Sustainability News

To help organizations interested in eco-friendly purchasing, ASU's Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative is partnering with the Environmental Protection Agency on sustainablepurchasing.issuelab.org.

The website features a searchable database of research articles related to the concept of “servicizing,” which promotes a more environmentally responsible way for businesses, nonprofits, governments and individuals to meet their purchasing needs.

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The 23rd Conference of the Parties – a U.N. climate conference in Bonn, Germany – attracted dignitaries from around the world. Luckily, those at home had School of Sustainability student Julia Colbert to fill them in.

Colbert, a student worker with the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, shared her video coverage of COP23 on YouTube. On top of that, she connected with fourth-to-twelfth-grade classrooms throughout the country via Facetime or Skype, teaching conference-related lessons like “how to negotiate.”

"It was inspiring to see how much they really wanted to learn,” said Colbert. “It made me hopeful that this next generation will be the change-makers that truly make a difference in the fight against climate change."

Small acts of kindness – something as simple as lending a neighbor a cup of sugar – not only bind us together, but are critical to our survival as a species. That's according to Senior Sustainability Scientist Amber Wutich, an anthropology professor and director of ASU's Center for Global Health.

"Sharing is so important, that in most cultures it has its own special vocabulary and rituals," Wutich explains in a November 2017 KEDtalk. "Sharing helps families survive, and it's a core part of people's identity that defines their place in their communities. That's why anthropologists like me have studied how humans share in cultures in every part of the world."

Ryan Johnson, Executive Director of Sustainability Education and Training for ASU's School of Sustainability, has been appointed as a member of the Global Reporting Initiative Stakeholder Council for a term beginning January 2018. Johnson is also a student in the Master of Sustainability Leadership program at ASU.

GRI is an independent international organization that has pioneered sustainability reporting since 1997. The initiative helps businesses and governments worldwide understand and communicate their impact on critical sustainability issues such as climate change, human rights, governance and social well-being.

The GRI Stakeholder Council is the formal stakeholder policy forum within the GRI governance structure. The council's key governance functions include appointing Board members and deliberating on issues of strategic importance to GRI.

The risk of things like skin cancer, extinction of sensitive amphibians and degradation of outdoor buildings is now lower, thanks to the fact that the hole in our ozone layer – which protects Earth from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation – has shrunk.

Satellite measurements indicate that the ozone hole is about 1 million miles smaller than when measured a year ago, a positive trend that NASA says can be explained by an unstable and warmer Antarctic vortex. Senior Sustainability Scientist Kevin Gurney is heartened by this news, which suggests that other negative trends can also be reversed.

With regard to influencing the direction of climate change, Gurney says, "It suggests more than a possibility — it suggests that we can achieve the solution to a large global environmental problem."

Carbon-dioxide removal could be a trillion-dollar enterprise because it not only slows the rise in CO₂ but reverses it.

Many companies are vying to prove that carbon removal is feasible, but also owe their origins to the ideas of a physicist and sustainability scientist named Klaus Lackner, who now works at Arizona State University.

Featured in The New Yorker, this article chronicles the journey that led Klaus to found the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.

Shirley-Ann Augustin-Behravesh, a lecturer with the School of Sustainability, won the Decision Sciences Institute's conference paper competition for her outstanding thesis research paper titled "Uncovering Sustainable Business Practice Bundles."

Augustin-Behravesh's effort to bring together both the School of Sustainability and W. P. Carey School of Business allowed her to produce a paper that demonstrates how decision landscapes for businesses can be rooted in sustainability.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

by Alan AtKisson

When it comes to sustainability as it is practiced today, I helped get a number of things started, from the use of sustainability indicators, to the concept of training “sustainability change agents," to the search for measures of our planet’s ecological boundaries, to weaving the concept of sustainability into the practice of developing the “Blue Economy” – the economy of our oceans and seas.

By making this statement, I do not mean to imply that I take credit for those things — far from it. The emphasis is on “helped." These were processes that would have happened anyway, no doubt. I was just lucky enough to be around in their early, generative moments, and to lend a hand.

Don’t worry: the main purpose of this short article is not to reminisce, as you will see, but to look ahead and reflect on what the sustainability movement needs going forward. But sometimes, to see the way ahead clearly, we have to look back.

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At the first U.N. climate meeting since President Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris agreement, countries came together to iron out some details – like rules for how carbon emissions will be measured and how to pay for these efforts.

Called COP23, the meeting took place in Bonn, Germany in November 2017, and School of Sustainability Professor Sonja Klinsky provided advance insight.

“We are still part of the Paris agreement. If the United States wants to pull out of the accord, it will have to file this in writing in November 2019,” Klinsky told ASU Now. "Other countries’ perceptions of the willingness of the U.S. to be a cooperative global actor generally may change how effective it is at promoting its own interests. It is a distinct possibility that the U.S. will have less influence in this arena than it had previously; however, it is too early to say whether or not this has happened."

A multi-disciplinary team from Arizona State University, U.S. Geological Survey, New Mexico State University, University of Arizona and Utah State University will carry out research to inform the management of Department of Defense drylands in the western U.S. The newly-funded proposal will investigate the interactive effects of climate change and disturbance on vegetation communities and ecosystem processes across three large deserts of the western U.S.

Researchers will assess the vulnerability of vegetation and ecosystem processes to drought and disturbance with a set of factorial field experiments aimed at isolating key drivers of change under drought conditions predicted by climate models. They will combine experimental results with existing long-term climate and vegetation data collected in actively-managed and paired-protected areas to quantitatively model and scale vegetation sensitivity to different climate drivers in relation to disturbance history. Importantly, this allows for frameworks of understanding and planning at spatiotemporal scales not possible with on-the-ground or site-specific measurements alone.

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If you enjoy travel and exploring sustainability, the School of Sustainability is offering a study abroad course in Cuba over Spring Break 2018. It’s a Spring C session, 3-credit course, with 7 weeks of online content to learn about Cuba (January-February), then nine days onsite in Havana (March 3-11). A final Reflections Paper (about 8 pages) is also submitted.

Brigitte Bavousett, lead instructor for the Global Intensive Experience (GIE) course Cuba: Unlocked and On the Edge of Rapid Transitions, was impressed with the variety of learning outcomes her students demonstrated after returning from their trip to Cuba in Spring 2017. The students chose to study diverse sustainability topics, including energy independence solutions, preservation of architecture, plastic waste concerns, agro-tourism benefits, dual-currency issues, food supply challenges and more. Watch snippets from their presentations.

Scholarship funding for 2018 is available. Visit with the Study Abroad Office for more information, including on funding sources like scholarship grants and other resources. Make sure to have your FAFSA on file with ASU in order to be awarded funding. You can reach the Study Abroad Office at (480) 965-5965 or email studyabroad@asu.edu.

Benjamin Fogg is a student in the ASU School of Sustainability's Master of Sustainability Leadership program and graduates in Fall 2017.

Fogg was recently promoted to Sustainability Specialist at FedEx Ground in Pittsburgh, PA. Currently, he works to develop internal and external relationships for FedEx Ground with the aim of applying circular economy principles using research from his SOS capstone project.

Why did you choose to major in sustainability?

Sustainability, in a sense, has been ingrained in me since I was a kid. I grew up in the Marshall Islands where I bore witness to beautiful islands and beaches, all while being surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. The island itself was only three miles long and half a mile wide. Over time, these islands – and many others like them – have fallen victim to issues like climate change, ocean acidification and the plastics epidemic. Knowing that such problems exist and that they threaten the beautiful paradise where I grew up, I decided to pursue an education and career in which I help solve these problems while getting businesses on board to do the same.

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"We've seen a strong business case for the circular economy transitions we've made at Google," Sustainability Lead Kate Brandt told an audience at her November 2017 Wrigley Lecture.

Titled "Google: Searching for a Circular Transition," Brandt's lecture detailed how the tech giant is working to embed circular economy principles into its infrastructure, operations and culture. She pointed to numerous wins, including using machine learning to avoid 1.5 million pounds of food waste last year and increase efficiency in an already highly-efficient data center by 40 percent.

Google is among the Global Partners of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an organization Brandt referenced throughout her lecture for its exemplary work. ASU joined the foundation's Circular Economy 100 program as a pioneer university in 2016, and the ASU Wrigley Institute is developing an ‘Introduction to Circular Economy’ course through that partnership.

Brandt also met with School of Sustainability students, faculty and staff during her visit to ASU. She remarked at how impressed and heartened she was by the university's sustainability efforts.

During an inaugural Army Reserve Mission Resilience and Sustainability conference hosted by ASU, over 150 military personnel, Department of the Army civilians and contractors were given the mandate to change the “sustainability DNA” of their organizations. The conference – which took place in November 2017 – brought together experts in the areas of energy security, water security, solid waste diversion and environmental quality from across the Army Reserve, encouraging collaboration and fostering innovation.

Joe Knott, an ASU doctoral candidate in the School of Sustainability and retired Army lieutenant colonel, helped to facilitate the partnership between ASU and ARMRS. He points out that today's young people are better versed in subjects like sustainability and climate change. In that sense, if the Army does not develop a strong sustainability culture, it may have trouble with retention.

“They expect sustainability and doing the right thing in addition to serving their country,” Knott says. “They say ‘what are you as a military organization going to allow me to do to make this earth sustainable for my kids and grandkids?’”

Sean McAllister, a doctoral student in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, is currently researching energy transitions in Brazil through ASU's Global Development Research program.

Coming from Sioux City, Iowa – a city with a rich history of fluctuating social and industrial transitions – McAllister believes the Brazilian community he is researching is like an echo of his hometown’s history. He is interested in learning how different levels of governance, policy and incentives play out on a local level, and how this affects energy outcomes and individual and community decisions.

What is the focus of your research project?

This project, which began last year, started with finding better ways to improve water quality in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Now, we are exploring technological change driven by the community. We have delivered locally-developed technologies, such as solar water heaters and solar ovens, to the community and have seen that people are genuinely interested in the technologies we are putting forth.

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Not all students who travel with the School of Sustainability are sustainability majors. Breanna Reeser, a doctorate student studying integrated behavioral health, is currently researching and interning in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Through ASU’s Global Development Research program, Reeser is collecting data for her thesis. She returns to the U.S. in December and will graduate in May.

What is the research of your GDR project?

I am currently doing my PhD dissertation research and internship at Saraphi District Hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand in collaboration with Chiang Mai University. This is a USAID grant-funded project through ASU’s Global Development Research Lab. My thesis question involves predicting risk levels using a patient's ability to understand their doctor’s recommendations (health literacy scores).

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The Design School and the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, in partnership with An-Najah National University, recently received a grant from the Stevens Initiative to use online, collaborative learning to increase cross-cultural understanding and equip young people with the skills needed to thrive in a 21^st century economy.  ASU and An-Najah National University students exchange unique perspectives and share a common goal -- to design a sustainable community center for a refugee camp in Palestine.

The Stevens Initiative is an international effort to build career and global competence skills for young people in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by growing and enhancing the field of virtual exchange: online, international, and collaborative learning. The Initiative honors the legacy of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who devoted his life to building bridges between people from different cultures.  Arizona State University and An-Najah National University received one of 13 new grants funded through this international competition, expanding the Initiative’s reach to approximately 30,000 students in 18 MENA countries and 31 American states.

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Phosphorus is a basic element found in all living things and is a key component of most fertilizers – enabling modern agriculture. On the flip side, phosphorus runoff contaminates rivers, lakes and streams, providing an overabundance of nutrients that leads to toxic algal blooms.

That's why the Sustainable Phosphorus Alliance, a unit of the ASU Wrigley Institute, continues to grow – to take on the phosphorus problem in the global food system. Following a five-year National Science Foundation grant, the alliance received a second round of funding from the OCP Group – a Moroccan mining company that owns the largest deposits of phosphate rock in the world.

The alliance grew out of industry interest in phosphorus sustainability and recycling during the original NSF grant period, which brought together dozens of researchers from around the world. In 2017, the alliance grew to nine member organizations representing different stages of the phosphorus value chain.

Not everyone in our highly-connected world is a text or tweet away. For those in off-grid locales like Samoa, lack of information access means fewer educational opportunities.

That’s where ASU’s SolarSPELL comes in. The digital library, developed by Senior Sustainability Scientist Laura Hosman, is both portable and solar-powered. With its own Wi-Fi hotspot, it functions without electricity or existing internet connectivity.

In October 2017, volunteers came to ASU’s Polytechnic campus and built 150 SolarSPELLs in one day! Hosman’s innovative device received one of the inaugural PLuS Alliance Prizes at the 2017 Times Higher Education World Academic Summit in London.

While interning at paper giant Kimberly Clark, undergraduate School of Sustainability student Junkee Justin Ahn noticed that the company had a nitrile glove recycling program. He recognized the need for a similar program at ASU, where countless gloves are used in labs across its campuses each week, and began collecting information.

By bringing the program – called RightCycle – to ASU, Ahn is helping gloves from the Tempe and Polytechnic campuses reach recycling centers where they are turned into plastic materials. He presented his work at the nation’s biggest higher-education sustainability conference, held by the the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education in San Antonio, in October 2017.