World Water Day

World Water Day 2012!

It’s March 22nd, so you know what that means? It’s the UN World Water Day! This year, it could not come as a more perfect time, as everyone in the Northeast is experiencing uncharacteristic heat, and therefore increased need for water. Since it’s establishment in 1993, World Water Day has served as a yearly reminder to the world that water is our most important research. Each year, a different theme is used, and is sponsored by a different UN/International organization. In the recent past, themes have included Sanitation (coordinated by UNICEF and WHO), Clean Water (organized by UNEP), and Water for Cities (Coordinated by UN-HABITAT). This year, the theme is the ever-important Water and Food Security: The World is Thirsty Because We Are Hungry.

“What does this theme cover?” you may ask. The idea of this year’s theme is to educate the world about something we don’t think about – how much water is used to make our food on a daily basis, and how the wastefulness of our modern food preparations methods. According to this year’s website, we drink an average of 2-4 liters of water each day, but most of that goes unnoticed, as it is consumed in our food. On top of that, gallons upon gallons (or liters upon liters) of water are wasted each day just preparing food. For example, it takes 15,000 liters of water to produce one kilo of beef, and 1,500 to produce one kilo of wheat. Modern processing methods, especially those that make canned food or foods with large amounts of preservatives also waste a ton of water. Worse yet, 30% of the world’s produced food goes uneaten – and all the water wasted.

The campaign this year encourages citizens of the world to help conserve water at all levels of the supply chain, recommending that everyone:

• Follow a healthier, sustainable diet;
• Consume less water-intensive products;
• Reduce the scandalous food wastage;
• Produce more food, of better quality, with
  less water.

One of the major aspects of this year’s campaign is the interactive activity/game from onedrop.org, which allows you to find out how much water your meal is using, and to try to figure out what meals you can make with the least wasted water! Try it out!

In short? Let’s all make small, personal changes that can basically save the world.

Caught Green Handed: Plainview to Get Electric Busses

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so proud to be from Plainview. My hometown, will be the first school district on Long Island to have electric busses. Check out what’s going on:

The Plainview-Old Bethpage School District’s transportation vendor, We Transport, recently introduced a new fully electric school bus at district headquarters as part of their ongoing initiative to reduce their carbon footprint. The bus is part of a new generation of zero-emission electric and hybrid-electric models that are slowly making their way into school districts across the country. Plainview will be the first school district on Long Island to begin the transition to fully electric school buses, incorporating several of these buses into their regular fleet beginning Fall 2012.

“This is a step forward. Getting to and from school is going to be healthier for the students, the drivers and the community” said Nadine Eiring, the district’s director of health, safety and transportation.

While electric vehicles such as these typically sell at over $30,000 more than their gas-powered counterparts, the district will not be bearing these costs. Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District is currently in a five-year contract with We Transport-Towne Bus Corp., who plan on gradually adding the new buses to the District’s fleet over the next few years.

School buses make frequent stops, cover short distances, and spend most of the day off the road – making them perfect to be converted to electric. Although frequent stops are wasteful in a traditional gas-powered bus, electric models can actually use the energy created by applying brakes to recharge their batteries.  Each bus will take six to eight hours to recharge, with the ability to do so virtually anywhere.

These new commercial vehicles are all-electric and produce zero emissions, with operating costs that are significantly lower than comparable diesel vehicles. The average school bus uses more than 1,700 gallons of fuel per year, according to Illinois-based IC Bus, one of the country’s largest school bus manufacturers. The electric buses will carry up to 42 students at a time next school year.

Go Plainview!! If you want, check out the full article here.

ESF President Murphy: “Moving The Needle”

Cornelius B. “Neil” Murphy, has been President of SUNY ESF for just over a decade, but he’s been around Syracuse for much longer than that. With a PhD in Chemistry from SU, and then working his way up the ladder to become President and CEO of Syracuse-based O’Brien & Gere, he’s got plenty of experience in the realm of sustainability and the environment. So when a person with this kind of background gets up in front of a room to talk about sustainability measures, you can be sure that not a sound was made until he finished. To miss even a word of what he spoke would have been considered blasphemy in some circles.

This is exactly what happened last Friday at the Shades of Green Conference in Madison County, NY. President Murphy spoke about “Moving the Needle” – essentially, to make a measurable difference in the sustainability of our world. He believes that is largely the responsibility of higher educationto do so – and such is the goal of

President Murphy Speaks at Shades of Green Conference

ESF. As the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Murphy feels that it is the goal of the university to “educate a new generation of sustainability directors.” Furthermore, he feels that the only way a school can possibly be successful in teaching sustainability is to be sustainable as an institution in the first place. ESF itself needs to research and push boundaries in renewable energy systems, biomimicry, and resource recovery if it ever wants to successfully teach its students to do the same.

To illustrate his points, President Murphy presented the audience with some data to add to their background knowledge. He discussed the world’s energy usage – already at 16.3 trillion watts a year by 2005, and expected to have doubled as early as 2050. Worse, we use over 50,000 gallons of oil each second, and that’s a problem even before we consider greenhouse gases. According to the most recent (the fourth) UN Climate Change Committee, it is now predicted that our climate here in New York is shifting towards that of Miami or Atlanta. Syracuse without snow? A scary thought to most.

His evidence did provide hope, however. According to Ken Zweibel, a leading expert in the field of photovoltaic cell technology, published a paper in 2005 in Scientific American entitled “A Solar Grand Plan” in which he laid out a master plan to end American dependence on foreign oil, with solar power as the major game-changer. One memorable quote that President Murphy chose to present the audience was particularly poignant and enlightening. “The sun produces enough energy in one hour to supply the world’s energy needs for one year.” Imagine if we could take even just a small part of that. Oh wait – we can!

SUNY ESF is trying to do just that. The different initiatives being driven by students, staff, or by combination of the two is on an unimaginable scale. Take an anecdote shared by President Murphy for an example. He had a student whom he learned had been making biodiesel from used vegetable oils with his mother, in their garage, for years before he got into college. The university figured that if the kid could do it at home, the possibilities would endless if he started to do the same thing at the university – except replacing his home-made systems for some high tech (and costly) gadgets that university could offer him to work with. Now, all the formerly diesel vehicles on campus are run on biodiesel made with oil from SU’s dining halls.

It’s not just the people at ESF who are making a difference either – the buildings are environmentally friendly as well. There is a 16 kilowatt photovoltaic cell system on top of Walters Hall, home to the Department of Paper and Bioprocess Engineering, able to produce up to 1.5% of the colleges power per year. Baker Laboratory also has a photovoltaic cell system on its roof, and even some in its blinds, amounting to a total of 23 kilowatts. Murphy has a brilliant justification for these, even outside of their obvious benefits. His philosophy, and that of the college, is that they need to have these systems so that students will ask how they work. Inspiring students to be inquisitive – that’s a huge step towards moving the needle towards sustainability.

However, that only scratches the surface of what ESF has to offer. Like President Murphy said, in order to create tomorrow’s sustainability directors, they need to have everything possible available to them. So in addition to the photovoltaic systems on campus, there are also roof mounted vertical access turbines on top of Illick Hall, which take advantage of the wind tunnel created by the Carrier Dome and a wood chip boiler system that currently saves ESF a whole bunch of money by reducing heating costs each year.

In addition to producing renewable, clean energy, many features of the school’s campus are designed to harness the power of rainwater as well. There is a green roof on top of Walters Hall, which collects rainwater, and serves to cool the building while simultaneously getting more water to recharge into the hydrosystem. Additionally, porous pavement around campus helps do just the same. Centennial Hall, the new residence hall, is made with tons of natural materials, and almost all of the furniture is natural, environmentally friendly wood – just another one of the many ways ESF is staying sustainable.

In keeping with his theme of making sure ESF’s students are ready to lead the world in moving the needle, Murphy reminded us one last time: “If we can’t do it, who can?” So ESF did it. What is it? Well, currently under construction on campus is the state-of-the-art Gateway Building, the latest project on the path to meet the goals of ECN 2015 (ESF Carbon Neutral by 2015), the building will not only serve as the new “gateway” to campus, but will be the most sustainable building on campus, and one of the most sustainable in the world. According one of President Murphy’s anecdotes, the architects of the building offered them increasingly impressive designs, hitting LEED Silver and Gold, which weren’t good enough for the college, and even when they approached him with a design that would attain LEED Platinum, he still told them: “It’s not good enough.” Murphy made it clear – this building would defy expectations, and even LEED itself.

What will make this building so sustainable? Integrated heat and power systems, powered by 3 turbines within the building itself (two are natural gas, one is biodiesel) will drastically reduce energy costs within the building and around campus. A wood chip boiler with a pre-gasifier will create a state-of-the-art steam/thermal heating system – and all of the biomass to be burnt will be created by the Agriforestry department. The building itself will create a whopping 22% reduction in the school’s carbon footprint, an enormous accomplishment. The building will also have a special thermal wall, made of glass that will pre-heat air within the building using natural sunlight to make the heating system even more efficient.

But this isn’t enough for ESF. As has been mentioned before, the students need to be able to ask and understand what is going on. So the building will not just be super sustainable, but students will be able to use all of its various systems to learn about how to do things like it themselves! Oh, but that’s not the end of it. The building will be finished off with green roofs and a series of wetlands, simulating environments starting at saltwater and filtering down to completely freshwater, using just rainwater and snow. These wetlands will provide students with the opportunity to study environments right on campus, instead of having to take time-heavy trips (on busses or in cars that would create tons of greenhouse gasses and CO2) to places miles away where these environments exist naturally.

Oh, and one more thing – the entire project will have paid for itself within 7 years. Impressive, right?

The message of all of this? No more of this “do as I say not as I say, not as I do” crap. It’s generally considered to be terrible parenting, and it should be eradicated from our education system as well. ESF has got it right – how can a university “move the needle” and teach students to make sustainable changes in this world if the ones teaching them haven’t done it themselves? It just makes sense.

Shades of Green in Madison County!

This past Friday, I was fortunate enough to attend the Shades of Green in Madison County conference on sustainability. The conference took place at Morrisvile State College in Madison County, NY, and while the focus was on sustainability measures being implemented in Madison County and the surrounding areas, many of the messages and ideas transcended location. As described by the conference’s website, the purpose of the event was to:

“…help individuals, businesses, and communities advance green initiatives throughout Madison County to achieve more economically viable, sustainable and healthier places to live, go to school, work, shop, and enjoy!  Check out the agenda on the conference program page and register today! Shades of Green in Madison County: A Green Living Experience is an initiative of the Madison County Community Economic Development (CED) Committee.”

The day started off with a presentation by Peter Fleischer, the Executive Director of Empire State Futures (ESF), a coalition of over 50 organizations working towards a more sustainable and equitable New York State, promoting the idea of “Smart Growth” for land use and business expansion. Mr. Fleischer discussed how ESF works to promote sustainable development across the state. One particularly poignant example was ESF’s work with the food industry. According to Mr. Fleischer, New York State annually produces 4.5 billion dollars of food annually. Now, this seems like a huge amount of food, but compared to the $30 billion of food consumed by New York City alone each year, it is clear that New York cannot sustain itself, which led the speech in the direction of discussing what kind of things are done to make this consumption more sustainable.

The rest of the conference followed this discussion. It was a sustainability junkie’s heaven – discussions and presentations were available about a variety of topics, ranging from historical preservation to composting, sustainable gardening to retrofitting lighting systems, and had just about anything you would want to learn about in a sustainable context. This is in addition to the dozen or so exhibitors from around the state, including some local energy companies, NYSERDA, and my good friends at YouSave Green! As an inspiring finale to the day, SUNY ESF‘s President Cornelius Murphy gave a brilliant Keynote speech on how ESF (Not the same as the first Keynote speaker’s ESF) has changed the world of sustainability and environmental awareness.

I managed to rack up a bit of information during the conference:

Attn: Readers - Prepare for a knowledge infusion.

I plan on using all of this information, combined with what the presenters spoke about to bring a whole smothering of new posts over the next few days, starting with an overview of President Murphy’s speech, and continuing on to include:

• Home Energy Efficiency
• Geothermal Heating Systems
• Shopping Locally
• Home Gardens and their Sustainability Impact
• Reusing Waste to Create Energy Sources
• Effective Composting
• Coordinated Transportation Systems

Check back often to see all of these awesome posts!

Anything specific you want to learn about? Let me know!

Dunk the Huskies!

After beating Georgetown’s Hoyas Wednesday night, it seems almost too easy to just beat the UConn Huskies this afternoon. So as an added challenge, Syracuse University is also working to promote sustainability via the DOT program.

DOT (Do One Thing) On Campus is an initiative of SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise)

America’s Next Eco-Star

FANTASTIC NEWS!!

Earlier this month, I was officially nominated for the “America’s Next Eco-Star” competition, sponsored by SmartPower. In just 4 days of voting, I’m already in the #3 spot! However, I need to stay in the top 10 until February 29th, so I still could use all of the support you all can muster!

Don’t have a clue what I’m talking about? Find out all about the contest here. Ready to vote? Click here.

So why was I nominated?

State Of The Union 2012:

For those of you who didn’t see President Obama’s 3rd State Of The Union Address last night, here’s a link to read it. Among the multitude of  policies, promises, and dreams that were discussed last night, it should stand as a testament to how our country is changing for the better that a major chunk of time was devoted to environmental and energy policy. Though the official statistics are not in yet, it is clear that this year’s focus dwarves last year’s speech, during which only 3 sentences – less than 1% of the speech – revolved around the environment.

Obama at 2012 State Of The Union

So what did Obama say, and how will it affect us? According to Obama, “nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy.” And he is most certainly right. Now yes, he did suggest the expansion

Whose Problem? Part 5: International Bodies

So hopefully you’ve been keeping up with this series of posts. If not, check out Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Today’s installment will be formatted a little differently. I’m going to take a look at a few different organizations and examine how they could play into the fight for a sustainable world. This is all in anticipation of Sunday’s post, in which I will reveal my suggestions on how we should and shouldn’t approach sustainability.

SU Building Goes Platinum

Hey SU students, Syracuse residents, and everyone else!

Let’s all give a hearty congratulations to the Hotel Skyler, Syracuse’s first LEED Platinum rated hotel!

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a point system used by the United States Green Building Council,

You Go Girls!

If you look at the major environmental organizations in this country, you’ll notice something interesting. There is a higher percentage of female executives than in almost any other public-interest field. In honor of these awesome ladies, here are some quick profiles of 3 of them: