On February 22, 2017, GL hosted our first lunch of the spring semester and featured a talk by Marsha Dickson, Professor in UD’s Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies. She spoke about how UD is striving to create an intersection between the fashion industry and sustainability.

Dickson informed us of the many consequences of current practices of the fashion industry: environmentally, fashion today involves the use of hazardous materials, overuse of numerous resources such as water, cotton, and energy, and the production of waste; socially, fashion today involves human rights issues, health and safety concerns for laborers, and a perpetuation of an ideal beauty standard.

The Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies, however, is trying to eliminate those consequences. The Department has decided to collaborate with many big players in the fashion industry to create a policy guide for sustainability. This policy guide includes recommendations and ideas for replacing toxic chemicals, applying new tanning approaches, and repurposing fabric waste into infrastructure.

These innovative ideas are a result of considerable research performed by UD and other institutions and industries. The Department offers programs, certificates, and research opportunities for both undergrads and grads at UD.

To learn more about these programs and how fashion and sustainability are merging, please check out the whole talk here!

On October 26, 2016, GL hosted Dr. Raymond Scattone, Assistant Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at UD, for a talk on his research that examined the link between environmental justice and brownfield revitalization.

According to Scattone’s research, urban land use changes often focus on “redevelopment” as opposed to “revitalization,” which means that priority is placed on the economics of a project, rather than a combination of economics, environment, and society. The latter option also allows for more community involvement and say in what their neighborhood looks like and how it functions.

Scattone’s research focused on 10 brownfield revitalization projects across the U.S., as brownfield land use-change projects often highlight the ongoing and unequal environmental and social problems associated with conventional redevelopment because they often have a large proportion of minority or low-income populations. Scattone also provided suggestions to DNREC and the state of Delaware based on this research, including a need to increase the flow of information between developers and community members and the need to create explicit “Brownfield Opportunity Programs” in order to ensure the continued success of revitalization projects.

If you would like to view Scattone’s full talk, you can find it here!

For Earth Week this year, Green Liaisons again hosted two great speakers: UD scientist Dr. Jennifer Stewart and UD Dining Representative Ryan Boyer. The lunch took place on April 18th.

Dr. Stewart spoke about her research under the school’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment that seeks to make algae-based biofuels a viable source of renewable energy.

Algae, like corn and sugarcane, is an organic matter that can be converted into a “biofuel” capable of replacing gasoline. It is thought to be preferable to such food crop biofuels, as it offers the advantage of producing more fuel per acre and requiring no farmland for growth.

Algae could be made even more beneficial by feeding it carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from smokestack emissions. This would reduce the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere and subsequently reduce climate change.

Stewart is investigating a way to enable the algae to use this CO2 for increased growth while simultaneously absorbing the nitric oxide also found in the emissions. Nitric oxide would otherwise be harmful to algae.

She aims to breed a strain of algae that would treat the excess nitrogen as a nutrient rather than as a toxin, so that it would grow faster and consume more CO2.

The second speaker, Ryan Boyer, the District Marketing Manager for Dining Services, shared with us the latest environmental initiatives being implemented in the university’s new Caesar Rodney Dining Hall.

These initiatives fall under the umbrella of Dining Services’s new Green Thread program, which focuses on responsible sourcing (such as purchasing locally, moving to cage-free eggs, and looking out for animal welfare), efficient operations (such as increasing water conservation and improving green cleaning practices), and waste minimization (such as increasing recycling, introducing tray-less dining, and streamlining the to-go container system).

In addition, Dining has been adding other initiatives to improve their environmental footprint, like the weekly Farmers’ Market, Sustainable Fish Friday, and RecycleMania.

If you would like to learn more about either of these topics, please check out the talks here!

On Friday, March 4th, Green Liaisons hosted Dr. Willett Kempton, UD Professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy and Research Director at the Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration, for our first lunch of the semester.

He shared with us the latest news about the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology that he helped to spearhead.

V2G technology is an innovation of renewable energy research that enables electric vehicles to communicate with the electric grid in order to recycle stored battery power.

Beginning with local situation of electric vehicles (EVs), Dr. Kempton mapped out the current locations of electric vehicle charging stations in Delaware in order to demonstrate the benefit of how deliberate public planning can benefit the electric-vehicle driver and how that planning is already being instituted in this state.

He also described for us the benefits of transitioning to EVs. The environmental benefits are certainly known, but what Dr. Kempton stressed were the advantages earned by the entire grid system and by the EV driver when V2G technology is implemented, as this enables the grid to rely on a more efficient and quick-responding power source and it enables the driver to earn a profit from the energy they are sending to the grid. According to Kempton, in a theoretical situation in which the vehicle is unplugged for six hours a day, a driver may earn up to $56 a month.

Dr. Kempton also detailed the aggregator system that is responsible for bidding on the amount of energy required by the grid each day and then documenting what energy is inputted by the EVs in order to recognize when the energy limit is reached.

This work has involved collaboration between Dr. Kempton’s team in Newark and international collaborators in Denmark.

If you would like to learn more, check out Dr. Kempton’s talk here!

Photo by Evan Krape (UDaily)