Individual Project Finale

Reflection on Zero-Waste Brewing 

My individual project was a success in many ways, the most notable being that it made me more aware of the importance of small actions and forced me to re-think how I live. Brewing beer popped into my head after a month of bottles piled up in my new apartment and made me aware of how much waste I am responsible for everyday. Even if I did plan to recycle the bottles, research found that most beer bottling companies only utilize 12.5% recycled glass¹. Being short on cash but high in energy, I decided to brew my own!

Successes:

• 3 awesome batches of homebrewed beer!
• Went from recycling or throwing out ~45 bottles per month in my household to zero, beginning in September.
• Approximately 135 bottles saved
• Re-purposed about 75% of water required to brew  (~ 18 gallons)
• Incorporated spent grains (usually a waste product) into cookies, granola, and baked goods
• Shared bottling equipment

                                            First batch complete- Belgian Witbier in re-used bottles

Quantitative Aspects Reflection:

The project ‘s biggest quantitative success was the approximately 135 bottles saved. This not only saves glass and the energy involved in making new bottles, but also heavy transportation costs, labeling and packaging costs, and costs associated with making the purchase itself (more gas, miles etc). It also means that my roommate and I will save ~540 bottles each year that I brew, and after tasting how delicious home brew can be, I am planning on continuing for a long time, meaning even more savings in these categories in the future.

 

                 New Belgium Brewing Co. 37.6% of calculated carbon footprint due to glass bottling 

                    http://www.newbelgium.com/sustainability/stories/14-02-28/A-Snapshot-of-our-Footprint.aspx

Half of the brewing equipment (all the bottling gear) was borrowed from a friend who also brews- saving me around $60 and saving a considerable amount of excess plastic. Since each of us only need the equipment 1 day a month it makes more sense to work out a sharing program between local brewers rather than each person having a full set of equipment.

Because I began to require more bottles as I brewed consecutive batches, friends saved bottles for me and started trading me homemade food and wine for beer! Sharing and trading are at the heart of any strong community and brewing via this project has helped solidify more personal bonds and piqued considerable interest among acquaintances.

Re-used approximately 18 gallons of waste water used to clean brewing equipment to wash my dishes and clean my bathtub- now a monthly routine.

After the first batch of beer, I began to incorporate spent grains into cookies, granola, and waffles, producing almost zero waste from the process. I even use the malt containers as cookie jars!

Qualitative Aspect Reflection:

This success of this project was not only focused on quantitative components, but also on the many additional lessons learned throughout the project that corresponded with topics discussed in class. The combination of learning about the larger importance of water and energy conservation, cultivating greener, food secure communities, and waste reduction and recycling while focusing on a zero-waste project helped me to understand these concepts on both a macro and micro level. While in class we tended to focus on the wider effects of policy on communities, regions, and the world, my individual project was also teaching me how to be a conscious citizen of the earth without any policy implementation.   

Forcing myself to plan ahead to brew as sustainably as possible seeped into other aspects of my life and made me acutely aware of wasteful water use behavior and food waste in other aspects of my life. For instance, I noticed that after successfully incorporating wet grains into baked goods, almost all the ‘borderline’ food in my fridge could also be used in other forms instead of tossed into the garbage.  I also noticed that by trying to find ways to re-purpose water, that I began thinking of saving water in other aspects of my daily routine. Completing this project with the goal of zero-waste made me think more about the brewing process overall and also drew my attention to how much waste I produce that I never acknowledged, and ideas to reduce these numbers.

 A delicious way to incorporate a byproduct of the brewing process into brewing routine!

Problems

The main problem that I’ve found with trying to accomplish zero-waste brewing is the energy lost through heat during the boiling process.  I’ve found that during the winter an easy solution to re-using the heat energy given off during brewing can be used to heat my apartment temporarily.  Between the stovetop heat from extended boils and the heat from baking with the spent grains, my small apartment heats up pretty nicely for about 4 hours. Not a lot of savings but it’s a little more sustainable. Also, for my next batch I am planning to use the cold winter weather to my advantage and brew a lager. Lagers require at least 6 weeks of refrigeration (expensive and energy intensive)…or the temperature of a poor students’ apartment in an Indiana winter.

Future Impact/Statistics:

Statistics show that the average college student drinks 7.44 alcoholic beverages per week². Even if we attribute only half of that to beer (bottled or canned) that accounts for 15,475,200 beer containers/year on the IU Bloomington campus alone. If everyone brewed their own beer, the saving in glass, aluminum, energy, transportation, packaging, trash pickup etc, the saving to the environment and society would be immense! I don’t think that a huge number of college students would have the time or interest that home brewing takes, but it is fairly easy, requires very little equipment and depending on what type of ingredients you use, can be significantly less expensive than purchasing beer from the store- and that is not including the externalities mentioned above.

This project has forced me to analyze every decision in a fairly complex process and use creativity to find the most sustainable solutions to an array of different behaviors. 

1 New Belgium Brewing Co.http://www.newbelgium.com/sustainability/stories/14-02-28/A-Snapshot-of-our-Footprint.aspx.

2 Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Studies-http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394678/
3 NCES (2014). U.S. Department of Education  "Fast Facts Enrollment"

Final Course Reflection

The first day of class you said something that stuck in my head, and I think it will continue to stick with me for a long time. You said that experience is nothing without reflection. I’ve had a lot of experiences in my life, but that one stray comment made me wonder just how often I had really stopped to reflect upon those experiences, and if they would have been richer had I just paused. It’s nagged me all semester and while I don’t have an answer as to previous experiences, I do know that this class made me stop and think, and that’s a lesson that I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time in our lives.

Overall Impression

The format of the class was innovative and a welcome breath of fresh air in the rip tide of regular grad classes. It was especially refreshing after coming back from working in the real world for a couple of years and suddenly faced with the façade of student life where pride seems to come in the form of letter grades. The class format might not work for everyone, but I found it very useful and it encouraged me to study harder and reflect more deeply than exam based courses.  

Understanding of Sustainability

Prior to this class, sustainability was a term that I had heard thrown around a lot, but a concept that felt too big and expansive to properly define.  After taking this course, completing my individual project and working on the STAR community report for the City, I feel that while sustainability remains a very expansive term, it is something that I am constantly aware of now and actively striving toward in a vast array of thoughts and forms. My personal project of sustainable brewing forced me to look at sustainability from a variety of perspectives and levels that I never would have believed possible.

Course Projects

In planning my independent project, the most basic aspects of conserving, recycling and reusing came easily, while re-thinking sustainable approaches took a greater effort, more creativity and made the topic more interesting to me. A bigger picture began to form as each minor detail such as water re-use, glass recycling, cooking with spent grains, sharing communal equipment initiated an incremental lifestyle change. I started researching each topic separately, and while each topic was relatively minor on its own, each aspect emerged as something larger in the end. I noticed that drawing attention to how much water I could re-use in brewing changed my overall consumption of water, and my boyfriend’s consumption as well.   Relying on other people for equipment allowed me to make connections with new people who not only had lots of helpful advice, but also more equipment to share. Around the same time I began sharing my car with a friend and finally put my apartment on the couchsurfing website to reciprocate for all the couches I’ve bummed during my travels. Learning to cook with wet spent grains encouraged me to pay more attention to other food I was throwing out that could be re-purposed with a little creativity.  I began to see that sustainability is not just about changing policy, but our everyday behavior, and most importantly, our very way of thinking.

Course Content

Many of the articles that we read, especially those that focused on the economic perspective of carbon use, climate change and natural resources impacted me the most deeply. Those articles did not just focus on what individuals can do, but proposed that we think about the world differently. If we begin to see a world with a definitive limit, that GDP always adds and never subtracts, that it is bizarre to tax everything except limited resources, that scare resources are used to the detriment of the planet while a nearly inexhaustible labor market goes under-utilized to the detriment of people, the world begins to look different, and questions begin to surface. With questions inevitably come answers, and more questions. In cases like this, it is the questions themselves that can change the world. The little routine choices that we make everyday matter too, but for me, it is learning to question the root of the issues that made this topic and class so useful to me. While I’m sure many of the facts we’ve discussed in class will fade, the questions will not. I think that is the best type of education we can receive, the type that motivates us to learn more, to constantly seek to find answers, discuss frequently, until we change things in the process.

Thanks for everything, I really enjoyed this class and appreciate all your insight. Hope to stay in touch and please feel free to let me know if you need any help on local sustainability initiatives, I’m always happy to help out!

NPR Cities Project- Out of class Experience III

NPR producer and Franklyn Cater and former New York chief urban designer Alexandros Washburn visited IU Bloomington last week to discuss Urban Resilience and the NPR Cities Project.

                                            
                                           One reason why we need to discussion urban resilience Scott Olson/Getty Images


In order to understand and design a resilient urban community, the hosts of the evening focused on 3 central planning strategies, location, design and mobility.

1. Location: As most of us already know, its all about location, location, location, a fact reiterated by Cater and Washburn throughout the lecture.  They illustrated this point by showing communities in Staten Island, NY who lived in houses that were for all practical purposes, located in a swamp. Obviously, this creates problems when significant weather events strike, and after Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, federal money was granted to buy out some of these homes to provide a buffer from the water. They also mentioned that there are 2 strategies to location, retreat and defend.

Retreat- depending on the building structure or area, one possible way to change 'location' is to retreat vertically, that is, keep building up! If flooding is a foreseeable danger, put all water sensitive items in an upper floor.

Defend: redesign the landscape to provide natural barriers to predicted weather events. Surrounding canals with burms, or redesigning a local flood prone area into a recreational park as  in Meadowlands, NJ. The main problems with this strategy are a vast array of political, local, and stakeholder concerns that must be addressed before any project can move forward.

2. Design: Ensure that all new buildings and existing buildings (if possible) are built in a thoughtful way that incorporates resilience and protective measures. Examples of this include, building vertically, insulators, and using tall buildings as natural shading. One specific example of this was utilizing some of these techniques to prepare for a rising heat index in Arizona based on ancient desert city designs/city planning.

3. Mobility: Ensure that transportation is multi- modal, so that if a disaster strikes, people have many options. For instance, when Hurricane Sandy shut down the subway in NY, people could still utilize ferries, bikes, and walking to commute.

This topic is very important in discussing any aspect of sustainability because it pertains to our communities ability to survive and bounce back after natural disasters. Without plans such as these, most other sustainability efforts on the front of food, water, etc are minimized instantly as disasters strike, especially if fresh water sources are not adequately prepared. While trying to minimize additional carbon output into the environment is crucial, we are at a point currently that exceeds the tipping point for what the planet can absorb and we must not only concentrate on solving the root problem, but also preparing for events already in motion because of choices already made by previous generations.

Governing Sustainable Communities

Resilient Bayview Project

In Mark Roseland’s chapter on governing sustainable communities, he emphasizes the importance of participatory governance that includes the voices of all stakeholders and the necessity of community based efforts.  Much of the chapter focuses on providing advice to both citizens interested in becoming involved in sustainability efforts as well as to local governments that strive for just sustainability for all their residents.

Even after reading the chapter, many of subtle nuances of the various ideas were lost on me, as all of them focused on communicating community opinion to integrate change. However, after a little research I found the Resilient Bayview Project, a initiative centralized in the Bayview area of San Francisco that seems to illustrate almost all of Roseland’s sage advice and is succeeding in forming a resilient community via holistic local efforts.

Lashon Walker- a member of the Resilient Bayview Project

The Resilient Bayview Project is a community-led planning effort that aims to plan, develop and implement a Resilience Action Plan that will prepare the community for major environmental catastrophes (mainly earthquakes). This effort brings together neighborhood leaders, city agencies and all additional stakeholders from local families, immigrant communities, senior citizens, small businesses to local non-profits. The congregation of stakeholders meets monthly with the goal to find ways to protect the region’s most vulnerable citizens in case of emergencies by training residents on evacuation techniques, setting up support lines, distributing emergency kits, and providing additional information concerning emergency response. 

The project has been designed by the community and is staffed by community volunteers in order to protect the community. This seems to be a perfect example of Roseland’s prescription on how to involve residents to govern sustainable communities by using both visioning and implementation charrettes and consensus-based decision making. The Resilient Bayview Project also goes a step further in engaging in community sustainability and resilience by training at-risk youth to secure foundation’s of senior citizen housing, an effort paid for by grant money and serving to protect seniors, construct more durable housing, and provide at-risk youth with skills, income, and purpose, all at the same time. These are the types of plans that only active community members could innovate, communicate, and plan, because they involve a deep knowledge about what each region needs, and also the resources that they can access. Many sustainability initiatives also require trust, which can be built much quicker through community members and local organizations than by government agencies. Also, as we learned in community based social marketing, being a part of a change organization often ensures that you put forth more effort and are much more likely to strive to see the initiative succeed than if it was solely a governmental measure. 

 Dan Homsey speaking about the Neighborhood Empowerment Network from the government point of view

To leave with you with a final thought from the leader of the Resilent Bayview Project, “We aren’t going anywhere. We know that if we work together before a major catastrophe, we will be able to work together during a major catastrophe.”

What other communities that you know about have succeeded in community resilience projects such as this one?  Which of the other types of governance strategies that Roseland mentioned would work best for similar initiatives?

Sources:

1. Roseland, Mark. Toward Sustainable Communities. 2012.

2. How One California Community Prepares fot hte Worst. http://www.governing.com/news/headlines/gov-how-one-san-francisco-city-prepares-for-the-worst.html

Food Matters- Discussion on Food Issues -Out of Class Experience II

Mark Bittman is a food columnist for the NY Times and cookbook author. As part of IU's themester Eat, Drink, Think: Food from Art to Science the author journalist discussed food policy and issues in America.

TED talk with Mark Bittman from 2007- "What's wrong with what we eat?"

To begin, he stated that he believed 60-80% of supermarket food is so packed with preservatives and chemicals that it could not be defined as 'food' by dictionary terminology. He instead classified them as UFO's -'unidentified food like objects.' This made me laugh because it is so true, it has become nearly impossible to find food in the supermarket that doesn't contain unpronounceable and unheard of ingredients.

He equated this public health issue to smoking back in the 80's- many people will likely end up with diseases or die unnecessarily before laws are changed (this time in the form of diabetes and obesity rather than lung cancer).

Bittman also identified 3 changes that he believed that U.S. policy makers should undertake to solve this issue.

1. Create policy's that remove antibiotics from the food supply

2. Limit the ability of food marketers to target children- food preferences are formed infancy or early childhood so targeting children with sugary soda's, candy, cereals etc is creating problems for the future. Bittman even recommended laws preventing children from buying certain foods and drinks before 16 without an adult present. Yikes!

3. Create a national food policy- guarantee all citizens access to 'real' food, guarantee that food will not have a more negative impact on the environment than necessary. Provide comprehensive food service wages

He also left the audience with words of wisdom aimed at answering the question we all had, what can college students do to change the food system in America?

1. Divestment- speaking up and telling policy makers on campus that we do not want our food endowments coming from large food companies.

2. University food services need to be better
      - ban meat with antibiotics ( if Chipotle can do it, universities can)
      - source a significant percentage from local farms
      -compost all kitchen and food court waste

3. Make food important in your own life- be passionate and you will positively influence those around you


What do you think about his advice? Are these the  central changes that need to be made to our food policies in the US? What are some ways that other countries have dealt with similar problems?

The first thing that comes to my mind is the national soda tax that Mexico recently passed- a policy that caused a decrease of almost 10% in soda products sold, and the extra cash from the tax was earmarked to provide clean drinking water to its citizens. For more info on this project go to http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/mexico-soda-tax-sugar-obesity-health

One can of Cocoa Cola contains the equivalent of eight sugar cubes, according to its own label. Photograph: Geoff Abbott/Demotix/Corbis

To Brew or Not to Brew

So I've truly been enjoying brewing my own beer. However, I have quite a bit in reserve now and am going to take a pause for a while. While I'm taking a brief hiatus, I'm going to take the opportunity to reflect on 'zero-waste' my project actually is.

Home Brewing Process

Industrial Brewing Process

To begin, going zero-waste on an individual or household scale is pretty near impossible no matter what the subject is. The technology required is just too expensive and unnecessary for small scale projects such as this one. 

The largest 'waste' that home brewing accrues is one that I have not been able to find a solution to, other than a side effect of reduced heating  in the winter. Brewing beer requires about 2 hours of boiling a large amount of water, requiring a large amount of energy. In the fall and winter this produces the wonderful by-product of heat and allows me to give the apartment heater a break. Is this zero- waste? I would have to compare electricity bills over the long run and account for a lot of seasonal temperature variation and behavior to find if this saves money or energy. I doubt that is does, but at least the by-product is useful and achieves duel purposes!

 I don't know what the proper definition of zero- waste should be in regard to this project. Everything in the process can be re-used or recycled, such as spent grains and water as I've discussed in previous blogs, but is re-using water and heat still waste? Depends on the definition. For this project, I think I've done the best that I can do and accomplished what I aimed to achieve. Whether or not this constitutes zero-waste is up to you. Let me know what you think or ways I could improve my zero-waste goal!

The First Sip of Glorious Home-Brewed Sustainable Beer

At last!

It took a long time to get here, to the first sip of my own beer. It was quite a process, more than I had anticipated but worth it!

A Witbier..soon to be followed by Octoberfest just in time for Halloweeen!

The hardest part the last few weeks has been waiting, seeing the rows of beautifully carbonated beverages and knowing that I had to just let them sit there for 2 more weeks. The first batch- the Witbier was not made as sustainably as I would have liked, but I was unprepared, trying to do something for the very first time and more worried about getting a drinkable concoction rather than the details of saving or reusing everything. It was also difficult because I was simply unfamiliar with the process and what elements of the process could be adapted to make the process more environmentally friendly. The process has made me much more environmentally conscious and I feel much more aware on a daily basis of what kind of resources I use just to wash dishes or cook dinner.

It's also incredible that there was such a huge difference between my first batch of beer and my second. The second time I was familiar with the process and was able to plan ahead accordingly, utilize resources to their fullest potential and to achieve almost all of my personal project goals. I have not purchased any beer in 2 months, have stuck to re-using the bottles I already had accumulated, I have re-purposed spent grains to make cookies and granola for the class, re-used grey water to wash my bathtub and clean water to wash dishes and water plants. I borrowed about half of my equipment from a friend who brews and we now alternate the equipment, saving us both money and limiting the amount of plastic and other resources consumed.

The experience of brewing and sharing my new found knowledge with friends and folks has been terrific and has encouraged me to continue brewing and experimenting and keeping it as sustainable as possible. As I share bottles with friends, the trade off for free beer is to return the bottle to me...plus any addition bottles they may have lying around destined for the trash.

I have loved this project and can't wait for my next batch to be ready...Octoberfest I'm ready for you!

p.s. The Witbier is awesome and I will share with anyone who wants to try, just let me know :)

Housing and Community Development

3.5 Million Homeless, 18.9 Million Empty Houses

There seems to be a simple solution

The Housing and Community Development chapter in Roseland struck a chord with me as I recently read an article with some staggering implications of the subject of housing in America. Information gathered by the Urban Institute and Fox Business estimate that there are 18.9 million vacant homes in the USA.  The number of homeless is America is estimated at 3.5 million. See the full article here. How is this possible!? Two legitimate national concerns could be solved in one beneficial transaction. 

It is completely understandable to resist simply giving away empty homes, a great deal of people struggling to pay their own rent would likely resent the ‘freebies,’ yet something needs to be done with the houses. Houses can last for decades or even centuries if built well and continually maintained. Without maintenance, houses quickly fall into disrepair, become uninhabitable and a detriment to the community, as well as a miserable testament to squandered resources.  It seems to me that this issue should be one that politicians, economists, and activists could unite on and strive to find a solution that is beneficial to all.

 Utah Strives to Solve Homelessness

Utah has attempted to find that balance.  The state government began a program in 2005 with a goal of eradicating homelessness in the state entirely by 2015. By 2013, homelessness had declined by 78%. Their incredible goal may be attainable after all! 

The Utah project provides free housing to homeless people and also provides each person with a social worker to aid them in finding a job or to solve health/personal issues.  Once jobs are found, the renters are required to pay 30% of their income- the percentage considered to be affordable housing in the Roseland chapter.  The government created this program after estimating that the annual cost of providing emergency room care and jail time per homeless person in Utah was estimated to be $16,670. Providing free housing and social worker is around $11,000/person. 

Not only has homelessness decreased, community development has become stronger, property values have been steadily increasing, and the taxpayers are actually saving money by funding  housing rather than ER and jail time.  The trail period of the program has not been completed and the total results are yet to be determined, but it seems like no one has lost, yet many have gained- a rare Pareto efficiency for all those econ minded folks.

Homelessness in a sea of empty houses is not only a problem in America but is being faced in Spain and the U.K. as well as many other nations. However, the struggles of housing and community development is not restricted to developed countries in which we have simply continued to build and build and build even if there is no one to buy the houses. One of the most creative ways to solve the crisis of homelessness in underdeveloped countries is show in the video below.

Constructing houses from discarded plastic bottles

  

The Samarpan Foundation used discarded water bottles filled with sand to construct a schoolhouse for local children in India. The schoolhouse encouraged many other similar housing projects in rural villages in Africa, India, and central America and while made almost completely from recycled materials, are aesthetically pleasing when completed. I’m not sure how architecturally sound these structures are…it seems to be debatable, but the idea is innovative and has greatly helped the community by providing schools and housing while encouraging community development by engaging many residents in the construction project.  It also helps to re-purpose plastic bottles that would usually end up in a landfill or ocean.

 It is interesting to see how similar problems can be solved in a variety of different ways depending on context, available resources, local policies and politics, economic status, support, and creativity! I hope that there are many more innovative ways of developing more affordable and secure housing for all, and that the U.S.A can make a positive shift toward solving its own issues concerning homelessness while decreasing the number of empty houses across the country.

Sources:

Toward Sustainable Communities. Mark Roseland. 2012.

Sustainable Brewing: Spent Grains to Cookies!

Baking with Spent Grains

"Spent grain can constitute as much as 85% of a brewery's total by-product."- Kay Witkiewicz 'Sustainable Uses of Spent Grains'

Grains such as malt, wheat, and barely give beer its wonderful flavor and color. Grains are placed in a nylon bag and dunked into hot water to soak just as you would make tea. After an hour or so, the hot water is aromatic and on its way to becoming beer. But what to do with the ~2 lbs of spent grain now that sugar, nutrients, and proteins have been extracted? 

                                         

          Soaking grains in hot water extracts the flavor and color of the grains without introducing bits of grain

My first brewing session was a disorganized, nerve racking, late night adventure followed by 8am classes and long days. Wet grains quickly became moldy grains and they had to be tossed, an unfortunate waste that could have been used to make cookies, bread, cakes, waffles, granola or any number of delicious treats! As a part of zero-waste brewing I was better prepared for my second batch and was ready to bake.

                            A delicious way to incorporate a byproduct of the brewing process into brewing routine!

You guys already tasted my first attempt at baking with spent grains, and I think the cookies turned out pretty well. The 40+ cookies and granola I made disappeared within in the day so I'm taking that as a compliment. They were also super healthy and accidentally, also vegan. Next time I am psyched to try spent grain waffles!

Here are some other sustainable options that small-mid sized breweries around the country are doing with their spent grains. 

Some of my favorites are:

Full Sail Brewery: Provides farmers in the Hood Valley with 160 tons of spent grains a week, diverting 97% of wastes from the landfill.

Standing Stone Brewing Company- Ashland, OR

Feeds more than 5 dozen chickens and hopes to use the spent grains as fertilizer that will help them grow fruits and vegetables in the future

 The Brewery at Blackberry Farm Wallant, TN

Use grain to feed chickens, sheep, llamas and pigs which provide eggs, milk, wool, and meat for patrons

Alaskan Brewing Company: Designed a broiler fueled entirely by spent grain that will lead to “more than 60% reduction in fuel oil use in the first year, and, with moderate growth assumptions, this transfers to a fuel savings of nearly 1,500,000 gallons of oil over the next 10 years.”

Bottling Time!

Round 1, almost complete!

After 2.5 weeks of impatiently waiting for fermentation to finish, today is bottling day! I was able to find a friend who brews and was willing to lend me all the bottling supplies I needed, reducing the plastic bucket, tubing, bottle capper demand in the world by one. A few more awesome friends were happily lured into helping with the promise of freshly brewed beer. 

I was more prepared this time and was able to save all the water used to clean bottling equipment to do my dishes and to wash brewing equipment in preparation for the next round! The biggest bonus of the night was that the huge accumulation of glass bottles under my sink is finally in use and no longer a despairing reminder of wasteful behavior.

45 bottles fewer in the trash or recycling.

45 bottles of witbier bottled and ready to pop in 1-2 weeks!

               Ta-da! First attempt at sustainable beer-making is looking good!

Because only about 12.5% of glass is recycled, being able to re-use existing bottles is the best way to extend sustainability because it reduces demand for glass bottles and re-purposes them, thereby extending their lifecycle. Of course, the entire beer industry needs to be re-vamped to make the process more sustainable. Here are some innovative breweries who are re-thinking the process and increasing their sustainability and environmental awareness.

Steamwhistle Brewing-Canada:  Re-uses each bottle up to 45 times by producing a bottle from 30% more glass and emphasizing to customers importance of returning bottles. The logo is also painted onto the bottle to reduce the amount of trees processed to make labels, eliminates toxic ink, varnish and glue- common environmental hazards.  http://www.steamwhistle.ca/ourbeer/greenInitiatives.php

Sierra Nevada: “In 2012, 99.8% of solid waste was diverted from the landfill through creative measures that encourage reuse, recycling or composting of waste." They also developed a new compost system that uses organic waste from brewing to feed their hop and barley fields, restaurant garden, and employee garden. http://www.sierranevada.com/brewery/about-us/sustainability#/resource-recovery

P.S. For anyone who is wondering why I am not just circumventing containers all together and tapping beer directly from a keg…the price tag is HUGE! Not only is a mini keg unit going to run you at least $200 with CO2 tubes, regulator etc, it also requires a separate refrigeration unit, energy to cool it, and considerable additional equipment that is only less wasteful if you brew often and have quite a few brews all refrigerating at one time.

Innovative Transportation Planning in Buenos Aires

 Re-Designing the World's Widest Avenue! 

Avenida 9 de Julio, Buenos Aires, Argentina:Guinness Book of Record holder for world's widest avenue until 2006. http://www.inautonews.com/10-busiest-junctions-in-the-world#.VDGXWPldX_o

Buenos Aires had a major problem with traffic congestion. 3 million people, 200,000 commuters and a perpetually clogged 20 lane avenue leading to the city center. 

Citizens demanded better traffic flow and expected that the iconic 20 lane Avenida 9 de Julio would be expanded to accommodate the increase in automobile traffic. Instead, city planners focused on creating an innovative solution that addressed the root causes of traffic congestion in the area.

Video interviewing city planners about the struggles and triumphs of re-designing Avenida 9 de Julio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaBNNHLzBhI#t=119

Last week our class focused on waste reduction and determined that the most desirable outcomes presented in Mark Roseland's hierarchy of waste diagram (pg.96) were produced by rethinking and redesigning common processes, i.e. reducing waste by not creating any in the first place. I was curious to how this concept could be applied to transportation systems in some of the world's most crowded metropolises. After a little digging, I found Avenida 9 de Julio.

The proposed plan to reduce traffic congestion was met incredible amounts of opposition from all sources- citizens, businesses, and political leaders, but garnered the stubborn planners the 2014 Sustainable Transportation Award. Here’s a breakdown of how one of the world’s largest cities used innovation to create a transport system focused on accessibility while balancing maximum transport choices, cost efficiency, and environmental sensitivity utilizing many of the ideas presented in Roseland’s 'Traffic, Mobility, and Accessibility' chart (pg.130)1.  

Avenida 9 de Julio in 2014- after re-designing its famous avenue

https://www.itdp.org/2014-sustainable-transport-award-finalist-buenos-aires-argentina/

•  4 of the 20 congested vehicular lanes were set aside solely for buses- speeding up mass transit efficiency by 50% and car transport by 20%.2
•  Laws require buses to only travel on the main road, allowing over 100 blocks of side streets to be transformed into pedestrian and bike friendly spaces.
• 130km of bike lanes were added, increasing bike commuting from “almost nothing” to 12%3.
• The new efficiency of mass transit travel is predicted to shift the already 80 million bus commuters to 120 million by 20154.

After reading Roseland’s chapter on transportation planning and traffic management highlighting dynamic changes various cities are implementing to create positive change, I was admittedly a little underwhelmed after reading about Buenos Aires grand new design. I was not very impressed with the scale of innovation and viewed it as just a shift in resource usage and allocation. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that innovation does not require new inventions, but can be a change in perception or creative re-design as emphasized in Roseland’s Hierarchy of Waste diagram (pg.96).   

With the expense and time that re-designing transportation systems requires in large cities, often the best choices for major change are the simplest.  The planners of Avenida 9 de Julio did some serious re-thinking and the benefits of their design cascaded through the city, spurring a domino effect of sustainability. By changing the purpose of lanes in a highway system, traffic congestion decreased and transport efficiency increased. More people began to ride the bus because the design changes made it faster than driving a car. As buses were removed from side streets, traffic decreased and more people felt comfortable walking or biking. With the establishment of bike lanes, a shift in social norms occurred, and bikes were no longer only associated with the poorest of citizens but as a simple and healthy form of commuting.

Side streets converted into pedestrian friendly walking streets
Credit: http://www.citiscope.org/

Bike racks now populate Buenos Aires as more people are encouraged to bike
Credit: http://www.daveheidebrecht.com//

While the changes made in Buenos Aires may not seem ground breaking or extremely innovative at first glance, they garnered impressive results and are predicted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5,600 tons per year- the same results as taking 4,300 cars off the road for an entire year2.

What other innovative transportation systems have you heard about? How effective is this type of transportation innovation compared to new engineering technology and ideas presented in Toward Sustainable Communities? Do you think that this type of change possible in other mega- cities that have more elaborate infrastructure (over and under passes etc)?

1. Toward Sustainable Communities. Mark Roseland. 2012.
2. The Institute of Transportation and Development Policy: https://www.itdp.org/2014-sustainable-   transport- award- finalist-buenos-aires-argentina/
3. Cityscope.org: http://www.citiscope.org/story/2014/how-buenos-aires-unclogged-its-most-iconic-street
4. Sustainable Transport Award 2014 Winner: Buenos Aires Interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaBNNHLzBhI#t=119

3.       

Big Red Eats Green

Big Red Eats Green is a unique campus fair that brings together local restaurants and community organizations working toward sustainability in order to educate students and to spread awareness of opportunities to get involved in the campus and community. 

I enjoyed chatting with a number of representatives from various community organizations such as the Bloomington Community Orchard, Hoosier Hills Food Bank, Sprouts and many others. The students present seemed happy and interested in gathering information from the organizations. I was a little confused as a visitor as to what qualified each of the represented restaurants to be there. Was the criteria just that they were local, or were the participants limited to those that used sustainable practices as well? I looked for signage but came up dry. 

The most interesting part of the fair for me was a conversation I had with a member of an organization that focuses on increasing the amount of locally grown food available through RPS and in the campus food halls. He mentioned that though IU claims that ~30% of its food procurement is locally sourced, the majority of these 'locally sourced' items are not actually food product, but cardboard packaging. My 'facts' are not really facts, and just came from casual conversation with an organization member but I would be curious to know what the true facts are. He had worked within the system for years trying to convince IU to modify its food contracting so he seemed pretty reliable.

He also mentioned that the number one item sold on campus is bottled water. A little alarming when all of campus is thoroughly inundated with drinking fountains. Imagine how many of those purchased bottles end up in the trash rather than the recycling, or as we discussed in class, part of the 1,500 lbs of litter picked up every day on the IU campus.

Sustainable Brewing..a little too hectic for the first go

I was super excited to start my first home brew. I  gleefully skipped across the street to Butler Winery- the go-to brewing supply shop in Bloomington and bombarded the lovely and knowledgeable staff with billions of questions.  I left with the basic brewing equipment and supplies needed to make a witbier (a German style wheat beer). I assembled all the materials on my table and started reading the instructions.

The more I read the more unsure I became. I realized quickly that it would be a time consuming process and didn't have time to start the brew immediately.  The same pattern continued to emerge throughout the rest of the weekend. Finally I got a surge of energy Monday night and went for it!

This turned out to be a terrible decision. I had only calculated the times given in the instruction book and hadn't considered how long the boiling and cooling processes between steps for 2.5 gallons of liquid would take.

Finished around 2am and fell into bed exhausted, but excited that the brewing process was under way. By morning the water in the air lock was bubbling as CO2 released and fermentation was under way!

For an extra aspect of my sustainable brewing project (other than saving bottles, transport, packaging costs etc) I had planned on baking with the spent grains left over from the brewing process. Unfortunately, I was slammed this week and never got around to it and had to thrown the grain out. Maybe complete sustainable brewing was a little too hectic for my first attempt at mastering a new skill.

Goal for the next batch: Start early, plan accordingly, and prepare to bake the spent grains immediately (and to save energy by baking multiple items at the same time.)

Cultivating Food-Secure Communities

Food Insecurity

 

Food security (or insecurity), is far from a new phenomenon. No period in human history has met the standards of the 1996 FAO food security definition “when all people, at all times, have physical, social and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Though history does not show it, the FAO definition is not as idealistic as it may seem. In fact, based upon global food production statistics there is enough food to supply each of the earth's 7 billion patrons to the critical FAO standard 1. The previously unaccomplished ideal is technically attainable. 

When this data is presented in conjunction with global, or even US maps of food insecurity it is difficult to believe this conclusion.  Economic and social injustice are critical contributors to the issue of food security, as food products tend to accumulate into wasted surplus in some regions while others starve. This hurdle to food security is one of the most serious and yet easily traceable problems in sustainability today.

So where is the extra food?

Statistics show that 20-50% of food products we purchase end up in the trash. The chart below breaks down some of the harsh realities of food waste in the US, including that as a country more than 34 million tons of food waste are generated each year, about 650 lbs/person.

 

The issues of food waste and food insecurity are inextricably linked and will likely continue to have a heavy influence on each other.  As communities move toward optimizing food security through self-sufficiency and sovereignty through an emphasis on locally grow or self-grown produce, food waste will likely decrease. As individuals put sweat, blood, and tears into growing their own food or watching it grow in a community space,  the 20-25% of groceries thrown out would likely decrease.When I started gardening I developed a huge appreciation for fresh produce and all of the effort that it takes both the earth and myself to grow.

The 100- Mile Diet. Is it feasible?
 Studies published in Food Miles 2008, determined that most fresh produce in the US usually travels 1,500 miles from where it was grown to where it will be consumed. For many of the other products we are reliant on, the distances are even further. During my last visit to Kroger, I paid attention to where my purchases were coming from and the result was shocking. The grapes I purchase are from Chile, avocados from Mexico, nectarines from California, coffee from Colombia, and chocolate made from coco beans harvested from tropical areas far from Indiana. And that was only a minor shopping trip since I grow most of my own produce.

Consuming only food products that are produced from locally grown (or raised) ingredients is apparently extremely limiting. Strengthening food systems is not just about starting more local gardens and switching to buying local produce like tomatoes, beans, corn, and peppers, but changing diets in a significant way. 

The following data is an excerpt from a large scale study called “Food, Fuel, and Freeways,” which recorded average distances from farms to grocery stores and local farmers markets in Chicago.

Terminal Market vs. Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Apples: 1,555 miles vs. 105 miles

Tomatoes: 1,369 miles vs. 117 miles

Grapes: 2,143 miles vs. 151 miles

Beans: 766 miles vs. 101 miles

Peaches: 1,674 miles vs. 184 miles

Winter Squash: 781 miles vs. 98 miles

Greens: 889 miles vs. 99 miles

Lettuce: 2,055 miles vs. 102 miles

The most bizarre part is that I buy my grapes from Chile, yet I work at a local vineyard. Granted, I work with wine grapes rather than table grapes, but the idea that my produce has to travel over 2,000 miles when the vineyard is only 15 miles away is absurd and speaks vastly about the importance of established habits.

Food for thought

This got me thinking about the consumer perspective discussed in Fostering  Sustainable  Behavior:  Community  Based  Social  Media. If you are trying to convince people to buy local to foster food security, where would you put the cut-off for ‘local’ foods?  What would be a better step for encouraging positive community behavior, purchasing food products made entirely from local ingredients or just locally assembled ingredients? Would it be harder to encourage someone to eat less red meat or give up tropical treats like chocolate and coffee? Is either possible without sacrificing our own personal “dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”?

1. World Food Programme. http://www.wfp.org/hunger/faqs