"We can do this. There's absolutely no question that we can do this. But the longer we wait, the harder it gets."
~Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences
How long has Penn State waited? What are people doing there? And how is the institution building sustainability into everything it does? How quickly will it proceed?
Today we are revisiting the Penn State Sustainability Strategic Plan with two men who have been pushing sustainability-related issues for years. David Riley is the director of Penn State's Center for Sustainability, the piece of Penn State charged with fomenting an educational culture for sustainability. Steve Maruszewski is the Assistant Vice President of Penn State's Office of Physical Plant. He oversees or is involved with many of the physical operations of the university from energy to waste.
These videos give a sense of the vision, the scope of Penn State's influence, education, and research initiatives, energy and waste issue, and what staff can do to change things.
Yes. That is co-host Peter Buckland on the Green Team video talking about bottled water.
We will talk about the strategic plan. Where will it take this university and how will that influence the rest of the world? There is a sense in some circles that it might be greenwashing. We'll get at that too. If Penn State really has a vision, what is it?
Listen in today at 4 pm on The Lion 90.7 and feel free to call in with a question or brief comment: (814) 865-9577. You can find us on Facebook too and request to join our group. Feel free to leave questions here or there!
Follow Sustainable State's YouTube account here.
Showing posts with label Waste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Waste. Show all posts
27.1.12
11.9.11
Is there a better way of dealing with shit?
Shit. Crap. Poop. Dung. Feces. Defacation. Pee. Piss. Urine. Call them by their coarsest or most sanitized names, we all make it and we spend a lot of money and use a lot of water coping with it. 3,000 gallons of potable water each year goes to flushing your excrement to sewage treatment plants. The rough back of the hand calculation would mean that America flushes a few hundred BILLION gallons of water to sewage treatment plants each year. And what do we do with all of that crap?
Like most people, you probably don't know. Whatever your answer is, think about something else for a minute. Shit and piss are organic right? It's not frack water or radium 226 or bisphenol-A. It's basically digested food and microbes. So's cow manure that farmers spray on fields. And manure is in many conventional fertilizers you can purchase in home and garden shops. Well, what about basically free human manure? Humanure for short.
Enter the composting toilet. Madhu Suri Prakash explains the what, the why, and the how in this video on ecological toilets.
Talk about closing waste loops. A human growing their own garden and being not just a consumer with her/his body but also a producer in the most fundamental way. With good methods and proper conditions, this takes a considerable step toward what Wendell Berry (whom Prakash loves) calls "solving for pattern" (pdf here).
If only I wasn't renting.
Dr. Prakash is a Professor of Educational Theory and Policy at Penn State, a contributing editor at Yes! Magazine, and a frequent speaker across the United States and world on education and development having worked with the Bhutanese government on educating for happiness and the United Nations Educational Program. She is also co-host Peter Buckland's graduate adviser.
Like most people, you probably don't know. Whatever your answer is, think about something else for a minute. Shit and piss are organic right? It's not frack water or radium 226 or bisphenol-A. It's basically digested food and microbes. So's cow manure that farmers spray on fields. And manure is in many conventional fertilizers you can purchase in home and garden shops. Well, what about basically free human manure? Humanure for short.
Enter the composting toilet. Madhu Suri Prakash explains the what, the why, and the how in this video on ecological toilets.
Talk about closing waste loops. A human growing their own garden and being not just a consumer with her/his body but also a producer in the most fundamental way. With good methods and proper conditions, this takes a considerable step toward what Wendell Berry (whom Prakash loves) calls "solving for pattern" (pdf here).
If only I wasn't renting.
Dr. Prakash is a Professor of Educational Theory and Policy at Penn State, a contributing editor at Yes! Magazine, and a frequent speaker across the United States and world on education and development having worked with the Bhutanese government on educating for happiness and the United Nations Educational Program. She is also co-host Peter Buckland's graduate adviser.
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