Sustainability News

Outstanding graduate and Fulbright winner Jill Brumand is an honors student and a double major in sustainability and geography. She started her academic career at Arizona State University in 2009 and will begin her graduate career as a Fulbright master's student at Lancaster University in Northwest England.

During her sophomore year, Brumand partnered with Sustainability Scientist Kelli Larson to do some undergraduate research work on people's landscape choices in Phoenix and the sustainability implications. Throughout the rest of her undergraduate career, Brumand worked with Dell and Maricopa County. She was also a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student with the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) program. Brumand credits her success to the School of Sustainability.

"The School of Sustainability has a network of people who care and check up on you," she says. "The support and encouragement of the faculty and staff at the school has been invaluable."

For the fifth consecutive year, Arizona State University made The Princeton Review's "Green Honor Roll," a list that includes universities across the nation that promote sustainability in education, practices, and partnerships.

ASU has the largest collection of solar panels of any public university and numerous LEED-certified buildings. Sustainability is a core goal across departmental curriculum. The university is also pursuing carbon neutrality by 2035.

As part of the recognition, ASU will appear in The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition, the only free publication that offers information on the top colleges focusing on sustainability.

As part of  Arizona State University’s Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program, engineering graduate student Shawn Fink organized Mountain Pointe High School's Earth Day celebrations. He also partnered with the high school's teachers to create sustainability lesson plans and student projects.

The Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools program, part of ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability, recently won the 2013 President's Award for Sustainability. Since the program's inception, ASU has partnered with more than ten local K-12 schools. Graduate students at ASU can learn how to interact with students, plan lessons, and gain real-world experience in teaching.

“High school students will face real, complex sustainability challenges in their lifetimes,” says Monica Elser, a principal investigator for the Sustainable Schools program. When students learn about sustainability in their classrooms and through real projects implemented in their schools, she says, “it helps them see how sustainability applies to them, and how they can make a difference in the future.”

TEMPE, Ariz. – April 24, 2013 – According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the largest coal-fired power plant in the west needs to improve its pollution controls.

Located near Page, Ariz., the 2,250-megawatt, 40-year-old Navajo Generating Station (NGS) provides electrical power to customers in Arizona, California and Nevada and for pumping Colorado River water for the Central Arizona Project, which delivers water to central and southern Arizona. It is also Arizona’s “largest single source of climate-disrupting pollution,” according to a <!-- -->report<!----> published by the Sierra Club.

The EPA gave an extended deadline of 2023 for installation of emissions reduction equipment, with a goal of reducing the visibility impact of the NGS required by Congress under the Clean Air Act and to protect public health. The EPA’s proposed emission limits would reduce emissions by 84 percent, or 28,500 tons per year.

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A recent School of Sustainability alum, Andrew Krause, and his mentor, Sustainability Scientist George Basile, and two former classmates have launched the website, eEcosphere in an effort to make sustainability actions easier to adopt among everyday people.

The website is based on years of research done by Basile and other sustainability scientists. The research they compiled outlines how people and corporations have undertaken sustainability efforts. This research is now on eEcosphere in an easy-to-read, interactive format with social capabilities.

“A person may already be saving energy but might need help with water conservation; someone else might need help with both,” Krause elaborates. “eEcosphere helps people identify and adopt ideas that match their personal sustainability goals. It embeds a scientific approach in the decision-making process and encourages people to take action as a group using the social web.”

For their demonstrated excellence in fostering the successful development, implementation and promotion of sustainability, three programs at ASU were awarded the President's Award for Sustainability:

Facilities Management Grounds Services – Grounds for Grounds

The program recycles coffee grounds into fertilizer, working towards Arizona State University's zero waste goal.

Materials Management Recycling

The recyclable items list has grown thanks to ASU's Materials Management, which also helps ASU Recycling staff.

Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools

Graduate students, professors, high school students and teachers, and researchers team up to work on a project to make a local Arizona school more sustainable.

Women & Philanthropy, a group committed to supporting and investing in Arizona State University, awarded $286,541 to six promising programs this year, the highest amount of total annual funding in its 10-year history.

While this year’s grants recognize ASU’s commitment to science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM), they also include programs that support ASU’s commitment to connect with communities through mutually beneficial partnerships.

The School of Sustainability, part of the Global Institute of Sustainability, received $30,200 to work with the journal, "The Sustainability Review," to produce public videos highlighting current research in an easy-to-understand format.

TEMPE, Ariz. – April 18, 2013 – Arizona State University has appointed documentary filmmaker Peter Byck to jointly serve as Professor of Practice for the Global Institute of Sustainability’s School of Sustainability and for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Byck focuses on issues of environmental sustainability and he has more than 20 years’ experience as a writer and producer. His most recent documentary, the widely acclaimed Carbon Nation™, is a “climate change solutions movie (that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change).” The film was recently featured during an interview with Byck on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” show. Byck’s new installments in the “Carbon Nation 2.0” film series will be co-branded with ASU.

Byck will teach a short film documentary course to educate and provide hands-on experience to students on communicating contemporary principles, ideas, concepts, and issues of sustainability; documentary film-making and marketing; and storytelling on sustainability-related topics. The course will be offered in the fall semester of 2013.

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TEMPE, Ariz. — April 18, 2013 — The Phosphorus Sustainability Research Coordination Network (RCN) kicks off its first meeting in Washington, D.C. May 14-16 to address ongoing challenges in producing a sustainable global phosphorus system.

This is the first of five annual meetings of the Phosphorus Sustainability RCN designed to connect scientists and stakeholders across the world to find sustainable solutions that provide a secure food supply, protect fisheries, and maintain clean drinking water.

James Elser, a sustainability scientist at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability, serves as principal investigator of the RCN. Elser is also a Regents’ professor at ASU’s School of Life Sciences, with more than twenty years’ experience in phosphorus research.

“Phosphorus is a naturally occurring element essential for all life, including crops,” explains Elser. “The availability of cheap phosphate rock used to make fertilizers is increasingly uncertain. Meanwhile, phosphorus runoff from farms and cities pollutes lakes, rivers, and coastal oceans, causing harmful algal blooms that impair drinking water and kill fish and shellfish. Neither of these situations is desirable, but it would seem that by solving one, we might solve the other. For long-term sustainability, we need to make fertilizer by efficiently recycling phosphorus from the food system instead of mining increasingly scarce rocks. This will also keep our lakes and oceans clean.”

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TEMPE, Ariz. – April 16, 2013 – American historian of science and author Naomi Oreskes visits Arizona State University on Monday, April 22 as a Wrigley Lecture Series speaker, hosted by ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability.

Oreskes will speak about climate change and how consensus forms around scientific issues. The event is free and open to the public, held at ASU’s Tempe campus, Old Main building in the Carson Ballroom, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m., followed by a reception.

Please RSVP at: http://sustainability.asu.edu/events/rsvp/naomi-oreskes

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Visit the Farmers Market @ the ASU Tempe Campus on Tuesday, April 23 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. to celebrate Earth Day 2013. This will be the last market of the spring season.

This market will feature guest vendors, Medicine Take-Back Day, prize drawings and extra tables and chairs for lunch dining.

Visit Farmers Market Special Events to learn more or email FarmersMarket@asu.edu.

Emily Allen, a sustainability and English major and student in Barrett, The Honors College, has been named a 2013 Udall Scholar by the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation. She will receive a $5,000 scholarship to use toward tuition for her senior year at Arizona State University.

Allen hopes to follow in the footsteps of the scholarship's namesake, Morris K. Udall, a U.S. congressman who established legislation in Arizona to expand national parks and create the Central Arizona Project.

“My career goal is to work with local governments in the state of Arizona to protect fragile water resources from the pressures of overuse and rapid urban development. I plan to accomplish this goal as an attorney with a water law specialty, either in a private firm or a local municipality,” Allen stated on her scholarship application.

Arizona State University Professor Carlos Castillo-Chavez has been reappointed to the U.S. President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science.

Castillo-Chavez is a Regents’ Professor and a Joaquin Bustoz Jr. Professor at ASU. He is a faculty member in ASU's School of Sustainability and a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist in ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability. President Obama first appointed him to the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science in 2010.

The 12-member committee evaluates and nominates fellow scientists for the National Medal of Science—one of the field's highest honors. Nominated scientists come from the physical, biological, mathematical or engineering sectors.

Upon his reappointment, President Obama said: “I am grateful that these impressive individuals have chosen to dedicate their talents to serving the American people at this important time for our country. I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”

A celebration of food, art, and community is coming to downtown Phoenix on Saturday, April 13. Called “Feast on the Street,” the event is a culmination of numerous local community partnerships that will bring people together for a meal or two on First Street in Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row District.

“Feast on the Street is an urban harvest festival celebrating food and art in the desert, while reclaiming the city street for pedestrians,” says Heather Lineberry, Arizona State University Art Museum’s senior curator, associate director, and an event organizer. “It creates a place to gather with our Phoenix neighbors around art and food. What could be better?”

The Global Institute of Sustainability is providing composting workshops at the zero waste event and ASU's Green Team will educate participants on recycling, composting, and waste. ASU School of Sustainability alumnus, Colin Tetreault, will act as master of ceremonies.

For Earth Month 2013, the Global Institute of Sustainability will welcome Richard Morrison, ASU's Morrison Institute co-founder, to talk about sustainable and ethical business practices. Part of the Institute's Sustainability Series, Morrison's talk, "Ethics and Sustainable Practices," will take place on Monday, April 29, from noon until 1:30 p.m.

Morrison is an Episcopal priest and a sustainable ranching business partner. He is also an attorney, focusing on Native American water rights and natural resource policy.

Morrison says his main sustainability challenge is world hunger. Morrison joined the Farm Foundation's  Dialogue Project for Food and Agriculture Policy in the 21st Century to find a common commitment to ending world hunger.

Earth Day is Monday, April 22 and Arizona State University is turning all of April into Earth Month 2013. Tempe campus and Polytechnic campus feature multiple events like workshops, lectures, and film screenings. All events are open to the public.

“ASU’s Earth Month helps us celebrate our connections to the natural resources and ecosystems on which we depend,” says Nick Brown, ASU’s director of University Sustainability Practices. “In an urban environment, it’s easy to overlook our interdependence on natural systems, and observations like Earth Day remind us of our need for good land stewardship.”

Ten films will be screened during Arizona State University's Human Rights Festival this weekend, April 5-7, at the Tempe campus.

Human Rights Film Festival Director and Sustainability Scientist LaDawn Haglund says, "I was inspired to create a human rights film festival, in part, because in an academic environment, it is easy to get lost in heady and sometimes terrible facts. Film, when done well, forces us to bring our hearts to the issues, helping us to empathize and, hopefully, spurring us to act."

Of the films, one is part of ASU's Earth Week 2013 events entitled "A Fierce Green Fire." The film explores the history of the grassroots environmental movement for the last fifty years. Another film, "Four Stories Of Water" focuses on indigenous water rights.

Naomi Oreskes will be visiting Arizona State University to give her lecture, “Who is Responsible for Climate Change?” on Earth Day, Monday, April 22 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. at Old Main’s Carson Ballroom on the Tempe campus.

Oreskes is a prolific writer, appearing in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and academic journals like Nature and Science. She was named the 2011 Climate Change Communicator of the Year by George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication.

As a writer and an academic, Oreskes researches the role of science in society and investigates society's reaction to climate change evidence. She shares the importance and urgency of climate change to multiple audiences.

Researchers at Arizona State University, including Sustainability Scientist Marco Janssen, are using games to learn about water resource sharing and cooperation among people.

The project was recently covered in an article by the International Food Policy Research Institute, which is a partner on the project along with India’s Foundation for Ecological Security and Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes.

The research is taking place in rural India and Colombia where groups of villagers are asked to act out water use and crop growing strategies in low-water surroundings. Once their "water supply" is exceeded, the game is over.

The School of Sustainability at Arizona State University has announced its new dean effective July 1, 2013. Christopher Boone, a professor at the School of Sustainability and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, has served as the associate dean for education of the School of Sustainability since July 2010. Boone has been with ASU since 2006 and is a member of the executive committees of the School of Sustainability and the Global Institute of Sustainability.

Boone will succeed Dean Sander van der Leeuw, who will continue to support the School's research and education endeavors as a member of the Global Institute of Sustainability's board of directors and co-director of the Complex Adaptive Systems Network.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to serve the School of Sustainability,” Boone said. “I see this as a really important continuation of the work Professor Van der Leeuw did to strengthen the School. ASU serves as an international model for blending sustainability education and research with practice. I am confident we will continue to be a leader in sustainability.”