When: Monday 4/30 from 12 to 1:15pm Where: Atrium of SciTech
Join the Tufts Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering next Monday for a poster session highlighting senior student projects! Four out of seven of the projects relate to sustainability.
Project Appetizers:
1 & 2: These projects involve ways of removing carbon dioxide from the waste stream of a power plant. The titles of these projects are “CO2 Capture with Lithium Zirconate” and “Fabrication and Analysis of a Wetted Wall Column for CO2 Analysis”.
3: This project involves a new method for fabricating solar energy collectors using electro-deposition. Its title is “Increasing Conductivity in Cuprous Oxide: Doping with Electro-deposition and Hot-Point Probe Construction.”
4: For this project, the students are synthesizing ethanol from a plant called duckweed as an alternative to using corn. The title of their project is “Hydrolysis Stage Optimization for the Production of Ethanol from Duckweed.”
While these projects don’t directly affect sustainability on our physical campus, it’s worth noting (and celebrating) that our students are thinking about sustainable practices in their research. These undergraduate research projects show the present and future trends in what Tufts students may contribute to sustainability beyond our campus. We would like to give our students the opportunity to display their hard work and commitment to sustainability with like-minded members of the Tufts community.
Since the beginning of March, the three Working Groups of the Campus Sustainability Council have been meeting bi-weekly to discuss the current state of energy/emissions, water, and waste policies and practices at Tufts, and to create new policy measures in these areas.
The Energy/Emissions Working Group met for the first time on March 15th and reviewed its roles and responsibilities, which include reviewing current energy usage and emissions, existing initiatives and goals, as well as creating recommendations for goals and implementation plans to present to the Campus Sustainability Council.
The group reviewed Tufts’ institutional commitments to energy and emissions reduction including the 1990 Talloires Declaration and Tufts Environmental Policy, the 1999 Climate Change Commitment to follow the Kyoto Protocol and reduce carbon dioxide levels to 7% below 1990 levels by 2012, and the 2003 New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Change Action Plan with the goal to be 10% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 75-85% below 2001 levels by 2050. The members also learned that many energy-saving initiatives at Tufts are already underway, including:
Occupancy sensors in most rooms on campus
Daylight sensing/dimming, lighting & controls
Ongoing technology updates include LED lighting
Equipment efficiency
State of the art boiler controls and boiler upgrades
The working group members discussed the differences between Tufts’ campuses energy use and emissions, life-cycle costing, ways to evaluate proposed solutions and appropriate metrics for evaluation. The group is in the final stages of assessing the current state of energy and emissions at Tufts and will soon move on to metrics and goal setting. The working group is co-chaired by Ann Rappaport, Lecturer at Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Betsy Isenstein, Director of Facilities Technical Services.
As always, Tufts community members are welcome to add their own suggestions for the working group through the easy, on-line form available on the Office of Sustainability’s website.
Join Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) at the Upper Mystic Lake Dam in Medford for an open house on Thursday, April 26th to learn about herring and their migration to the Mystic Lakes.
Visitors will be able to view the new fish ladder (and hopefully the herring, too!) installed at the dam by the MA Department of Conservation and Recreation. Free and all are welcome. Please stop by between 3pm and 7pm.
It was a delightfully funny, engaging and eye-opening experience. Billed as a docu-comedy, YERT follows producer Mark Dixon, director Ben Evans and his stalwart wife Julie Dingman Evans in a “year-long eco-expedition through all 50 United States.” They packed their belongings into a Ford Escape Hybrid named Rachel (in honor of Rachel Carson) which is shown getting 44 mpg on the film. They started in Pittsburgh and carried all their garbage around the country from July 4, 2007 to 2008, interviewing over 800 people.
Unlike many films about the environment, YERT is far from depressing. Mark and Ben, being old college buddies, were especially goofy together – injecting a large dose of humor into even the most serious interviews. They put together funny skits to liven up conversations. They challenged themselves not to create more trash each month than a cereal box can hold. They slept in a cave, a VW eco-bus/hotel room, and of course, an actual yurt.
The film did not sugar-coat or avoid big issues; instead, it balanced the good news and bad news stories extremely well. Who knew that there is a guy in Idaho working on Solar Roadways, a project to harness the sun’s energy by replacing asphalt and concrete surfaces with solar panels? Or that worm poop is one of the best things that could ever happen to your garden?
I really enjoyed watching the team do their corn challenge in Iowa and visit unusual places like the City Museum in Missouri filled entirely with salvaged/repurposed objects. They also visited the Terracycle plant in New Jersey and massive wind farms in West Texas.
The Earthship Education Facility
I was especially inspired that so many people – real, regular, everyday folks – all around the country are bravely trying to effect change in their own way. We are introduced to several fascinating characters – the “Lunatic Farmer” Joel Salatin (whom we recognized from Food Inc. and now has his own film, Fresh) and the architect of a self-powered green house called “EarthShip.” My heart went out to the man in West Virginia who refused to move from his family home of 300 years, whose fight against the coal mining companies cost him his marriage (his wife was not a fan of getting shot at).
I was impressed that the film raised some key issues – questioning the model of infinite economic growth and how the American way of life has so successfully enabled individual independence at the expense of a sense of community. It’s no surprise to me that YERT has won so many awards. I highly recommend catching a screening soon – Tisch Library has a copy. Don’t pass up the chance to watch this very entertaining and inspiring film!
In the meantime, you can watch any of the 60 short films or YERTpods on their website. Here’s the trailer again, in case you haven’t seen it yet:
“Degrowth, the Steady State-Economy, and the Social Structure of Accumulation” Presented by: Kent Klitgaard, Visiting Fellow, GDAE Date: Wednesday, April 25 Time: 12:30-1:30 p.m. Download Event Flyer
Brown Bag lunches take place
in the 3rd floor conference room from 12:30-1:30 at the
Global Development And Environment Institute
44 Teele Ave,Somerville, MA 02144
50 States. 1 year. One planet to save.
Spring 2012 Brown Bag Lunch Series
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