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TE R PS POW E R A SUSTA I N A B L E ,
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OUR LOW CARBON UNIVERSITY 2 / COMPOST: THE NEXT BIN THING 14 / HEALTHY FOOD, HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT 16 Fall 2018
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Meeting the Challenge of Sustainability
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he University of Maryland continues to make significant progress toward our ultimate goal of a carbon-neutral campus by 2050. As the human health and financial impacts of climate change mount, it becomes ever more important that we succeed in reaching this goal. By tightening our policies and through thoughtful individual action, we are getting very close to reaching the next major target—cutting greenhouse emissions in half by 2020, compared to 2005. Already our reductions exceed 40 percent. Under our Climate Action Plan 2.0, put in place last year, we will make this target—even with the continued growth of campus. New elements of the plan include the Carbon Neutral Air Travel Initiative. It accounts for the greenhouse gas emissions connected to university air travel. Its impact is the same as all 10,000 homes in College Park and University Park converting to renewable energy. Other strategies include getting imported electrical energy solely from renewable sources, the addition of 7,000 solar panels to campus, planting more trees, capturing carbon from landfills, encouraging hundreds of individuals to use the Purple Line to travel to and from campus by 2025, and making sure that all new buildings have a carbon-neutral footprint. Because climate change is a worldwide concern requiring cooperative action, the university has established important new relationships and taken a leadership role. After the United States exited the Paris Climate Agreement last year, the university signed on to the “We Are Still In” coalition statement, as did some 2,000 leaders from across the
country. We joined “America’s Pledge,” along with other private- and public-sector leaders, to keep our nation on track to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement. Along with other top research universities, we joined the University Climate Change Coalition to help local, state and county leaders and citizens work together to meet these goals. We are the research lead on that effort. Meanwhile, individuals on campus are doing the hard work of advancing climate change action. The university is a leader in climate change research— in atmospheric and related sciences, technology for renewable energy, public health impacts and public policy research on how to implement changes from the bottom up and top down. Faculty, staff and students have embraced a campus culture of sustainability, modifying their personal activities. Students have made sustainability studies our most popular minor for the past five years. This is how we will make our 2020, 2025 and 2050 goals. I commend our students, faculty, staff and alumni for their commitment to sustainability. Together, our research, innovation, learning and activism will make this a fully sustainable campus. Go Terps! Sincerely,
Wallace D. Loh President
umd Office of Sustainability Director Scott Lupin Sustainability Manager Mark Stewart Senior Project Manager Sally DeLeon Communications Manager
Andrew Muir Sustainability Associates Samantha Bennett, Lee-Ellen Myles, Emery Wolf Student Interns Tingwei Hsu, Sanchali Singh, Samantha Walker Office of Strategic Communications Executive Director Margaret Hall University Editor Lauren Brown University Photographer John T. Consoli ’86
Design & Illustration Jason Keisling, Matt Laumann Photography Assistant Gail Rupert M.L.S. ’10 Web sustainability.umd.edu Email sustainability@umd.edu Social @SustainableUMD umd
Contents
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Terps Power a Sustainable, Solar Future
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Compost: The Next Bin Thing
IMPACT
2 Our Low-Carbon University 4C omputing the Costs of Digital Data on Campus 4U MD Sustainability Around the World 5W elcome to the McKeldin Jungle
ACTION
6 Green Life Is the Good Life 7 Let It Bee at UMD 8S ustainability Pioneer at Nat Geo 9B lending Diversity, Sustainability
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Healthy Food, Healthy Environment
RESEARCH
18 L earning About Our Planet—From Space 19 A quaponics: The Future of Sustainable Farming
LEAD
20 W hat Makes Maryland a Leader in Sustainability
IMPAC T
Our Low-Carbon University By 2020, umd will cut its net greenhouse gas (or carbon) emissions in half. Here’s a glimpse of our not-too-distant future.
The coming Purple Line light-rail will introduce a new commuting option.
100% of air travel emissions are offset with carbon management measures like local tree plantings and projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from regional landfills.
Retrofits to existing buildings will make campus 20% more energy-efficient by 2020.
The Combined Heat and Power Plant will be re-engineered to make the campus district energy system more efficient.
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Two new residence halls will add 900 beds to campus by 2021, reducing the number of commuter students.
100% of purchased electricity will be generated by renewable energy sources by 2020.
Increased use of electric vehicles, carpools and vanpools will reduce commuting emissions. At least 20% of Dining Services’ food purchases will come from sustainable sources and local farms.
All new buildings are carbon-neutral.
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IMPAC T
Computing the Costs of Digital Data on Campus
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lthough the virtual world can’t operate without the data centers that house oceans of internet information, these giant computerized hubs create problems in the real world. They consume 3 percent of the globe’s electrical power and pump as much carbon into the air as all airlines combined, contributing to climate change. But because they’re also crucial to higher education, umd faculty members Michael Ohadi and Farah Singer and graduate students in mechanical engineering are working closely with President Wallace D. Loh’s Energy Initiatives Implementation Task Force and IT facility managers around campus to assess energy needs and conservation opportunities in campus data centers and server rooms. Campus IT system owners can save energy by co-locating servers in data centers with efficient cooling systems, consolidating physical data storage onto fewer machines through a process known as virtualization, and keeping server rooms free of objects that block cool air flow.
UMD Sustainability Around the World
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or over a decade, Terps have been traveling the world to help the environment. From learning about human rights issues and environmental justice in Peru to cruising the Bahamas to investigate the impacts of ecotourism, Terps are expanding their understanding of sustainability through a global lens. Students have visited cities from Prague to Beijing to see how sustainable infrastructure positively impacts urban
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developments and those who live there. They’ve explored the Amazon rainforest in Brazil to learn how deforestation, road-building and urbanization affect indigenous villages. Terps helped alleviate hunger in Liberia by teaching locals healthy farming practices. Through programs like these, the University of Maryland provides its students with numerous ways to get involved and help people around the planet leave smaller footprints.
Welcome to the McKeldin Jungle
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ew visitors to McKeldin Library might be surprised to find an entire first-floor wall has been disguised as a garden. The University of Maryland in March 2018 installed the campus’s first indoor biowall, a vertical surface covered in live plants, near the library’s high-traffic main entrance. The “living wall,” designed by students in the Department of Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture, blooms with environmental and ambiance benefits: Indoor plants filter and absorb some common contaminants in the air; save energy related to heating, cooling and ventilation; and provide a natural quieting effect— especially beneficial in a library. Made up of about 1,000 plants and eight plant varieties, the 21-by-8-foot wall doesn’t need soil, just water, nutrients and light. Furbish, the Balti-
more-based company that installed the wall, also maintains it. “A biowall in McKeldin may seem a bit surprising,” says Gary White, associate dean for public services in University Libraries. “But it aligns very clearly with our goal to provide spaces that inspire creativity and foster well-being.” The wall was made possible by a $30,000 grant from the Sustainability Fund and a generous donation from Patricia Steele, former dean of libraries, and her husband, Charles. Journalism major Mel Madarang loves that the library installed a biowall. “It makes the environment inside more lively,” she says. “It’s really amazing that the plants don’t need soil.”
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Green Life Is the Good Life
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tudents at Maryland can do more than expand their horizons. They can shrink their environmental footprint. The Office of Sustainability, in partnership with the Department of Resident Life and the Department of Fraternity and Sorority Life, launched the Green Terp and Green Chapter programs to increase sustainable behaviors among students. The Green Terp program asks students to adopt 10 “green” habits that can be easily integrated into everyday life at no cost, such as carrying a reusable water bottle, using biodegradable cleaning products and washing laundry in cold water. Students can become certified as “Green Terps” through the program, which is designed to be accessible to anyone on campus regardless of background, living situation or knowledge of sustainability. “The Green Terp program brings sustainability concepts directly to students and makes them really digestible,” says Lee-Ellen Myles, sustainability associate for green housing programs. “It gives anyone the opportunity to be involved in something that is more important than ever on campus and in our community.” Bryan Selby, a resident assistant in Oakland Hall, encouraged students to participate. “Sustainability is often looked at as an inconvenient way of living,” he says. “This is changing the narrative: You can
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be sustainable as a college student and not change that much about your lifestyle.” Members of fraternities and sororities can participate through the Green Chapter program by committing to sustainability as individuals and taking chapter-wide environmental action. To earn certification, 30 percent of the chapter’s membership must be certified Green Terps, the chapter must have an elected sustainability chair, and complete at least three environmental projects per year. “I have seen a difference in my chapter after joining the Green Chapter program,” says Paola Santos, president and sustainability chair of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority. “They think about sustainability now even without my influence. They have become very conscious.” The Green Terp and Green Chapter programs became realities thanks to support from the Sustainability Fund. An initial grant allowed the programs to pilot in 13 residence halls and eight Greek chapters during the 2017–18 academic year, bringing sustainability knowledge and skills to over 1,500 students. A second Sustainability Fund grant expanded both programs across campus. “Our hope is that Green Terps take sustainability with them after graduation in order to become more conscientious citizens,” says Myles. “Being sustainable is part of what it means to be a Terp, and through these initiatives, individuals are seeing how their small actions can make big changes.”
Let It Bee at UMD
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f you like to eat, bees are your friends. The crops they pollinate account for 30 percent of Americans’ diets, and have an economic value of more than $20 billion. Yet the busy, buzzing insects are threatened by factors including pesticides and parasites. The science behind preserving pollinators is a major focus of the University of Maryland, where the Department of Entomology, the vanEngelsdrop Bee Lab and numerous staff, faculty and student members are all busy working on solutions, including building natural habitats on our campus and in the state of Maryland. And don’t forget the student Beekeeping Club, a small but important component in the university’s commitment to sustainability. Led by President Noah Zingler and Vice President Ian Howard, the club promotes beekeeping and bee conservation by spreading awareness and engaging the local community. Club members attend a variety of campus events where they talk to students about the importance of bees and how they can help preserve them. The Beekeeping Club raises money by selling beeswax and honey that members collect from their seven hives located by Campus Creek near the Xfinity Center. It also hosts soap-making and DIY lip balm workshops open to all university community members.
“We specialize in taking in people who have never seen or been inside honey bee colonies before,” Howard says. “We introduce them to our hives, and ultimately show them the wonderful things that our bees can produce for us.” Due to his passions for bees and educating others, Howard decided to revitalize the club by taking on the role of president in 2016. One of his first projects was a “wax rendering,” harvesting the wax from old beehives to use for products. “The hives had fallen into serious disrepair,” Howard says. “Many of the colonies had moved on to other places on campus and we were left with big honeycombs.” They had to start from scratch, melting down the remaining combs in order to create new wax, a sticky and grimy process to start creating the honey and lip balms. Club members have varying academic backgrounds and interests ranging from engineering to theater. “We truly have a multitude of different people here,” Howard says. “Many of us aren’t even environmental science majors.” The Beekeeping Club, Howard says, “teaches members how these small organisms can come together to make something absolutely amazing… and it’s a really good excuse to get outside on the weekends.”
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AC TIO N HA N S W EG N ER ’70
Sustainability Pioneer at Nat Geo
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hile National Geographic magazine is renowned for its respect of world cultures and ecosystems, Hans Wegner ’70 spent his career ensuring that the company’s operations were also gentle on the planet. Under Wegner, who retired in 2014 as the National Geographic Society’s first chief sustainability officer, the magazine was the first to achieve carbon neutrality at its building, the first to take a carbon footprint of all its products, and the first to join the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, ensuring responsible management of forests and actively promoting reforestation. Wegner says once he created a sustainability initiative, getting his colleagues onboard was easy. “Everyone feels badly about environmental deg-
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radation and climate change, and they want to be a part of the solution. I showed them how we could do it, and they felt good about it.” Originally from the countryside of Paraguay, Wegner says, “I’ve always been an environmentalist. Where I grew up, it was beautiful and undisturbed.” When he was a teenager, he and his family immigrated to the United States. Wegner says he noticed a big difference in how the environment was treated. “I became increasingly aware of the fact that people were living unsustainably, and so my inclination was simply to say, ‘What can I do to make a difference?’” He started as a photographic lab worker at the National Geographic Society in 1973, eventually working his way up to vice president of production services. In this capacity, Wegner saw his opportunity. He oversaw magazine printing and production, and took the initiative to mandate more sustainable practices by the Society’s suppliers.
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“I was very concerned about making sure that our suppliers, printers and paper manufacturers were as efficiently run as they could be—that any airborne or waterborne emissions and the disposal of toxins would have to be managed responsibly,” he says. “I just made it my business to talk to people and say: ‘You can’t do business with National Geographic unless you use the best practices available.’” National Geographic published its first comprehensive issue about climate change in 2004, sharing jarring evidence about the rising amount of carbon in the atmosphere and how that correlates to climate change and destructive changes for ecosystems and human society. Wegner says it sparked a personal resolution to do even more. “I was frustrated by the fact that people were doing this harm to the planet but we weren’t behaving differently,” he says. “At National Geographic, we were content that we’d done our job just because we published this issue about climate change. But really our job had just begun and we needed to act.” Wegner took his goal of reducing the impact that National Geographic operations had on climate change and formed an employee committee, which he led until his retirement. “We needed to know the size of the problem that we were creating and we needed to take ownership of it,” he says. Wegner says calculating the company’s carbon footprint helped to reveal the company’s progress in decreasing emissions. “People find it empowering to have this kind of a tool. Now we can see the impact we have and how much of this decline we can contribute to actions we’ve taken.” Wegner spent 41 years at National Geographic working to incorporate the best environmental practices into the company, and he hopes his pioneering work in company’s operations inspires others. “I see a lot of businesses waiting for government guidance, and I see very few businesses taking control of what they do and trying to make a difference,” he says. “Businesses and workers need to look in the mirror and say, ‘What is it that I can do?’”
Blending Diversity, Sustainability
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ochelle Samuel ’15 stood among the first Maryland graduates to earn a minor in sustainability studies—even though five years earlier she’d never heard the term “sustainability.” Today, she melds her passions for environmental stewardship and diversity as a process sustainability engineer for the global manufacturing firm Saint-Gobain, where she supports over 110 manufacturing sites in North America to ensure sustainability goals are being met. She initiated a Green Committee that’s focused on increasing employee compost efforts in company buildings. She also co-founded the company’s first multicultural employee resource group. The group, Leading Efforts for Ancestral Diversity (lead), strives to build cultural awareness about the different ethnicities, particularly minority ethnicities, with which Saint-Gobain’s U.S. employees identify. “Diversity is in the definition of sustainability,” she says. “There is so much data that says you need to have a diverse team to solve a problem, and sustainability is a huge problem. In that way, diversity is very relevant to sustainability because it’s going to take a major culture change; we need to live our lives differently.” Samuel was introduced to sustainability when she took a mandatory engineering class and the professor was doing research on biofuels. “I had never heard about biofuels before. It was pretty cool: He was using E. coli to express methane and create energy.” She was inspired to change her major from chemical and biomolecular engineering to civil and environmental engineering. “That was the first time I got exposed to energy and the environment and what the relationship between the two were. I became really interested in it. I thought, ‘Why doesn’t everybody care about this?’” Samuel had to take a fifth year to complete her bachelor’s degree with the sustainability minor, but says it was worth it. “When I first started taking sustainability classes, I remember how surprised I was at the amount of literature and data that supported everything,” she says. “I’m an engineer so I really care about data and was impressed by how much there is. Sustainability is something I can justify as I go throughout my work.”
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TERPS P OWER A SUSTAIN ABL E,
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SOLAR’S PROMISE OF LIMITLESS, CLEAN POWER IS THE CORNERSTONE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND’S WORK TO BUILD A CARBON-NEUTRAL WORLD.
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UMD’S SOLAR DECATHLON “HOME RUN” he house of the future could help save the planet—and offer new options for adaptable, self-sustaining homes. That’s what University of Maryland students majoring in architecture, engineering, agriculture and more designed and built to compete at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2017 Solar Decathlon last October in Denver. umd came in second, just behind a team from Switzerland, impressing the judges particularly in the innovation category while adding to the university’s history of strong finishes in the competition: A Maryland team won in 2011 and placed second in 2007. Paige Andros, a mechanical engineering student, served as a student project manager. “When University President
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Wallace D. Loh visited our team, he asked us, ‘How many of you would say this is the most impactful educational experience you’ve had at the University of Maryland?’ Every one of us raised our hands.” The team of more than 400 students worked with the Nanticoke Indian Tribe to incorporate traditional principles of reducing environmental impact and waste while designing and building reACT (Resilient Adapted Climate Technology), an affordable 940-square-foot house that produces more solar power than it uses and conserves every drop of water used. The home was based on a modular system customizable for each occupant’s unique needs and wants, while consistently providing net-zero energy use and sustainability in any climate. It included a composting toilet, water filtration system, hydroponic garden, moveable living walls covered in plants, and a GreenCourt, a combination of a greenhouse and a courtyard, that can harvest heat energy. It even featured a solar
attic that uses the sun to heat water, dry clothes and cook food. The team tested the house by simulating everyday tasks like cooking, doing laundry and washing dishes to assess its energy efficiency and livability. “People went crazy for the solar dryers,” says Andros. The victory over 13 other collegiate teams didn’t come easily: The project, from conception through construction, took nearly two years to reach fruition. “We watched it develop from a line on a piece of paper to a real thing,” says Alla Elmahadi, a graduate student in architecture and real estate development and a construction manager for the project. Now, the reACT team is moving forward from prototype to manufacture. The hydroponic system has been installed in McKeldin Library’s Learning Commons for further research and development of a remote sensing system. Matt Lagomarsino ’18 received a Sustainability Fund mini-grant to perform the research under Associate Professors Hooman Koliji (architecture) and Dave Tilley (plant sciences) and Patricia Cossard of University Libraries. Under the direction of Professor Raymond Adomaitis (chemical and systems engineering), the Honors College Gemstone team purify has installed a water filtration system in a campus lab to continue the development to potable standards.
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PAR K I N G POWER E D BY THE SUN
he top levels of parking garages used to be the last resort—a place where your car heated up to thigh-scalding levels while you worked. But since Fall 2017, the Regents Drive, Terrapin Trail and Mowatt Lane parking garages have been topped by solar canopies, which provide clean energy to run the university, besides shielding the cars parked beneath. More than 7,000 solar panels generate over two megawatts of electricity. That’s enough to light up more than 600 houses, according to the Solar Industries Association, and represents serious progress in achieving the President’s Energy Initiatives goals in the umd Climate Action Plan. The initiative calls on umd to integrate clean, renewable energy use into campus operations, reduce electricity use 20 percent by 2020 and ensure new construction and purchased electricity don’t add more carbon to the earth’s warming atmosphere.
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ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
117Million 12Million 5,900
Hours of Light Generated
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Pounds of Carbon Offset
Trees Saved
A . James Clark School of Engineering’s Commitment to Creating a Renewable Future SOLAR ARRAY AT A.V. WILLIAMS
One of the first Sustainability Fund projects (2011), this solar array is used for educational and research purposes. MARYLAND ENERGY INNOVATION INSTITUTE (MEII)
Launched in 2017 by Gov. Larry Hogan and the Maryland General Assembly and housed at UMD, it features more than 100 university faculty involved in clean energy technologies. COMPACT AND LOW-COST MICROINVERTERS FOR RESIDENTIAL SYSTEMS
To make the new solar canopies a reality, the Department of Engineering & Energy in Facilities Management secured a $250,000 grant from the Maryland Energy Administration and matched funds, and worked closely with the Department of Transportation Services, manager of the garages, to coordinate the construction of the canopies. Most of the work was done by wgl Energy Systems, owner and operator of the solar project. “Our renewable goals set the vision for our university to achieve aggressive climate standards and help strengthen support for new energy projects not only at our institution but also in our region,” says MaryAnn Ibeziako, director, engineering and energy. Over the term of the power purchase agreement, the energy produced by the canopies will combine with the energy generated by solar panels at umd’s Severn Building and Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research in Rockville, Md. The result will yield 3,941,000 kilowatt hours of renewable energy annually. “Just the notion of driving up this ramp to the rooftop of a garage and seeing that there is an energy generation facility here—that is absolutely incredible,” University President Wallace D. Loh said at the dedication event. “That is what innovation is all about.”
Associate Professor Alireza Khaligh (electrical and computer engineering) and Professor Patrick McCluskey (mechanical engineering) are collaborating on a $2.37 million, three-year project to develop a new technology for residential solar systems that could cut the cost of solar energy in half by 2030. SUSTAINABLE ENERGY IN A SMALL SPACE
Professor Chunsheng Wang (chemical and biomolecular engineering) led a team developing a denser lithium-ion battery, a critical component for widespread use of sustainable energy, like wind and solar. SOLAR-POWERED HELICOPTER
The UMD Gamera Team set out to harness the sun’s energy to power a human helicopter flight, achieving two successful unofficial flights hovering over one foot above ground and lasting nine seconds.
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COMPOST THE NEXT BIN THING 14
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an expansion of composting across campus is creating a treasure of natural fertilizer while reducing food waste. The Office of Solid Waste and Recycling in Facilities Management has placed composting bins in 37 locations around campus, including McKeldin Library, the Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center and Maryland Stadium. In 2011, they were available only in the Stamp Food Court and dining halls. It’s a dramatic step toward reducing the amount of waste the university sends to landfills, says Bill Guididas, assistant director in Building and Landscape Maintenance. Over 30 percent of the waste generated on campus is compostable and could be collected, processed and reused as fertilizer. A Sustainability Fund grant approved in 2015 by students bolstered the infrastructure, and students have continued to push for more campus composting while playing an integral part in education and outreach about its benefits.
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Dining Services serves vegetables at dining halls
“Composting is such an easy way for students, staff and faculty to make a huge difference when it comes to reducing waste,” says Williem Klajbor ’18, who majored in environmental science policy and economics. “It has been incredible to see umd’s composting program grow during my time in College Park.” The expansion of compost processing in Prince George’s County benefits the university’s effort: In spring 2018, the county expanded the capacity of its composting facility to 57,000 tons per year, making it the largest on the East Coast. “Our facility is playing a role in the transformation from a stream of waste to a stream of sustainability,” says Adam Ortiz, director of the Prince George’s County Department of the Environment. “With the university and other partners, together we are showing the nation what the future of environmental stewardship should be.” The facility turns food scraps, yard waste and other organic material into fertilizer, which the county sells back to residents. One customer is Terp Farm, located at a university research facility in Upper Marlboro. At the farm, Dining Services works with the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources to grow vegetables and herbs that are served at campus dining halls and on the Green Tidings food truck.
Terps toss food scraps
BRINGING WASTE FULL CIRCLE 4
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Terp Farm uses the compost to grow vegetables
Prince George’s County composts the scraps
Composting is a key element in the Drive to Zero Waste, a partnership with Maryland Athletics since 2014. It encourages Terps fans to properly sort waste, including recycling and composting, in the Maryland Stadium concourse. Most of the paper products used at concession stands have been replaced by compostable paper products, including beverage containers and utensils. As a result, 73 percent of the waste generated at the football home games in 2017 was recycled or composted. Residence halls are the next frontier in campus composting. A pilot program that began in 2016 with composting in two halls has expanded to 14. “The increasing volume of compostable material that we’re diverting from landfills is a significant factor in our waste reduction effort and an opportunity for our community to see firsthand how we can make a positive impact,” says Guididas. “Eventually, the collection of compost could become as commonplace as recycling bottles, cans and paper.”
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Healthy
Healthy Environment ining Services has expanded its menu of eco-friendly actions in hopes of providing students with a more sustainably satisfying experience. The Anytime Dining Program launched in Fall 2016 gives residents on meal plans unlimited access to the three dining halls—they can enter as often and eat as much there as they like on reusable dishes (and no single-use, disposable products). Dining Services administrators streamlined service to reduce students’ time in line, and chefs updated menus to emphasize fresh produce, whole grains and legumes, vegan and vegetarian meals, and local, sustainable ingredients. Reminders posted in the dining halls encourage Terps to think about how much food they are putting on their plate: “Take less, waste less,” “Leave small FOODprints” and “Try a little, enjoy a lot.”
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Students are now eating healthier and learning important lessons about portion control and locally sourced food while they help reduce food waste and eliminate disposable containers sent to the landfill. “We are excited about the improvements we see in our program with the launch of Anytime Dining,” says Colleen Wright Riva, director of Dining Services. “The changes we made to our system and the structure of the resident dining plans have increased student satisfaction, decreased food insecurity and shrunk our environmental footprint all at the same time.” Perhaps the greatest sustainability win of the new program has been the elimination of disposable products: 6.3 million single-use items have been eliminated from the campus waste stream annually. Compost collection increased 48 percent
as all food waste remained in the dining halls, rather than being carried across campus to residence halls and academic buildings. The process was simplified by the purchase of a new dish conveyor belt, funded in part by a grant from the Sustainability Fund. These changes were only the beginning. Dining Services has turned its facilities into living-learning laboratories for students. Student projects examine all facets of the operation from purchasing to setup, consumer expectation and customer service. Some students conduct waste audits to assess what food and other items are most and least discarded, while others develop the next Terp Farm product, like the Terp Farm Flower csa. Students then present their findings and spur discussion at Dining Services’ Sustainable Food Symposium, held at the end of each semester. As a result of the dining transformations and integration of academics and research into operations, umd was accepted into the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative in June 2018, joining Stanford University, the Culinary Institute of America and 50 other leading universities.
27%
Percentage of sustainable and local food Dining Services purchases, including vegetables from Terp Farm.
10,000 Increase in pounds of leftover food collected by the student-run Food Recovery Network thanks to the Anytime Dining program.
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Tons of organic waste composted and recycled by Dining Services last year.
Menus of Change contains 24 “Principles of Healthy, Sustainable Menus,” one of which is to serve less red meat. While red meat consumption in umd dining halls has dropped 28 percent in the past two years, Dining Services officials say the program provides a new opportunity to explore non-traditional menu items. “We are so excited to work together with experts from across many disciplines and industries to advance healthy, delicious and sustainable food through Menus of Change,” says Allison Tjaden, assistant director of new initiatives. “It’s thrilling to put these principles into practice and, with the help of our students, lead the way for a more healthful and eco-friendly food system on campus and across the country.”
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R E SEARC H
Learning About Our Planet—From Space
“We’re compiling an accurate description of the destruction of the Earth.” MATT HANSEN
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ritical data on global trends about the most pressing issues on the earth’s surface, from forest loss to freshwater patterns, are coming out of the University of Maryland. Yet that information is coming from above. Since 2013, Matt Hansen, a professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences and co-director of the university’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (glad) lab, has used satellite data provided by nasa and the U.S. Geological Survey to construct high-resolution global maps of forest extent, loss and gain. Hansen and his team also work on site with 24 countries, from Bangladesh to Brazil, to educate citizens on what is happening to their forestland and train them to build and interpret their own maps. “We’re compiling an accurate description of the destruction of the Earth,” Hansen says. “We need to know, what is the rate of our rainforest loss? What is the rate of our urbanization? The glad system competes globally with some of the largest systems in the world on capacity for high-performance data storage. “Professor Hansen and his colleagues have been doing this work for nearly a decade and have built a system for monitoring the globe that has made Maryland a world leader in this field,” says Chris Justice, chair of the Department of Geographical Sciences. Satellite observation has also enabled an assessment of changes in freshwater availability
at the global scale, something previously limited by a lack of information or restrictive data-access policies. A nasa-led research team that included Hiroko Beaudoing, a faculty specialist in umd’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, used 14 years of observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites to track global freshwater trends. The team found major shifts in freshwater resources in 34 regions worldwide and attributed the cause of each region’s trend to either human impacts or climate variations. “What we are witnessing is major hydrologic change,” says James Famiglietti, who co-authored a study published in Nature about nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We see, for the first time, a very distinctive pattern of the wetland areas of the world getting wetter—those are the high latitudes and the tropics—and the dry areas in between getting drier. Embedded within the dry areas we see multiple hotspots resulting from groundwater depletion.” Freshwater changes in two-thirds of these regions may be linked to climate change or human water use, such as large-scale pumping of groundwater for farming, according to the study. While water loss in some regions is clearly driven by warming climate, such as melting ice sheets and alpine glaciers, Famiglietti says it will take more time before other patterns can be unequivocally attributed to climate change.
Aquaponics: The Future of Sustainable Farming
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sustainability fund grant is helping to bring an innovative farming method to the University of Maryland, and nothing about it smells fishy. Students, faculty and staff will build a 1,200-square-foot aquaponics research center near the Research Greenhouse Complex during the Fall 2018 semester. Aquaponics is a form of food production that integrates hydroponics (soilless crops) with aquaculture (fish production). Jose-Luis Izursa, a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology, is leading the effort. “I’m fascinated with aquaponics because it’s not just about food production,” Izursa says. “It’s about the way you produce the food—trying to simulate what nature does.” In the enclosed ecosystem, fish eat and produce nitrogen in their waste, which bacteria convert into fertilizer for plants, and the plants filter the water for the fish. Aquaponics uses only 10 percent of the water required by traditional plant farming, and it eliminates the use of fertilizers or pesticides when produced indoors. Izursa is planning to use rainwater
in the system to make it even more sustainable. Members of the Green Roots student club, whose adviser is Izursa, will help build and maintain the system. Green Roots’ mission to teach people about alternative agriculture and sustainability will be interconnected with the aquaponics center. “I want to make people aware that growing their own food is a lot easier than they imagine,” says President Michael Wijesinghe. Izursa says the facility can be used as a teaching tool for a variety of different disciplines, including agriculture, computer science, engineering, plant sciences, environmental sciences and business. The research done at the aquaponics center will also include peers over 1,800 miles away. Izursa and the Tecnológico de Monterrey University (tec), Campus Hidalgo, a school in Mexico that has a similar research facility, received an additional grant from the umd-tec Seed Grant Program to build data censors in the greenhouses. “We’re going to put the university on the map in terms of aquaponics research and teaching,” Izursa says. “There is some research out there on aquaponics, but there are still some crucial points that need to be answered.”
“I want to make people aware that growing their own food is a lot easier than they imagine.” MICHAEL WIJESINGHE
Fall 2018
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What Makes Maryland a Leader in Sustainability 1 Compostable straws at The Dairy 2 Good Neighbor Day clean-up project 3 Alternative Breaks trip
4 Facilities Management staff at a waste audit 5 Trash to Treasure
7 School of Public Health CONSERVE water sampling 8 Students use the Recylify app at Stamp 9 UMD Smart Commute vanpool 10 Arbor Day tree planting 11 Terp Farm Flower CSA
12 AGNR Living Umbrella project
13 Testudo at the Green Tidings food truck 14 UMD student at a tree planting
15 Earth Month at Maryland 16 UMD Wildlife Society
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Support sustainability at UMD by donating to the Green Maryland Gift Fund: greenfund.umd.edu
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6 LEAF Team members on a bike ride
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