Tag: Sustainability

Native Plants Improve Environment, Reduce Maintenance Costs

Native plants play such a critical role in our ecosystems. They have coevolved with the soils, rainfall patterns, and climatic conditions of a region. Native plants also have specialized relationships with the birds, butterflies, pollinators, and other wildlife of a region, providing nutrition and nesting. A common misconception is that all plants can provide the… Read More »

Innovative Engineering Expands the Role of Infrastructure

By Dan Sydow, PE Sustainability thought leaders around the world are changing the way we perceive infrastructure – the service mechanisms and underlying hardware that serve our communities every day. These systems supply clean water, power up our homes and businesses, enable safe travel, remove waste, facilitate communication, connect us to the internet, and much… Read More »

Mother Knows Best: Designers Smart to Play by Nature’s Rules

Nature at the Confluence in South Beloit, Illinois, incorporates all native species for the meadow and other landscape areas, and the walls are made of exposed aggregate from the adjacent Rock River. When designing spaces for a park, road, campus, etc., it’s not unrealistic to expect our work to be replaced in a few decades.… Read More »