rebuild our community … make your community so that much more stays there, rather than going to the big box companies.”
Soon, Hanlon will conduct a workshop on building a thermal siphoning device; it will be open to anyone interested in the concept. Participants will build a solar unit that will push fresh, cold air past a solar heater, which will warm the air and release it into a room, similar to a window air conditioning unit.
“We wanted some things for the do-it-yourselfer, not just the professionals,” Hanlon said. “Here’s a $65 collector you can build.”
With approximately 240 days of usable sunshine in Emporia, the collector can pay for itself in a short period of time in energy savings.
Lighting, safe wind and solar sources, photovoltaics and other aspects all will be highlighted. Storing electricity produced, always a problem in the past, has been made simpler and other innovations have added to energy options for homeowners.
As an example, Hanlon described a new substance that can be painted in stripes onto roofs to generate energy.
“It causes one to become negative and one to be positive,” he said.
By the second semester, Hanlon expects to have a class ready on green remodeling.
“Green building is fine, but we’ve got millions of houses out there,” he said. “I certainly could invest a few thousand in mine to get a return in three, four years.”
Green building on new construction costs between $1,500 to $2,000 more initially, Hanlon estimated; the return in lowered energy costs is not long in coming.
Small towns in the area, and even individual schools or businesses, could generate much of their own energy needs.
A school system in Wisconsin six months ago began producing its own energy, supplemented as needed by a traditional electrical company.
“We’re going to end up in eight years where they’re an independent company,” Hanlon said. “And I think, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with the Flint Hills Technical College doing this? In small communities, it’s going to work real well to do this.”
Denmark and several other northern European countries have been doing just that since the petroleum energy crisis of the mid-1970s, Hanlon said.
Farmers in those areas also have found alternatives to oil; they grow a grain similar to canola, then cold press it into a liquid that goes back into the tractor to fuel it another season.
“So it never even leaves the farm,” Hanlon added. “If we get off of an oil-based economy, we will have an extremely strong economy. The money they (Danes) make, they spend on lots of other things – new clothing, a new couch. … I think our standard of living will raise.”
Hanlon believes sustained living, and the benefits he expects to come with it, will need to be spread in geometric increments. He will teach the general public, contractors, and teachers; they will use the technology and teach others.
“It’s just an absolute waste of time and money to expect Washington to do it,” Hanlon said. “It’s a grassroots thought, so you got to start it there. … I kind of think we’re at a point where we don’t have a choice.”
For more information about sustainable living, call Hanlon or FHTC student services at 343-4600.
Hanlon will be a presenter this fall at the Kansas Wind and Renewable Energy Conference in Topeka, the Green Builders at the School of Architecture at Kansas State University, and the Oct. 4 meeting of a major cities group promoting green cities at the Discovery Center in Kansas City.