The Texas Environmental Excellence Awards is an annual awards program that honors achievements in environmental preservation and protection. There are ten diverse award categories that provide citizens, communities, businesses, and organizations an opportunity to obtain the state’s highest environmental honor and be recognized for their environmental projects. The deadline for submission is September 27th.

Since 1993, they have honored more than 250 successful environmental projects and efforts. By honoring these winners, the TCEQ hopes to encourage others to initiate like-minded projects and reinforce a spirit of environmental stewardship. These are the categories:

• Agriculture
• Civic/Community
• Education
• Environmental Educator of the Year
• Individual
• Innovative Operations/Management
• Pollution Prevention
• Technical/Technology
• Water Conservation
• Youth

The 2019 annual symposium will focus on conserving native plants in the upper Texas coastal prairies, also known as the Northern Humid Gulf Coastal Prairies in the EPA Level IV ecoregion map.

Quaternary-age deltaic sands, silts, and clays underlie much of this gently sloping coastal plain. The original vegetation was mostly grasslands with a few clusters of oaks, known as oak mottes or maritime woodlands. Little bluestem, yellow Indiangrass, brownseed paspalum, gulf muhly, and switchgrass were the dominant grassland species, with some similarities to the grasslands of the Blackland Prairies. Almost all of the coastal prairies have been converted to cropland, rangeland, pasture, or urban land uses. The exotic Chinese tallow tree and Chinese privet have invaded large areas in this region. Some loblolly pine occurs in the northern part of the region in the transition to the South Central Plains. Soils are mostly fine-textured: clay, clay loam, or sandy clay loam. Within the region, there are some differences from the higher Lissie Formation to the lower Beaumont Formation, both of Pleistocene age. The Lissie Formation has lighter colored soils, mostly Alfisols with sandy clay loam surface texture, while darker, clayey soils associated with Vertisols are more typical of the Beaumont Formation. Annual precipitation varies from 37 inches in the southwest portion to 58 inches in the northeast, with a summer maximum.

The symposium headquarters will be in League City, between Houston and Galveston. at the South Shore Harbour Resort and Conference Center, which is on the south side of Clear Lake across the lake from the Johnson Space Center. The event begins with a reception on Thursday evening for those arriving early, speakers on Friday morning with a choice of field trips in the afternoon, more speakers and breakout sessions on Saturday, and an awards banquet on Saturday night. A social event is planned for Friday night on the Kemah Boardwalk. In addition they have prepared a list of suggested side stops and field trips for those traveling on Thursday and Sunday.

Registration prices vary depending on your level of participation.

Shell Educators’ Preview: Start your evening at 4 p.m. and earn one hour of CPE credit while viewing our newly renovated George W. Strake Hall of Malacology.

HMNS’ Educator Members will have an opportunity to speak to Tina Petway, the
Museum’s Associate Curator of Malacology, during the Shell Educators’ Preview.
As a special treat, all guests will also be able to visit our newest special exhibition,
Art of the Brick until 6:00 p.m.!

The Educator Event @HMNS: Continue your evening with us starting at 5 p.m.
and earn up to three additional hours of CPE credit depending on which
programming you attend. HMNS is featuring several ways to earn CPE credit from
attending workshops to taking a guided tour to seeing a show in our Planetarium.
Educators are able to earn a total of up to 4 hours of CPE credit while attending
HMNS’, An Evening for Educators!

Registration Information
Educators: Free
Non-Educators: $10.00

(Pricing includes entry to the George W. Strake Hall of Malacology and Art of the Brick)
Registration begins Tuesday, July 30th and ends Wednesday, October 2nd.
Please complete the online form at hmns.org/eveningforeducators to reserve your spot. For questions, contact educatorevent@hmns.org.

Leave your troubles at the door, and join us for a chill craft event, second Thursdays from 6-8pm. Bring what you’re making, and hang out with us while we’re making what we’re making. Knit, crochet, embroider, slow stitch, paint, draw, collage, quill, whittle — whatever. BYOB — light snacks provided. Must be over 18.

Held on the “2nd Saturdays” of each month, they will enjoy a delicious vegan potluck and meeting, along with a discussion, film screening, food demo or speaker presentation on intersectional issues of veganism, animal rights, environmentalism, nonviolence, health and more. Each month will be something new! Their new venue is at the HCC Conference Center.

They are asking for a donation of $5 per person to help cover our facility rental expenses. All attendees must bring a vegan entree to share at the potluck (serving size to feed 10 people)!

Please remember to bring a vegan dish to share with the group! Their events are always vegan, so please only vegan or raw vegan foods (no animal-derived ingredients). Also bring reusable dinnerware and plates to keep the event earth-friendly. If you have questions on ingredients, feel free to contact them.

They will also feature a new discussion topic on inter sectional issues each month, such as: animal rights, ethical vegan living, vegan health & nutrition, cooking, world hunger solutions, eco-friendly living, nonviolence and more! Some months will also include film screenings and/or guest speakers and food demos.

Houston Community College Conference Center is located at 3100 Main St, 3rd Floor, Houston, TX 77002. See below for map. Free Parking is available on level 7 & 8 of the HCC Administration parking garage at Main & Elgin. Use elevator from parking garage to 3rd floor breezeway, which leads to the Conference suites. You must enter the building through the parking garage and not street-level.

All attendees must sign in at the Security Desk.

RSVP is appreciated for seating!

The Woodlands G.R.E.E.N. is sponsoring a FREE Going Green Sustainability lecture: “Mycophile or Mycophobe–we all need mushrooms” with guest speaker, Teri MacArthur, Certified Texas Master Naturalist. This event is free and open to the public.

Rain is as important as carbon dioxide in cooling our planet. People must restore trees and soil to restore the water cycle.

The image above shows how trees pump huge amounts of water back into the air and create more rain further inland. It is a river in the sky.

When folks started climate modeling, to simplify, they ignored water vapor and focused on carbon dioxide. But the water cycle is 95% of planetary cooling while carbon dioxide is only 5%, according to Dr. Walter Jehne. We need to keep on reducing emissions, but it’s time to also work on restoring ecosystems and their soils. Besides this may be an easier and faster way to make a difference.

To learn more and register to this event visit Coolingourplanet

Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP) will receive the 2019 Rudy Bruner Award Silver Medal for the transformation of Buffalo Bayou Park during a presentation on October 28. Following the presentation by Rudy Bruner Director Anne-Marie Lubenau, a panel discussion will highlight Buffalo Bayou Park and proposed improvements along Buffalo Bayou east of downtown.

Co-sponsored by AIA Houston and BBP, the panel will include Anne-Marie Lubenau; Guy Hagstette, Vice President of Parks & Civic Projects at the Kinder Foundation; Cary Hirschstein, Partner at HR&A; and Scott McCready, Principal of SWA Group.

The panel will be moderated by Bill Fulton, Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.  The event is free and open to the public. 

Celebrate Texas Arbor Day with a tree planting demonstration and receive a complimentary tree sapling while supplies last. Visit the outdoor library corner to find books on trees and how to care for them at Mercer’s West Side Arboretum. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES, FACE PAINTING, HISTORICAL TREES, CHILDREN’S CRAFTS

UH Energy invites you to attend the second event in the 2019-2020 Energy Symposium Series | Critical Issues in Energy, “Future of Plastics: Designed Sustainability or Recycling.”

The production and use of plastics has defined the modern era and since the early 1950s they have substantially grown to be the material of choice in diverse applications. The production of plastics was projected to grow by a factor of five over the next twenty five years and the chemicals industry has been preparing for this by expanding production facilities worldwide. However, most plastics have their origins are in fossil based oil and gas and they have increasingly come under public scrutiny because of the preponderance of single use plastics in consumer products, their poor recycling rates (less than 10% globally) and their high-profile observation in unexpected parts of the ecosystem due to their improper disposal. The future of plastics is being formulated and issues of designed-in sustainability, bio-based replacements, and improved recycling are at the core and will be discussed in this symposium.

Speakers

Nichole Fitzgerald, Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Technology Manager, U.S. Department of Energy

Jill Martin, Global Sustainability Fellow, Dow Chemical Company

Ganesh Nagarajan, Associate Director for Polymers Business Development and Projects, LyondellBasell Industries

Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor, University of California – Santa Barbara

Moderator

Dr. Megan Robertson, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston

For more information about our speakers and moderator, please click here.