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New Orleans - As the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches August 29, the Sierra Club releases a new report analyzing the green rebuilding efforts under way in New Orleans. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina (over 200,000 homes were destroyed) has provided the city of New Orleans with a unique opportunity to develop a national model for rebuilding green.

The New Orleans Green Building Assessment researchers Kristin McKee and Shawn Dillard from Monterey, California spent three weeks in New Orleans in January 2009 working with the Sierra Club to develop a plan for conducting a green building assessment. With advisement from Darryl Malek-Wiley, the Environmental Justice Organizer for the New Orleans office, the researchers began scoping the green building environment and conducting informal interviews with 42 green building organizations and stakeholders throughout the city of New Orleans.

The report examines current and former green building efforts in New Orleans, noting partnerships and potential strategies for improvement throughout; it also documents and merges the disparate green building efforts into one central location.

Moving forward, this document provides a foundation for the city to develop a “best practices” model for rebuilding green, focusing on the city’s existing and emerging partnerships.

While the report finds tremendous growth potential and interest within the marketplace to participate in sustainable building practices, it also cites that consumers lack the information to locate where they can buy these products in New Orleans. *LGNO created a LOCAL GREENS page featuring hand-picked local GREEN businesses and is updating our non-profit page to help you!

They also compiled a Green Building Directory based on available businesses during their stay in January, and is not a complete list. Many sustainable businesses were still launching during the research period, and thus, did not make the report.

To view the full report (Adobe PDF), click here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Green Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.