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- Member of: Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management
- Member of: The Future of Food in Arizona: Memories of Food to Build a Sustainable Food System
Sustainable Foods Systems/Café @ Rio Salado College
Michael Hodgins is the Director of Sustainable Foods Systems at the Café at Rio Salado College. His experience working within the kitchen at a young age gave him exposure to seasonal and local foods. This experience shaped Michael’s passion toward food as well as his approach to food economies. The primary focus for Michael over the past 10 years has been to connect local farmers to businesses in order to create the infrastructure for a working food economy. Education of the community has also become a priority so the growth of the local economy can continue to grow. Business within the food industry is a large part of the change that Michael focuses on addressing whether it be federal subsidies that prevent smaller business from purchasing local grown food or the competition small farms face from national conglomerates. His perspectives focus on changing how we view all aspects of the food industry.
Jayson Matthews is the Director of Enduring Hunger for Valley of the Sun United Way. Growing up in poverty has given Jayson a unique perspective that focuses on less fortunate communities. His emphasis has been giving those who are most financially challenged access to fresh, local food. Coordinating support and funds to end hunger within Maricopa County has been a challenge but it has developed Jayson’s abilities to orient his goals while still being grounded in the community. One of his biggest concerns for this project is food insecurity, or the inability to have access to food. It is message that has been stigmatized that has prevented many from fighting poverty. His organization seeks to remedy this problem through a support network so that those who are struggling have a place to get food. This way these members can make better decisions for themselves and their families.
Interview with Ashley Schimke, Farm to School Specialist for Arizona Department of Education
Ashley Schimke is the Farm to School Specialist for the Arizona Department of Education. Her experience working in the Phoenix community gave her an introduction to the struggles of the less fortunate within the Valley. Working with the Arizona Department of Education Ashley had the opportunity to bridge the gap between the education system and local producers. She seeks to give students the nutrition to focus and learn as well as the education to make healthy choices. Understanding food systems become more of an experience for students, which promotes a continual interest. Her work engages the next generation in an effort to change how they understand their environment and their food.
Bob McClendon is the owner of McClendon Select Farm. He started engaging with his local food economy through farmer’s markets then later engaged with local chefs. The organic movement that Bob has been a part of has reached not only personal customers but businesses as well. Though he has such as range of customers, Bob continues to be directly involved with the farming process. The true passion that Bob has toward the local food movement drives him to inspire others with his story so that others feel more connected to their food and community.
This report is the consolidated work of an interdisciplinary course project in CEE494/598, CON598, and SOS598, Urban Infrastructure Anatomy and Sustainable Development. In Fall 2012, the course at Arizona State University used sustainability research frameworks and life-cycle assessment methods to evaluate the comprehensive benefits and costs when transit-oriented development is infilled along the proposed light rail transit line expansion. In each case, and in every variation of possible future scenarios, there were distinct life-cycle benefits from both developing in more dense urban structures and reducing automobile travel in the process.
Results from the report are superseded by our publication in Environmental Science and Technology.
This study aims to assess the effectiveness of Germany’s energy policy with respect to the carbon footprint for the entire electricity generation life cycle.
In the construction industry, the management of knowledge is becoming an increasingly important element for success. The successful management of knowledge helps general contractors to better compete which ultimately leads to more contracts and potentially greater prots. The Life Cycle Costing assessment presented here is a small step in understanding the complex decision of investing in BIM from general contractor's perspective. This assessment has identified the cost components for BIM and has allocated the cost for a typical project.
There is no ’typical’ production process for Legally Autonomous Adults (LAD). However, some very general inputs and flows can be assumed: Physical, mental, emotional, and social or cultural inputs are provided by primary caregivers throughout the process. LADs in Arizona in the 21st century are produced in small batches. Inputs tend to be provided by consistent sources according to unique values, and the production process does not actually stop cold at the factory gate, but continues on into the next phase.
Sometimes, due to externalities like substance dependence or domestic violence, the original production process either deprives the product of essential inputs or adds toxic inputs, causing damage. The damage can carry forward into the next phases, or even be so severe that the production process is terminated. When there is a risk of such damage, then the product – the child – is removed from his original production system, taken into the custody of a state-run institution (Child Protective Services), and placed in foster care.
LADs who have experienced a foster care intervention as part of their production process are less likely to have that obligatory property of Legal Autonomy, and more likely to have obligatory properties that are detrimental to society at large. Omitting other variables, they have higher rates of incarceration, homelessness, and substance abuse than LADs who have not been in out-of-home foster care. The financial and societal costs of those dependencies are imposed on the same stakeholders whose efforts and contributions make the foster care system possible.
CPS removal triggers a system expansion that expends energy and resources in an attempt to compensate for the missing inputs and to mitigate the toxic inputs, if any, that the child’s family was adding. In a material production system, it seems illogical to construct a complex system expansion which predictably results in products lacking their most important obligatory property. That contradiction was the impetus for this paper.
The goal of this life cycle analysis is to visualize that system expansion. Then, the project seeks to quantify and compare the difference between this system expansion and the generalized original process, in units of dollars per LAD. Finally, the project assesses the statistical impacts of the system expansion on LADs, and describes further impacts of these LADs on society at large.
Healthcare infection control has led to increased utilization of disposable medical devices, which has subsequently led to increased adverse environmental effects attributed to healthcare and its supply chain. In dental practice, the dental bur is a commonly used instrument that can either be reused or used once and then disposed. To evaluate the disparities in environmental impacts of disposable and reusable dental burs, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed. The comparative LCA evaluated a reusable dental bur (specifically, a 2.00mm Internal Irrigation Pilot Drill) reused 30 instances versus 30 identical burs used as disposables.
The LCA methodology was performed using framework described by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 series. Sensitivity analyses were performed with respect to ultrasonic and autoclave loading. Findings from this research showed that when the ultrasonic and autoclave are loaded optimally, reusable burs had 40% less of an environmental impact than burs used on a disposable basis. When the ultrasonic and autoclave were loaded to 66% capacity, there was an environmental breakeven point between disposable and reusable burs. Eutrophication, carcinogenic impacts, non-carcinogenic impacts, and acidification were limited when cleaning equipment (i.e., ultrasonic and autoclave) were optimally loaded. Additionally, the bur’s packaging materials contributed more negative environmental impacts than the production and use of the bur itself. Therefore, less materially-intensive packaging should be used. Specifically, the glass fiber reinforced plastic casing should be substituted for a material with a reduced environmental footprint.