In celebration of NBC Universal’s “Green Is Universal” week, The Weather Channel announced that it will air “Changing Planet: Adapting to Our Water Future” at 5 p.m. ( ET ), 3 p.m. ( Arizona Time ), Nov. 17. An encore presentation will air Saturday at  2 p.m. ( ET ), 12 p.m. ( Arizona Time ).

NBC News chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson moderated the event, which was hosted by Arizona State University. The town hall is the last in a three-part series produced under a partnership between NBC Learn ( the educational arm of NBC News ), the National Science Foundation ( NSF ) and Discover magazine.

“We face great challenges now, and in the years and decades ahead when it comes to water – including its scarcity and its purity,” said Thompson. “It is important that we have these kinds of discussions about how we can work together to protect and conserve one of our world’s most important resources.”

This edition of “Changing Planet” brings together over 400 students and features four leading experts from science, academia and politics: Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico; Grady Gammage Jr., senior sustainability scholar with the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability and senior research fellow with the ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy; Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority; and Heidi Cullen, former climate expert for The Weather Channel and  current research scientist and correspondent with “Climate Central.”

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Can peer pressure help people live more sustainably? In this article from The Atlantic Cities, Susan Ledlow, ASU social psychologist; Mick Dalrymple, ASU Energize Phoenix project manager; and Dimitrios Laloudakis, Phoenix's energy manager, weigh in on how creating social norms can be used to get people to live more sustainably.

The idea that people will change their beliefs and behavior through social norms could be a powerful tool for cities chasing sustainability in everything from water consumption to recycling programs to energy efficiency.

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December 6, DCDC Water/Climate Briefing, Cotton, Condos, and Climate: Agriculture and Arizona's Water Future. Organized by School of Sustainability graduate students, this DCDC Water/Climate Briefing explores the climate-water-agriculture-nexus in Arizona. Over the coming year, academic researchers, farmers, water managers, and other stakeholders throughout Arizona will continue this work and will provide new insights into this critical challenge.

Using Social Psychology to Promote Sustainability. Our colleagues, Susan Ledlow and Mick Dalrymple at Energize Phoenix are featured prominently in The Atlantic Cities article, "In Arizona, Reducing Water and Energy Use Through Peer Pressure."

ASU ‘Changing Planet’ town hall airs Nov. 16 on The Weather Channel. This edition of "Changing Planet" brings together over 400 students and features four leading experts from science, academia and politics: Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico; Grady Gammage Jr., senior sustainability scholar with the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability and senior research fellow with the ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy; Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority; and Heidi Cullen, former climate expert for The Weather Channel and current research scientist and correspondent with "Climate Central."

Check out DCDC researcher David Sampson's interview on Fox News as part of ASU student Daryl Bjoraas' exploration of innovative techniques used to conserve water in Phoenix.

Rating Phoenix Sustainability: What Matters Most by Grady Gammage at ASU. It is understandable that Phoenix strikes people as a fragile place. But at the end of the day, the verdict on urban sustainability is not about geography, but about politics. Before we brand Phoenix as "the world’s least sustainable city," we need to figure out how to rate political foresight and willpower. The real measure of sustainability is in how a place responds to challenges.

In Phoenix, the Dark Side of the 'Green' City by Andrew Ross in The New York Times. While cities like Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are lauded for sustainability, the challenges faced by Phoenix, a poster child of Sunbelt sprawl, are more typical and more revealing.

In Arizona, Reducing Water and Energy Use Through Peer Pressure by Emily Badger at The Atlantic. The city of Phoenix, Arizona State University and the local power utility are trying to figure this out in a three-year project funded by a federal stimulus grant. The program, Energize Phoenix, is targeting 1,800 residential units and 30 million square feet of commercial space in an effort to get people to go for the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency.

Engineering alum helps Arizona meet its water challenges. Among certainties about life in the desert Southwest are that the supply, use, conservation and management of water will always be pressing issues. So it’s certain that Arizona State University and Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering alumnus Michael Johnson will have a hand in shaping Arizona’s future.

Better economics: supporting adaptation with stakeholder analysis by Muyeye Chambwera, Ye Zou, Mohamed Boughlala. Across the developing world, decision makers understand the need to adapt to climate change — particularly in agriculture, which supports a large proportion of low-income groups who are especially vulnerable to impacts such as increasing water scarcity or more erratic weather.

From The Atlantic, this article features a conversation with Kevin Dooley, Senior Sustainability Scientist and Professor of Supply Chain Management, W.P. Carey School of Business. Dooley also serves as Academic Director of the Sustainability Consortium. Dr. Dooley is a world-known expert in the application of complexity science to help organizations improve. He has published over 100 research articles and co-authored an award winning book, "Organizational Change and Innovation Processes."

In this article, Dooley discusses how most people are largely unaware of the life cycle of products they purchase and how smart companies already know that the next competitive landscape is about being more sustainable.

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A Thought Leader Series Piece

By Grady Gammage, Jr.

In early October, Andrew Ross issued the latest indictment of Phoenix: Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City. Ross’s book represents the latest, longest, and most articulate examination of Arizona’s capital – the nation’s sixth largest city – as a kind of colossal demographic mistake. But he’s not the first to go down this path.

In a 2006 radio interview, author Simon Winchester said that Phoenix “should never have been built” because “there’s no water there.” In 2008, Sustainlane.com rated Phoenix among the least sustainable cities in the U.S. for water supply, primarily because of the distance water must travel to reach the city. In 2010, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that Maricopa County, home to the Phoenix Metro area, was among the “most challenged” places in the U.S. for climate change – this conclusion based on the difference between rainfall and water use within the county. And in 2011, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) found current patterns of Arizona water use to be “unsustainable,” due to the large amount of water going to agriculture.

These views highlight the huge problems inherent in measuring urban sustainability. In large part, Phoenix seems to be everyone’s favorite whipping boy essentially because it’s hot in Arizona and doesn’t rain very much. This view is too simplistic. 

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From The Atlantic, this article features a conversation with Bruce Rittmann, Distinguished Sustainability Scientist and Regents' Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. As director of the Swette Center for Environmental Technology at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, Rittmann is searching for solutions to the challenges facing our world. Dr. Rittmann's research is aimed at developing microbiological systems that capture renewable resources and also minimize environmental pollution.

In this article, Rittmann discusses a revolutionary innovation that directs photosynthesis to make fuel molecules as a potential substitute for petroleum—the ideal win-win situation—a partnership between microbial workers and human managers.

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Our Energy-Efficiency Paradox: Psychological Barriers to 'No-Brainer' Solutions

Elke U. Weber, Keynote Speaker

Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business

Founder and Co-director, Center for the Decision Sciences (CDS) and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED)

Columbia University

November 30, 2011 | 9:30-11:00am | ASU's Memorial Union Turquoise Room 220

Please RSVP: estella.ohanlon@asu.edu

Talk Abstract

Of all environmentally-relevant decisions, the adoption of energy-efficiency technologies would appear to be a 'no-brainer,' yet these solutions are vastly underused. In this talk, Dr. Weber will highlight the psychological reasons for this paradox and suggest ways in which we can harness cognitive limitations to spark greater adoption of win-win solutions.

About Elke Weber

via The Earth Institute. Elke Weber has made it her life’s work to understand why and how people make the decisions they make. Not a simple task. Take, for example, smoking cigarettes. Doctors’ warnings of the deadly consequences of becoming addicted to cigarettes have been publicized for nearly 50 years now, but this hasn’t stopped millions of people from taking up the habit since. Irrational? Many would argue so. And what about other, less direct forms of unhealthy behavior that seem irrational? A perfect example today would be the continuation of practices known to cause catastrophic damage to our planet’s environment, and by extension, to ourselves.

Working at the intersection of psychology and economics, Weber is an expert on behavioral models of judgment and decision making under risk and uncertainty. Recently, she has been investigating psychologically appropriate ways to measure and model individual and cultural differences in risk taking, specifically in risky financial situations and environmental issues. She describes her research as follows:

"I try to gain an understanding and appreciation of decision making at a broad range of levels of analysis, which is not easy, given that each level requires different theories, methods and tools. So at the micro end of the continuum, I study how basic psychological processes like attention, emotion and memory (and their representation in the brain) influence preference and choice. At the macro end of the continuum, I think about how policy makers may want to present policy initiatives to the public to make them maximally effective. This range of topics and methods is challenging, but at least in my mind the different levels of analysis inform and complement each other."

Currently, Weber is focusing the majority of her time on two very different, but crucial issues: "… environmental decisions, in particular responses to climate change and climate variability, and financial decisions, for example pension savings." Like all of her research topics, even these seemingly unrelated issues are linked in that both involve choices with consequences that are delayed in time and are often highly uncertain.

Read The New York Times article featuring Elke Weber, Why Isn't the Brain Green? by Jon Gertner. Decision scientists are trying to figure out why it’s so hard for us to get into a green mind-set. Their answers may be more crucial than any technological advance in combating environmental challenges.

Biography

Elke U. Weber is the Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School, with appointments also in Psychology and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Her MA and PhD are from Harvard University. Previous academic positions include the University of Chicago and visiting appointments in Germany, UK, Denmark, Switzerland, as well as fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

Weber is an expert on behavioral models of judgment and decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Recently she has been investigating psychologically and neurally plausible ways to measure and model individual differences decisions under risk and uncertainty, specifically in financial and environmental contexts.

Weber is past president of the Society for Mathematical Psychology, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Society for Neuroeconomics. She has served on advisory committees of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, related to human dimensions in global change, edited two decision science journals and serves on the editorial boards of eight psychology and social science journals. At Columbia, she founded and co-directs the Center for the Decision Sciences (CDS), which fosters and facilitates cross-disciplinary research and graduate training in the basic and applied decision sciences and the NSF DMUU funded Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), which investigates ways of facilitating human adaptation to climate change and climate variability. She will serve as a Lead Author in Working Group III (on mitigation) for the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Parking

The most convenient parking for this DCDC Water/Climate Briefing at ASU's Memorial Union can be found at the Apache Parking structure at the intersection of Apache Blvd and College in Tempe. Parking rates are $2/hour with a maximum of $8.00.

TEMPE, Ariz., – The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) took a major step forward today when they announced the completion of 10 Category Sustainability Profiles as part of research on 50 product categories, with a commitment to develop 50 additional product categories by the end of 2011. The profiles provide accessible and actionable information for a wide range of companies on supply chain impacts. This knowledge allows institutions to take actions that reduce production costs, use fewer resources, and communicate benefitsto consumers.

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Happy Halloween Sundevils! Hope you are off to a safe and fun holiday season. We know it's tradition to give away those individually wrapped candies on this ghoulish holiday but did you know most major candy companies get their cocoa from unsustainable sources? If it's not too late, opt for fair trade chocolate or skip the candy all together and try giving away little treasures instead. Check out this sweet (pun intended) website for more Halloween inspiration: http://www.greenhalloween.org/index.php?page=home

Do you have any ideas or tricks to greening your holiday that you'd like to share? Comment below!

This year, CAP was proud to add its 400th publication to its long list of publications. To date, we have 408 publications in total, comprised of 320 articles, 78 book chapters, and 10 books that present CAP science. This is evidence of the tremendous productivity of CAP scientists.

Our students have been very busy as well and are co-authors on many publications. Since 2004, we have had 109 publications (including those published, in press, and in review) with students as co-authors; for 70 of these publications, a student is the first author.

To view a list of recent CAP publications and those in press and in review, visit /publications/ .

On October 18, 2011, Arizona Indicators, a project of ASU's Morrison Institute for Public Policy, presented, The Urban Heat Island: Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies for a Cooler Valley in conjunction with the Sustainable Cities Network Green Infrastructure Workgroup Meeting at the Decision Center for a Desert City.

Panelists included:

• Harvey Bryan, Professor, The Design School, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, ASU
• Carol Johnson, Planning Manager, City of Phoenix Planning and Development Department
• Chris Martin, Professor, Department of Applied Sciences and Mathematics, College of Technology and Innovation, ASU
• Moderator: Dave White, Associate Director, Decision Center for a Desert City, ASU

This panel discussion expanded upon the Arizona Indicators Policy Points piece, The Urban Heat Island: Jeopardizing The Sustainability of Phoenix, written by DCDC Research Analyst and Data Manager, Sally Wittlinger. In a desert city such as Phoenix, summertime heat is a way of life, but how much does the built environment contribute to the intensity of the heat on a summer night? In urbanized Phoenix, nights don’t cool down as much as in the surrounding rural areas and on more and more summer nights, the official Phoenix temperature fails to drop below 90 degrees. Climate plays a huge role in the comfort and quality of life of residents, with numerous implications for tourism, energy demand, water use, and the vulnerability of low-income families.

Harvey Bryan is a specialist in building technology; he has served on the committee responsible for developing the National Energy Standard for Buildings and is currently serving on a committee that recently developed a National High-Performance Green Building Standard. Dr. Bryan is active in ASU’s National Center of Excellence (NCE) which is charged with studying the impact of engineered materials (particularly their thermal impact) on the urban environment. Dr. Bryan has been involved in several UHI related studies. His investigations explore how natural and engineered materials absorb, store and lose thermal energy, which are key factors in our understanding of UHI and how it can be mitigated in our urban environments.

Carol Johnson is the Planning Manager with the City of Phoenix Planning and Development Department where she manages long-range planning and special projects. In addition to her Phoenix experience, she has worked for cities in Connecticut and Washington State, and as a consultant in the private sector. Ms. Johnson has promoted the incorporation of sustainability principles and practices into recent projects including the Phoenix General Plan Update and Downtown Code (formerly called the Downtown Phoenix Urban Form Project). In particular, the Downtown Code uses both regulations and incentives to mitigate and adapt to the Urban Heat Island by incorporating cool building materials and increasing shade to improve thermal comfort.

Chris A. Martin received his Ph.D. in Environmental Horticulture from the University of Florida; he came to Arizona State University in 1990, where he maintains an active and externally funded research program in urban plant ecology. He is a member of the American Society for Horticultural Science, Ecological Society of America, International Society of Arboriculture, the Metropolitan Tree Improvement Alliance, the International Association for Urban Climate, and the Arizona Community Tree Council. Dr. Martin is investigating the effects of urban vegetation design and urban vegetation management on urban microclimates.

October 26 | 12:00-1:30pm | DCDC Conference Room

Assistant Professor Kelli L. Larson and environmental psychologist Susan Ledlow will present research ranging from human environment interactions and water resource governance to aspects of human nature that constitute potential obstacles to solving problems of sustainability or that might facilitate our ability to make sustainable decisions.

This year's DCDC Water/Climate Briefing theme focuses on a branch of behavioral research situated at the intersection of psychology and economics. Our researchers are exploring the mental processes that shape our choices, behaviors and attitudes, and employ both evolutionary and sociocultural models to understand environmental decision making.

Dr. Larson's interests lie at the intersection between human-environment interactions and water resource governance. Focusing on urban ecosystems in recent years, her work aims to understand how diverse people frame social-ecological risks and what they are willing to do in order to ameliorate them. Her research presentation will focus on environmental concerns, risk perceptions, and policy attitudes regarding water issues in metropolitan Phoenix, including how assorted perspectives vary by gender, cultural domains, and the public, policy, and science spheres. The implications of this work speak to enhancing societal support and actions for sustainability, encompassing both collaborative decision-making and conservation practices.

Susan Ledlow is part of a team of psychologists who are adding experimental approaches to the suite of DCDC research activities. Their work takes an evolutionary functional approach to human decision-making. They are particularly interested in aspects of human nature that constitute potential obstacles to solving problems of sustainability, or that might facilitate our ability to make sustainable decisions. Susan will present results from a number of experiments they have conducted over the last two years related to residential water use, self-presentational aspects of landscaping, and framing persuasive messaging using motives related to status or kinship.

Will Arizona's climate change leave us thirsty?

Have you found yourself complaining about the heat more than usual? If you answered yes, then there’s a sound explanation. Record books show Arizona’s climate is drier than years past and hotter than ever before!

What does this climate change mean for us? Could we be faced with a massive water shortage in the near future? Find out with Arizona State University researchers, Nancy Selover and Ray Quay at Science Café hosted by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society.

Nancy Selover is a Research Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University and Arizona State Climatologist in the State Climate Office.

Ray Quay is Director of Stakeholder Relations at the National Science Foundation's Decision Center for a Desert City, a research center in the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Friday, October 21, 2011 | 7-8 p.m. | Free Admission

600 E Washington Street

Phoenix, AZ

(602)716-2000

At Arizona State, the bar is sky-high when it comes to how the university runs its daily sustainable campus operations. It continues to be recognized as a model for sustainability; Arizona State University was recently named on The Princeton Review’s 2012 Honor Roll of the nation’s “greenest” universities. For the fourth consecutive year, The Princeton Review has recognized ASU for obtaining the highest possible score (99) in its Green Rating tallies. ASU was one of only 16 universities to achieve a perfect score.

ASU was also in the top 25 on Sierra magazine’s Coolest Schools list – a survey that ranks the greenest college campuses across the nation. A publication of The Sierra Club, Sierra magazine’s "Coolest Schools" ranking is an index that provides comparative information about the most important elements of campus sustainability.

In addition, ASU earned a STARS Gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). ASU was one of only 22 institutions out of 117 to receive a gold rating. STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, is a transparent, self-assessment framework for colleges and universities to gauge relative progress toward sustainability.

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via AZ Republic on October 12, 2011.

Salt River Project opened the spillways at Roosevelt Dam on Tuesday morning, creating a rare spectacle of water gushing into the upper Salt River about 100 miles northeast of Phoenix.

SRP tests the two spillways periodically to make sure they will operate properly in case of a flood.

Tuesday's test was the first time both spillways had been open at the same time since the dam was expanded in 1996. At the peak of the hourlong test, about 100,000 gallons a second poured through 3-foot openings in the spillways.

Among a small crowd of onlookers, Emily Helms of nearby Tonto Basin took pictures during the test. Her husband, Larry Helms, was part of the 1996 expansion project, which made the century-old structure safer in case of flooding.

The water was captured in downstream reservoirs, starting with Apache Lake, and will flow into the canals that deliver water across the Valley.

Here's a video from September 2010 showing the release of water from one spillway.

In an effort to further advance the transition to a sustainable economy in Mexico, Arizona State University (ASU) and Tecnológico de Monterrey have jointly launched the Latin America Office of the Global Institute of Sustainability. This extension of ASU’s Global Institute at Tecnológico de Monterrey will conduct applied transdisciplinary research, offer an innovative curriculum, and develop business solutions that accelerate the adoption of a sustainable culture.

The Latin America Office of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability will offer academic programs to educate future leaders in the transition to a green economy. It will conduct applied research to address Latin American issues, particularly the adoption of sustainable development. It will also leverage linkages with the Technology Park at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus, to promote clean technologies and entrepreneurial projects that will create green jobs and businesses, and promote public policies that preserve natural capital through active participation of all sectors of society.

Tecnológico de Monterrey

Tecnológico de Monterrey is the largest private not-for-profit university in Mexico and Latin America. It is a higher education institution focused on educating students to become responsible citizens who will trigger the development of their communities by fostering humanistic values, an international perspective, and an entrepreneurial culture. Tecnológico de Monterrey is present throughout Mexico with 31 campuses.

"This partnership with ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability is an ambitious and avant-garde joint initiative that seeks to fulfill the 2012 mission of the Tecnológico de Monterrey," said Arturo Molina, president of Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Metropolitan Region.

"This new extension office of the Global Institute of Sustainability will be a catalyst by creating synergies among the several sustainability initiatives currently underway at Tecnológico de Monterrey," said Rick Shangraw, director of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. "It is a unique, highly-collaborative model that is garnering great interest by companies, government, and environmental organizations in Mexico and Latin America that are committed to sustainable development."

The joint venture will train a new generation of entrepreneurs to create businesses that combine a rational use of natural resources with environmental stewardship. This aligns with the entrepreneurial culture of both Tecnológico de Monterrey and ASU.

"The new Latin America Office of ASU’s Global Institute is unique in Latin America—a global think tank that will promote business solutions, clean technologies, and governance models for business and government decision makers," said Isabel Studer, the founding director of the new office. "It has the support of Arizona State University, one of the leading research institutes in sustainable development in the Americas."

The inauguration event included four discussion panels with public officials, business leaders, NGO representatives, and sustainability scholars and faculty members from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus, where the Latin America Office of the Global Institute of Sustainability is located.

DCDC and the Water Innovation Consortium (WIC)

The Water Innovation Consortium is a unique collaboration between ASU (DCDC and Decision Theater), Tecnológico de Monterrey (CALCA), and FEMSA Foundation to engage scientists and stakeholders in Monterrey, Mexico. The project develops a model for an Integrated Basin Observatory through surface and groundwater modeling, stakeholder engagement, and strategic decision support. Partners conducted a workshop on February 17, 2011 in Monterrey that brought together 25 scientists, stakeholders, 13 and decision makers for presentations and discussions. A follow-up workshop is planned for later in 2011. In June 2011, Project PIs Dave White and Patricia Gober met with the representatives of FEMSA Foundation with a follow-up meeting in August 2011 with a FEMSA delegation including the corporate CEO to discuss extensions of the current project.

About the Latin America Office of the Global Institute of Sustainability

About Tecnológico de Monterrey

About Arizona State University

About the Global Institute of Sustainability

Media Contacts:

Karen Leland, Director, Communications

Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University

United States of America

480-965-0013

Monica Camacho Lizarraga, Director, International Liaison Office

Tecnológico de Monterrey

Mexico City, Mexico

480-246-1205

The ASU Innovation Challenge, a funding competition open to Arizona State University undergraduate and graduate students of all majors. The Arizona State University Innovation Challenge is an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students from across the university to make a difference in our local and global communities through innovation. Win up to $10,000 to make your ideas happen! Applications are due by 5:00 PM (MST) on the final day of Global Entrepreneurship Week: Friday, November 18, 2011. For more information go to http://innovationchallenge.asu.edu/

Via IHDP

Scientists across all disciplines share great concern that our planet is in the process of crossing dangerous biophysical tipping points. The results of a new large-scale global survey among 1,276 scholars from the social sciences and humanities demonstrate that the human dimensions of the problem are equally important but severely under-addressed.

The survey, conducted by the IHDP Secretariat (UNU-IHDP) in collaboration with UNESCO and the International Social Science Council (ISSC), identifies the following as highest priority research areas:

(1) equity/equality and wealth/resource distribution;

(2) policy, political systems/governance, and political economy;

(3) economic systems, economic costs and incentives;

(4) globalization, social and cultural transitions.

Over 80% call for additional funding and opportunities for such research. 90% of the survey respondents are in favor of an assessment of social sciences and humanities research findings applicable to global environmental change.

Visit the IHDP website to view the full survey.

In an effort to further advance the transition to a sustainable economy in Mexico, Arizona State University (ASU) and Tecnológico de Monterrey have jointly launched the Latin America Office of the Global Institute of Sustainability. This extension of ASU’s Global Institute at Tecnológico de Monterrey will conduct applied transdisciplinary research, offer an innovative curriculum, and develop business solutions that accelerate the adoption of a sustainable culture.

The Latin America Office of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability will offer academic programs to educate future leaders in the transition to a green economy. It will conduct applied research to address Latin American issues, particularly the adoption of sustainable development. It will also leverage linkages with the Technology Park at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus, to promote clean technologies and entrepreneurial projects that will create green jobs and businesses, and promote public policies that preserve natural capital through active participation of all sectors of society.

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In October of 2009, I happened across a Sustainability Fair on the MU patio during my lunch hour away from my faculty office in the ASU Counselor Training Center.  Always intrigued by activities of the School of Sustainability, I browsed the booths and displays, sampling foods and collecting brochures.   I talked to a group of students about the pledge tree they had displayed there.  On each branch of the drawing of a tree were suggestions about living a greener lifestyle, and those who stopped by were invited to put a leaf on the tree on the branch that indicated a pledge they were willing to make.   Trees  so often inspire strong feelings in me, especially in the fall as the air finally cools and autumn colors glow.  In October afternoon sunshine on an ASU patio, I was ready to make a pledge.

Several of the actions listed on the tree branches were things I knew I could or would do, like using cloth bags for grocery shopping, or riding places on my bike more often.   But it made sense to pick one pledge of a new behavior to fully commit to doing every day.  Since I drink coffee most every day, I stuck my pledge leaf to the tree branch indicating a commitment to carry a reusable mug for my coffee, rather than buying and throwing away a paper cup each time I stopped at a campus coffee shop.  Since then I have brought my own mug from home most every work day, and I keep an extra mug in my office.  I carry the mug with me, and I estimate that I buy one cup per weekday on average for almost two academic years now, so that means I have reduced my contribution to campus garbage by approximately 320 cups since I made my original pledge.  That’s a lot less trash from just one person!

Now  I find myself noticing all the paper and plastic cups and food containers stuffed in overflowing campus trash cans, and I wonder what it would take to motivate more of the people who discarded them to pledge to bring their own reusable mugs and bowls.  If ten more people who drink coffee at the same rate I do also brought reusable mugs, there would be 3200 less disposable cups in the trash over the next two years; one hundred more people would mean 32,000 less cups trashed.  It takes some effort to develop the habit, but once established, it’s not much work to bring one’s  own mug.   I take the mugs home each night and stick them in the dishwasher, and I have a few mugs so I can grab one in the morning if the one from the day before isn’t yet clean.  It’s become a habit, and the pledge I made increased my commitment to establishing the habit.  I am interested to learn what could get more of us to bring reusable containers to hold our purchases rather than buying and trashing disposable containers with each new purchase.  What would get you to make a sustainability pledge you will keep?

By

Cindi Glidden-Tracey, Ph.D.

Clinical Associate Professor

Counseling and Counseling Psychology Programs

ASU School of Letters and Sciences