ANEW’s 2024 Earth Week Summit—three days of inspiration and connection!

This year’s Earth Week Summit took place from April 23-25 in San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA. We are grateful for our hosts Gensler (San Francisco, Day 1), Pivot Interiors (Los Angeles, Day 2), and HOK (Los Angeles, Day 3) and our special guest international speaker and author Tania Katan. Many thanks to Taylor Coleman from Howard Building Corporation (a longtime ANEW sponsor) for photography, our event sponsor Tito's Vodka, education platform CEU Events and the ANEW team! Together, doing what’s right with what’s left was a natural!

All three days of the summit were filled with inspiration, connections, and unforgettable moments!

DAY 1: ANEW kicked off its annual 3-Day Earth Week Summit by meeting with Marcus Hopper, Senior Associate, AIA and his leading A+D professional design project managers of the North Western Region with construction vendor partners at the Gensler San Francisco office. We focused on program engagement with owners and their general contractors and presented ANEW project case studies to raise awareness about the ANEWmethod™ for professionals of the built-environment.

DAY 2: ANEW engaged in a series of collaborative sessions and gave a presentation to the vibrant, engaging Pivot Interiors team, MillerKnoll platinum level dealership lead by Anthony Jenkinson, SVP, General Manager, in Los Angeles. We highlighted ANEW’s past and present across 19 years with the vision aimed on the next 20!

DAY 3: ANEW launched its premiere CEU module 1 to an audience of A+D professionals at the HOK LA studio with Cara MacArthur, HOK Sr. Principal, Director of Interiors Los Angeles. We brought top thought and practice leaders together in our inaugural Steward's Circle to WASTE their time. Our special guest author and motivational speaker, Tania Katan, opened the discussion with inspiring ideas based on her latest book “Creative Trespassing.”

Our Steward’s Circle included members from each discipline of the built-environment:

Corporate Real Estate – Newmark, Ron Burkhardt
Global Architecture + Design – HOK, Cara MacArthur
Corporate Construction – Howard Building Corp, Roman Esquivel
Design Build – Design Build Labs, William Robertson
MillerKnoll certified platinum dealer, Pivot Interiors, Anthony Jenkinson
Senior Multidisciplinary Design Consultant – Brett Shwery
Pre-Fab Design + Consulting – HelmersonSims, Amy Sims
Global Client – The Trade Desk, Sue-Meng Lau
Global Manufacturing, Flooring – Interface, Jill Potts
Corporate FF&E Decommission – California Office Interiors, Angel Gutierrez

The Steward's Circle engaged in inspiring dialogue on “What” defines WASTE and “How” to mitigate its social and environmental impact as applied to their day-to-day work. In break-out sessions, groups were challenged to find creative ways to increase circularity and life-cycle of C+D (construction and demolition) material by thinking of it differently. The groups shared their ideas and approaches, applied in real and hypothetical situations. ANEW then explained how they define WASTE.

ANEW sees W.A.S.T.E. as an acronym that stands for We Are Stewards of The Earth.

Each of the 10 professionals in the Circle saw themselves as the Stewards connected and responsible for incorporating best practice around waste. The event closed with a celebratory Thank You Happy Hour sponsored by Tito’s Handmade Vodka.

LOOKING AHEAD

Additionally, and for the months ahead, ANEW will issue a set of assignments to each of the Stewards. We look forward to receiving their case studies by year-end and learning how they incorporated waste minimization into their selected client projects at next year's ANEW Earth Week Summit. They will present their day-in-the-life, real work project studies with measured outcomes in accordance to the rigor of ANEW standards with an audited report. And, we will all gather, give a cheer and cut the cake in 2025, ANEW’s 20th year anniversary!