This project challenges the idea that a green business program can create impactful change. Twenty-eight green business programs were analyzed against the Literature Review, and 16 of these programs’ practitioners were informally interviewed. After synthesis of these findings, the Green Business Program Practitioner Guide was created and shared with the green business program practitioners to use to reflect on and improve their programs. The Winslow+Partners experience is also posed as a case study within this guide (Figure 12). This project conducted a comprehensive analysis of green business programs through three perspectives, including the perspective of the business going through the program, through publicly available information, and then through the perspective of the practitioners themselves. It is this project’s intent to help create the most effective green business programs in US history, propelling the US sustainability movement full speed ahead. This study offers an inside look at how businesses and practitioners interact with voluntary sustainability certifications and examines how, and if, a green business program can lead to transformational sustainability. This project asks, can green business certifications create transformational change?
This project is an exploration of a K-3 Early Childhood Center and the Roosevelt School District’s progress towards the Farm to School movement and focuses on the transformations and strategic partnerships required to maintain gardens as an educational resource over the long term. Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center is a Title 1 elementary school in South Mountain Village, Phoenix and is the primary research location for this study. South Mountain Village contains a series of urban food deserts which are low-income regions without adequate access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food options. The baseline for the school garden’s integration status was measured through the usage and adaptation of the Garden Resources Education and Environmental Nexus (GREEN) tool for well-integrated school gardens. The school has existing partnerships with the University of Arizona Co-operative Extension, and Farm at South Mountain to help establish their school garden and organize a series of educational field trips centered around sustainable agricultural practices. As a part of this Culminating Experience, I also worked with the Sustainability Teachers Academy to create, plan and execute Sustainability and School Gardening workshop on March 11-12 for teachers, and members of the Farm to School Network across Arizona. The end goal of this project and workshop is to create a framework to cultivate and sustain critical partnerships for farms and schools interested in being a part of the Farm-to-School program in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.
For the community engagement piece of the project, existing community engagement protocols and frameworks were compared. The most effective strategies were then selected and combined into a single adaptive framework. Assets Based Community Development, the Sustainable Neighborhood for Happiness Index, and the six types of capital are used as the foundational structure of the Community System Map. A Community Food System map was then organized using a “hub” approach, and the Residential Edible Landscaping map was organized based off of field experience. The nested systems illustrate just how complex the community food system really is. The outcome of the project is the first iteration of an adaptive tool that can be used by for-profit or non-profit organizations to co-create and interdependently manage local community food systems.
To combat the inefficiencies of pollination services for almonds, this project looks at diversifying income for bee farmers that participate in almond pollination by determining the practicality of marketing almond honey for cosmetic uses and uncovering new buyers. Almond honey is usually considered a useless byproduct from almond pollination and is wasted due to its bitter taste and marginal yields per hive. However, by building a new business model incorporating almond honey sales, farmers could diversify revenue streams and make up lost profits during almond pollination season. Minimizing the waste produced by almond pollination is also one of the project partners goals to make their business model more efficient and socially sustainable.
By building a current bee farming business model the entire bee business was analyzed for inefficiencies and opportunities. A cost-benefit analysis was then performed to determine the best scenario to extract almond honey to sell for cosmetic purposes. The cost-benefit analysis also helped build a new business model and BPM (business process management) that determined the price range almond honey could be sold at, buyers, and logistics.
Almond honey proved to be of interest to buyers and ways to sell and market the product was uncovered, however, the amount of almond honey produced by each farmer was too minimal to make a large difference in diversifying revenue streams for individual bee businesses. Though the project was unable to determine a more resilient and sustainable business model for bee farmers, it was able to introduce new business partners between beauty supply buyers and bee farmers as well as minimize almond honey waste.
Public transportation is inherently sustainable, however more needs to be done to improve the infrastructure of a city and positively impact the livelihoods of those living in the transit service area. In the Phoenix Metropolitan area, Valley Metro begun sustainability action in 2011, however there have been a variety of challenges in accomplishing sustainability goals: a lack of sustainability knowledge in the agency, overly ambitious plans, restricted time and resources, and limited employee engagement. As a result, no plan has ever been completed. It has been almost five years since the last sustainability plan was finalized and it was time for Valley Metro to learn from the past and create new objectives. For a more successful 2019 plan, information on transit and local city sustainability programs was compiled and studied to better understand plan formations and goals in Arizona and around the country. A sustainability action team has been established to engage and inform employees in every division about sustainability. With research, an engagement plan, and the knowledge of a sustainability professional, Valley Metro will create an impactful plan with attainable goals for the next five years. A sound sustainability program for Phoenix Metropolitan’s public transportation provider will provide resilience to future environmental problems, increased awareness of sustainability throughout the area, and enhance the lives of the public for years to come.
One solution to the problems of poor air quality in Phoenix, Arizona and global climate change is to alter the way the population uses transportation. In the US, around one-fifth of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are due to cars and trucks used for transportation and the increasing level of CO2 emissions is exacerbating our impact on the climate and is causing a shift in climate. By switching from combustion engine vehicles to public transportation, electric vehicles, or going entirely vehicle-less, the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere every day will be decreased and overall air quality within cities will improve. If public transportation, riding a bicycle or walking is not an option, electric vehicles (EVs) are ideal as a lower-carbon emitting option over traditional combustion engines when they are recharged using renewable energy sources, like solar.
To encourage the adoption of EVs, this project pushed to overcome a few of the traditional barriers to adoption – initial cost, charging station infrastructure, and education about EVs. First, charging infrastructure was installed on all four ASU campuses. Then, to discover the biggest barriers to EV adoption, a literature review was conducted to develop a general understanding of barriers which guided the creation of survey questions. This survey was distributed to all staff and faculty at ASU (over 9,500 individuals) and received over 1,400 responses. To begin building the EV program at ASU, other universities with EV programs were interviewed to learn best practices and to understand what is most effective in encouraging EV adoption on campus. The responses determined that ASU needs to:
1. Install more charging stations on campus.
2. Offer premium parking for EV/hybrid users or a discounted parking pass or free charging.
3. Add charging stations to ASU interactive map.
4. Develop an incentive program with EV dealerships.
The project built partnerships with EV dealerships to lower the initial costs associated with buying and leasing EVs. Finally, to increase awareness of EVs, the dealership partners brought EVs to campus for a demonstration day paired with Earth Day. The ASU EV program will reduce barriers to EV adoption to help reduce CO2 emissions related to transportation at the ASU campuses and improve city air quality.
The American food system creates a significant amount of waste and relies on significant energy, land, and freshwater inputs, accounting for a large amount of the United States GHG emissions (US EPA, 2009). Across the supply chain, a total of 40-50% of all food is not consumed. Reducing food waste is a way to decrease the impacts of the food system across the supply chain. At present, restaurants do not know of options available to them to mitigate their food waste and decrease their impact on climate change. For this project I partnered with Local First Arizona to use food recovery, or donating unused food to organizations that serve food insecure people, as an attempt to close the loop between the food that is being wasted and those who struggle to meet their caloric needs. The restaurants at Devour Culinary Classic, a weekend long food festival in Phoenix, AZ, received information about food donation and were prompted to donate at the end of the event. In total, 24 restaurants donated food, diverting 500 pounds of food, or 7% of all diverted waste, from the event’s waste stream. Donations were given to refugees recently released from ICE custody through a partnership with Arizona Jews for Justice. Following the event, recommendations on how to improve the project in future years were given to Local First Arizona in the categories of organization & logistics, marketing, communication, financial, and sustainability. A diffusion of innovation framework was used to identify the barriers faced by restaurants and analyzed how food festivals are a way to overcome those barriers.
In the end, Conservation International is more specifically seeking to aid in the optimization of the use of nature’s benefits in the region. The scenario development approach that will be used for the workshop is the quadrant method, where values of the region are used to create an axis that will show four different futures in four different quadrants depending on the direction. An example is using the axis of rainfall (increase or decrease) and the prevalence of slash-and-burn farming (increase or decrease). The findings of the workshop will be used to construct new policies based off of the Peruvian National Coffee Plan to encourage new farming techniques for the coffee growers. While the conclusion of the overall workshop will not be determined during the span of the MSUS culminating experience, the conclusion from my work will revolve around having a successful workshop, with success being defined by participation and usable results; the work, such as a literature review and interviews and running the work plan up to the workshop, that allows the workshop to occur.