Sustainability News

There has never been a more important time to educate and train the leaders of the future to deal with the threats of instability. Current world leaders are discussing climate change at the same time that local communities in the U.S. strive for more resilience to increases in climate events.

U.S. universities have a responsibility to prepare modern sustainability business, government and other professionals with the innovative technical and management approaches needed to lead in a rapidly changing world. During this January 14, 2015, webinar titled "Innovative Approaches to Sustainability Education at U.S. Universities," Dean Christopher Boone discussed how ASU's School of Sustainability - the first of its kind in the United States - came to be and how it has evolved. He also described how the School is providing future sustainability leaders with the education they need now, along with tools to move the sustainability field forward.

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by Alex Slaymaker, Master's of Sustainable Solutions

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability is now equipped with a system capable of achieving zero waste, defined as 90 percent diversion from landfills.  The system offers the option of recycling, composting, TerraCycling, plastic film and bag recycling, and landfilling "waste" - a term now nullified as all materials diverted from the landfill are valuable resources.

This seemingly complex five-option system is viewed as standard in many countries around the world, including Germany and Japan.

The opportunity to practice what is preached at the sustainability headquarters of ASU requires students, staff and faculty to learn how to properly use the zero waste system. In order for Wrigley Hall inhabitants and visitors to see these bins as empowering rather than overwhelming, graduate student zero waste advocates held a Zero Waste Kick-Off Party on April 9. The celebration on the first floor of Wrigley Hall helped to raise awareness about the new zero waste pilot, eliminate myths about "waste" and educate on proper diversion practices.

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Food systems are particularly important for human societies to sustain, as well as particularly vulnerable to multiple threats related to the interconnected sustainability challenges we face.

Reflecting the breadth of food system issues researched and taught at ASU, the School of Sustainability now offers a 15-credit interdisciplinary Certificate in Food System Sustainability - a comprehensive, sustainability-oriented introduction to food systems for undergraduate students.

The certificate, which complements a variety of majors from agribusiness to English, draws from food-related courses in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences and applied sciences. Each discipline approaches food sustainability from a different angle, giving students a holistic understanding of food-related challenges and solutions.

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This past December, representatives from around the world gathered in Lima, Peru to discuss our collective course on climate change. Megan Barry, a Fall 2014 graduate of the School of Sustainability's Master’s in Sustainable Solutions program, attended the historic conference. She shares her experience in this month’s Student Spotlight.

How did you snag a seat at the Lima Climate Change Conference?

I was serving as a research assistant to climate scientist Sonja Klinsky at the time. One aspect of my work was to analyze the various meanings of the term “transformation” with regard to climate change and climate finance. The conference was a perfect venue for this research because “transformation” is frequently used in this context.

What was it like?

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As a student in the Master’s in Sustainable Solutions program offered by ASU’s School of Sustainability, Angela Cazel-Jahn specialized in communication. Her focus centered on removing barriers to sustainable solutions by improving the public’s understanding of sustainability itself.

Cazel-Jahn set out to simplify sustainability concepts and stimulate conversation about them through her applied project – a participatory mural titled Adapt & Sustain. Through a series of workshops that she organized, students and other locals translated core sustainability terms into scenarios that could be both depicted in the mural and easily understood by the public.

Participants from surrounding neighborhoods, schools and organizations then painted these scenarios on a 330-foot stretch of wall located along the Grand Canal trail. The area's residents will soon walk, run, bike and rollerblade past the final product, enjoying its vibrancy while considering its underlying sustainability theme.

Last week, School of Sustainability alumna Christa Brelsford represented her country at the Paraclimbing World Championships in Spain where she dominated her division. Recognizing that participating in the competition is a privilege, Brelsford tied her international appearance to an online fundraiser for the less fortunate called Christa Climbs for Haiti.

If you spend any time with Brelsford, who graduated this summer with a doctoral degree from the School of Sustainability, you'll get the sense that this is a supremely practical person who is guided by a strong sense of self and innate desire to do good in the world. That's what Matt Lauer found when he interviewed Brelsford the TODAY show after she was badly injured during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where she had been working on an adult literacy project.

The newly crowned climbing world champion returns home following her competition abroad, but her mission remains unchanged.

"My biggest goal in life is to use careful thought to do good in the world," says Brelsford. "I was in Haiti to learn how to help, and I research and study sustainability for the same reason."

School of Sustainability alumnus Andrew Krause has found practical application for his education through technology that helps users discover, adopt and share ideas for leading a more sustainable lifestyle. The eEcosphere app, now available for iOS, matches millennials with ideas that are tailored to their needs and improve their everyday decisions by providing quality local resources. This helps to prevent the common breakdown between intention and action while providing the user with a fun and collaborative experience.

Krause, who received a Master’s of Science from the School of Sustainability in 2012, was recently named as a delegate to the United Nations Foundation Global Accelerator 2014. He and fellow delegates will work with policy leaders on global issues to create innovative advancements toward key Millennium Development Goals. Because the accelerator seeks out the world’s top 100 entrepreneurs, the appointment is a great testament to the significance of Krause's work.

Ben Warner, a School of Sustainability doctoral student, used an interdisciplinary approach to determine the causes of water scarcity in the rural, semi-arid region of northwestern Costa Rica. By working directly with water and agricultural managers, Warner found that both drought and international trade liberalization treaties have had a major impact on smallholder farmers. As a result, they have become increasingly vulnerable to global changes and less capable of adapting to them.

In an effort to bolster smallholder farmers’ ability to cope with limited market access and frequent drought, Warner collected data from workshop proceedings, focus groups, interviews and surveys within the Arenal-Tempisque Irrigation Project in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. His analysis revealed that farm size, farming tenure, the presence of family members working outside of the agricultural sector, livestock ownership, perceptions of climate change and household reliance on agriculture were determining factors in farmers’ decisions to adjust their livelihoods. His findings have since been used to refine agricultural water management policy in the region.

Motivated by the desire to make an impact, School of Sustainability doctoral student and Neely Foundation grant recipient David Yu made a courageous decision that has changed the course of his career.

Yu was born and spent his formative years in Seoul, South Korea. As a teen, he immigrated to the Canadian province of British Columbia with his family. After graduating from Centennial High School in Coquitlam, a suburb of Vancouver, he enrolled in the engineering science program at Simon Fraser University.

Life after graduation was comfortable for Yu, who began working as an engineer and quality assurance professional in the IT industry. Though he made a decent living, he began craving a change.

“I wanted to have more impact than being just one of many engineers in a big company,” Yu says. “I wanted an exciting career that allowed me to contribute and make an impact, even when I’m 60 or 70 years old.”

With his sights set on a new occupation in either environmental policy or sustainability science, Yu resigned from his job of seven years to pursue the graduate degree necessary to attain it.

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Now working to bring a renewable surface water supply from the Colorado River to Central Arizona, alum Jessica Fox has a long-standing interest in sustainability.

As a high school student in in Canandaigua, New York, Jessica was fascinated by the intersection between environmental science and economics. Wanting to learn more, she enrolled in State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Several years after graduating with a bachelor’s in environmental science and policy, along with a minor in management science from Syracuse University, she decided to pursue a graduate education in water policy.

“Water is obviously much more plentiful in the Northeast, and it’s governed differently there, so I wanted to study how water is allocated and managed under scarce conditions in the Western US,” Jessica says.

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Jesus Chavez is a senior in the Urban Dynamics track within the School of Sustainability. An alumnus of El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera, California, Chavez graduates in May 2014 with a bachelor’s in both Sustainability and Urban Planning.

Chavez is energetic in his pursuit of implementable solutions to urban planning predicaments in both his studies and extra-curricular work. In August 2014, he begins an urban planning internship with a private consulting firm in Spain.

Why did you choose ASU?

The School of Sustainability is the major reason I chose ASU, a one-of-a-kind institution tackling wicked problems on a local to global scale. The fact that it is a top-ranked institution for both Sustainability and Urban Planning solidified my decision to get the most out of my education here.

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In a recent early online edition of Nature Chemistry, ASU scientists, along with colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory, have reported advances toward perfecting a functional artificial leaf.

Designing an artificial leaf that uses solar energy to convert water cheaply and efficiently into hydrogen and oxygen is one of the goals of BISfuel – the Energy Frontier Research Center, funded by the Department of Energy, in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University.

Hydrogen is an important fuel in itself and serves as an indispensible reagent for the production of light hydrocarbon fuels from heavy petroleum feed stocks. Society requires a renewable source of fuel that is widely distributed, abundant, inexpensive and environmentally clean.

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The Arizona Solar Summit brings together people and organizations to advance the solar industry on both the regional and national levels, creating a network to propel Arizona to national prominence in the industry.

The fourth annual Arizona Solar Summit, part of the 2014 Sustainability Solutions Festival, will focus on introducing innovative policies, programs and technologies that are critical to reshaping Arizona’s energy markets.

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Assembling a picture of past environments always involves detective work. The reward is a clearer understanding of how natural and human forces have changed environments in the past, giving insights to how modern-day environmental changes take place.

Working with especially elusive evidence, Janet Franklin, ASU professor of geography, is participating in an effort to understand the profound changes in plant and animal life that occurred on the oceanic islands of the West Indies since the end of the last ice age.

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The recently released 2013 Sustainability Initiatives Revolving Fund (SIRF) annual report chronicles $5.6 million in investments that support Arizona State University.

The investments included seven energy conservation projects and six student and campus-oriented projects at ASU. From lighting retrofits, to specialized recycling bins, to an urban garden at the Downtown Phoenix campus, SIRF funds thrive in some surprising places.

In addition to project details and descriptions of all SIRF projects financed in 2013, the report includes three Q-and-A interviews with ASU SIRF fund recipients who have put their sustainability ideas into action.

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The Health Services Building on Arizona State University's Tempe campus has earned a LEED platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Health Services is the second ASU building to receive a platinum certification, which is the highest USGBC green building ranking under its LEED (Leadership in Excellence in Environmental Design) program. The Health Services Building is also the 38th ASU building to be LEED certified.

The Health Services Building underwent a major renovation and expansion that was completed in March 2012 by ASU's Facilities Development and Management unit.

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Life in a warming world is going to require human ingenuity to adapt to the new realities of Earth. Greenhouse-gas-induced warming and megapolitan expansion are both significant drivers of our warming planet. Researchers are now assessing adaptation technologies that could help us acclimate to these changing realities.

But how well these adaptation technologies – such as cool roofs, green roofs and hybrids of the two – perform year-round, and how this performance varies with place remain uncertain.

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Arizona State University engineers will lead two multi-university/industry research teams in support of a new U.S. Department of Energy program to develop technologies that use the full spectrum of sunlight to produce inexpensive power during both day and night.

The department's Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) recently announced allocation of $30 million in funding for 12 projects selected to conduct research for its Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program.

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ASU community invited to learn current sustainability business trends

For the first time, the annual GreenBiz Forum, a hallmark conference hosted by GreenBiz Group, is coming to Arizona State University as a shadow conference for students, faculty and staff, called GreenBiz U. Presentations at GreenBiz Forum, set to take place Feb. 18-20 in Scottsdale, will be simulcast for free on ASU’s Tempe campus during GreenBiz U.

GreenBiz Forum, which happens twice a year in various locations around the country, provides an in-depth look at today’s sustainable business challenges and opportunities.

"GreenBiz Forum brings together sustainability leaders from the world’s biggest corporations to discuss key trends and best practices,” says Joel Makower, chairman and executive editor of GreenBiz Group. “We’re excited to bring this wealth of insight and inspiration to the larger ASU community, which includes tomorrow’s business leaders.”

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New position created to encourage, facilitate cycling on and off campus

Arizona State University Parking and Transit Services announces Donna Lewandowski has been hired to serve as Bicycle Program Manager. Lewandowski, who is the first to work in this newly created post, begins her job duties on Monday, Feb. 3, 2014.

Lewandowski’s primary responsibilities will be to develop, implement and maintain programs and activities that encourage bicycle usage on and off campus. She will be the lead liaison in connecting bike commuters with services that can help them maintain their bikes and stay safe on the roads. Lewandowski will also assist cyclists with incorporating other modes of transportation that contribute to ASU sustainability goals into their daily commutes.

Lewandowski comes to ASU from Tucson Medical Center, where she served as a community outreach specialist since last March. She coordinated Safe Kids Pima County, a diverse community coalition for childhood injury prevention. Her duties included planning and executing community safety events aimed at children’s and women’s health, as well as developing grant application, fundraising and marketing materials for the Safe Kids coalition.

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