Month: March 2012

Refillable revolution: A proposal for bottled water reduction on Ohio State University’s Columbus campus

A Refillable Revolution is in the making on the Ohio State University’s Columbus campus.

People who purchase bottled water because it’s a healthy, convenient alternative to other beverages often don’t realize the negative consequences of their choice on the environment. Our research has shown that the environmental and economic impacts of the bottled water industry are monstrous — and easily avoided.

By educating those who live, work, or visit campus about the benefits of choosing sustainable practices, such as refilling a reusable water bottle versus purchasing bottled water,  Ohio State University can take one step closer towards optimal sustainability.

Our group submitted a report to the University’s Office of Sustainability on how to urge campus visitors to reduce their bottled water consumption. Included are recommendations concerning appealing and convenient alternatives, such as the installation of flavored water bars, which serve as additional support systems for nudging people toward making ecological, and wallet-friendly, choices.

By allowing campus visitors to make the decision to reduce their bottled water consumption for themselves, based off of the information and alternatives provided by this report, they will develop long-lasting behavioral changes. These behaviors quickly turn into habits, sending out ripples of environmentally-conscious behaviors and sustainable practices into all arenas of living: home, school, and work.

The Ohio State University continually makes strides towards achieving a sustainable campus, and through the implementation of this bottled water reduction campaign, they can further serve as role models for other universities around the nation.

Ohio State's Columbus campus has several water bottle refill stations, such as this one.

Growing local foods: Heirloom Café and Chef’s Garden at the Wexner Center

The local food movement has been taking hold in cities across the country.  The owners of the Heirloom Café, located in Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, want to bring the trend to campus. They plan to build a sustainable chef’s garden behind the café to grow their own produce for the menu.

This garden will utilize many best management practices for design, planting, water, waste and pest management. By taking a sustainable, holistic approach, the chef’s garden can ensure high yields and a positive impact on the environment.

Crops will be planted in permanent raised beds, which will not only provide the best yields, but can be designed in an aesthetically pleasing manner to suit the ideals of the Wexner Center. Raised beds also offer the opportunity to use cold frames, which can extend the growing season into the winter months. This way, the Heirloom Café can provide locally grown food to its customers in every season.

Water catchment devices in the garden will protect the soil from erosion and reduce dependence on the municipal water supply. Runoff from the roof above the garden can be channeled down the face of the building into these catchment devices using natural materials to construct a waterfall-type design. Water management will not only be a functional aspect of the garden, but a visually appealing one as well.

Composting on site will help reduce the already low waste from the café itself. Many of the items on the menu can be composted directly and other materials, like grass clippings and leaves, can be acquired from university maintenance.

Pest management will rely mostly on cultural practices that reduce the need for chemical applications. By understanding the pest dynamics in the garden, we can alter our management strategies to avoid insect damage.

The Heirloom Café and chef’s garden will be a great way for students and visitors to Ohio State to choose to eat healthfully, sustainably, and locally!

New tech takes out almost all the phosphorus

Aleksandra Drizo presents “Phosphorus Removal Via Innovative PhosphoReduc Technologies: An Overview” today (3/8) from 2-3 p.m., hosted by our Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering. She’s a University of Vermont research associate professor, is CEO of PhosphoReduc LLC, and has developed new filter systems that reduce phosphorus (a cause of harmful algae blooms), pathogens (such as E. coli), and suspended solids in polluted water (such as farm effluent or stormwater runoff) by 70-100 percent.

Free. All are welcome. 219 Agricultural Engineering Bldg., OSU, 590 Woody Hayes Drive, Columbus. Video link to 108 Administration Bldg., OARDC, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster. Information: 614-292-3826, brown.59@osu.edu.

Buckeye Footprint: A venue for conservation

Have you heard of Buckeye Footprint? Probably not, and unfortunately, you’re not alone. Buckeye Footprint (http://footprint.osu.edu/), a website with cool graphs and data about Ohio State’s energy use and real-time energy feeds from metered buildings, has largely not met its potential as a means to reduce energy consumption and develop environmental awareness on campus. In addition to flying under the school’s radar, Buckeye Footprint alone does not provide incentives for campus community members to conserve energy, and let’s face it, most of us would rather spend our free time looking at sports scores and Facebook than huge numbers that we can’t comprehend.

Our class group worked with the Office of Sustainability and Energy Services to address these issues so that Buckeye Footprint can be an engine for campus sustainability. Our plan was three-fold: marketing through social media, personalization through energy competitions and increased metering, and improved accessibility of information.

We propose that the office develop a fun, catchy Youtube video advertising the site — one that will both pique curiosity about Buckeye Footprint and also make people want to send the video to their friends. Also, the website needs to go where students, staff, and faculty go, so instead of expecting people to constantly visit the site, it should instead be in widget form on the OSU homepage and in application form on Facebook. In addition, the glue that holds our recommendations together is the incentives: We suggest there be multi-week dorm and academic building energy conservation competitions, and daily results should be posted on Buckeye Footprint. Finally, the website itself could use some tweaks — more environmentally-related photographs, more visually appealing and relatable data, and tweets from site users. By implementing these changes, we believe Buckeye Footprint can be an effective tool for improving campus sustainability.

A screen shot from footprint.osu.edu

‘He always encouraged me … I was always following along in his adventures’

Ohio State alum Benjamin P. Burtt Sr. was a gifted teacher, writer, scientist, and naturalist, and also even a fencer. He won the NCAA men’s epee championship in 1942 as a Buckeye. But for a father, there probably aren’t many better ways to be remembered than what his son, Academy Award-winner Ben Burtt Jr., told the Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard.

Burtt Sr., a 50-year nature columnist for that paper and a professor emeritus of chemistry at Syracuse University, died Feb. 23 in Columbus, Ohio, at age 91.

(Burtt Jr. — “E.T.,” “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” etc. — on IMDb.)

‘A systems approach to sustainability’

Joseph Fiksel, head of Ohio State’s Center for Resilience, speaks today at 3:30 p.m., part of the School of Environment and Natural Resources’ winter seminar series. (Free; all are welcome.) Details. He’s co-founder of the consulting firm Eco-Nomics LLC, which specializes in sustainable business practices, and is the author of Design for Environment: A Guide to Sustainable Product Development. He writes on defining “the s-word” here. Check out his bio here (pdf).