Mayor's office of Sustainability

Philadelphia’s likely the city with the most to lose with climate change as we face a hotter, wetter city. Alisha Ebling looks to a current situation in Flint, Michigan to see how Philly can learn from another city’s mistakes.  As...

Mayor Jim Kenney officially was inaugurated over at City Hall, coinciding with transition in the Sustainability Office. We called the new Director of Sustainability, Christine Knapp to follow up our exit interview with Katherine Gajewski. Along with the director transition,...

It’s official: Mayor-elect Jim Kenney has officially named Christine Knapp the new Director of Sustainability. Christine will be taking the reigns from current Director of Sustainability Katherine Gajewski. No stranger to the blog, we wanted to hear more from Katherine...

Newsflash: The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability has released a report about how Philly is going to be affected by Climate Change – and how we can prepare. Appropriately released in conjunction with the Paris Climate Talks, the 82 page doc is the first climate...

Philadelphia’s sustainability leaders are making some changes. Philadelphia Director of Sustainability Katherine Gajewski announced yesterday in an email that Andrew Sharp is joining the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability (MOS) as Deputy Director for Policy. Andrew Sharp – New Role in Mayor’s...

How are Philly's buildings faring with energy use? Just like we hinted in our recap of what Philly's doing to prep for climate change, the Mayor's Office of Sustainability (MOS) released results of Philly's Energy benchmarking program yesterday. The Year Two benchmarking results are available online to download. Don't feel like reading the whole thing? Highlights of the 2014 Philly Building Energy Benchmarking Report include:

Sustainability's on its way to become a little more permanent in City government, but they need your help! As we mentioned back in November, Resolution No 130884 is to make the Philadelphia Mayor's Office of Sustainability Permanent within Philadelphia city government. Director of Sustainability Katherine Gajewski sent an email with an update on the progress.  Councilwoman Reynolds Brown and Councilman Kenney co-sponsored the bill and it was positively voted out of the Committee on Law and Government last week.

Greenworks Philadelphia. Tree planting. Farmers Markets. Energy Works. Bike shares. We're all so used to the awesome things that the Mayor's Office of Sustainability does that we don't realize it's a temporary office. With a mayor election on the horizon, we don't want anything to disappear on us. Lucky for us, City Council introduced Charter Change legislation, Resolution No. 130884, to make the Office of Sustainability permanent in the Philadelphia government. As Katherine Gajewski said in an email announcement,

This week Green Philly Blog is interviewing some of Philadelphia's women sustainability leaders in honor of closing out March as International Women's History Month. Some of the women are well-known in our city, and some have yet to break out from under the radar. We kick off our week's interviews with Katherine Gajewski!   As Director of Sustainability for Philadelphia, Katherine Gajewski has helped our city become greener since July of 2009. Prior to coming on board to head the sustainability front for Mayor Michael Mayor Nutter, she worked on the smoke-free legislation for Breathe Free Philadelphia Alliance and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Gajweski has lived everywhere from Montana, Vermont, Seattle and Chicago. We asked her a few questions to find out more about Mayor Nutter's sustainable lady-in-charge. (Jump on through to read the Q&A, & find out where in the world Katherine would magically transport herself if she could!)