Sustainability Exchange @sustainability-exchange - Tumblr Blog

DIAPER LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS

Advisers: Jay Turner, Rebecca Chibnall, Angela Hobson

Over the course of the last 20 years, traditional cloth diapers have evolved from primarily cotton pre-folds, fitteds, or flats with vinyl or rubber covers to polyester stay-dry microfiber materials with breathable polyurethane outer layers. This shift in design to materials that facilitate breathability and moisture wicking has made modern reusable diapers less likely to cause diaper dermatitis than previous cloth diapers. Subsequently, modern reusable diapers are now more accepted in mainstream parenting communities; yet, disposable diapers continue to be the diapering option of choice for most parents in the developed world. Previous life cycle analyses comparing cloth and disposable diapers have been performed in the UK, most recently in 2008. These studies were extensive but came with many assumptions that were not standard practice for modern disposable and cloth diapers. Additionally, these studies were heavily industry sponsored which raises questions regarding the objectivity of their results. More recent analyses have focused on disposable diapers but not reusable diapers. A 2013 review article demonstrates the limitations of previous analyses and provides a good starting point for this project.

The Fall 2017 Diaper LCA group focused on creating a materials inventory for disposable and reusable diapers, as well as creating a survey for real use practices. The data from the survey will aid in future understanding of realistic use and diaper conceptions.

#fall 2017 lca

Final poster from the LCA group.

#lca #fall 2017 #fall 2017 lca

Diaper LCA Blog Post

As we near the end of our semester, our Life Cycle Analysis is beginning to come together. We plan to have our survey sent out within the next week, as soon as the IRB gives us the green light. In the meantime, we continue to work on collecting our more numerical data. With the help of our advisor Jay Turner, we took apart 5 disposable diapers to weigh and analyze their components. Pictured below is our data, with a chart showing the comparison between the Super Absorbent Polymer and the outer shell and layers.

We plan to take apart a few reusable diapers in the near future as well. We are lucky enough to have a link to the Bum Genius CEO, who has been extremely forthcoming with how their diapers are made and what comprises them. As we discussed in our presentation, our next steps involve a continued synthesis of our data into a report. We will begin drafting that piece as soon as we finish collecting data on the reusable diapers and obtain data from the survey.

#fall 2017 #fall 2017 lca #lca

ECOBLOCK WATER SYSTEMS

Partner: Eco-BLOCK™ Board

Adviser: Hannah Roth

As American cities re-invent themselves, the Eco-BLOCK™ focuses on the redevelopment of the inner-city block as a “cellular” unit within the larger community. Rather than rebuild industrial-era blocks or import suburban-sprawl style blocks, the eco-BLOCK™ concept re-conceives urban living from the ground up by integrating ecological, social and economic systems to increase beauty, efficiency and community. Instead of blocks being centered on alleys and garbage cans, the eco-BLOCK™ is centered on common space -- parks, walkways and gardens -- while preserving private outdoor space for each house or unit. Eco-BLOCK™ will aim to create Net Positive Energy and Water, and Net Zero Waste redevelopment that is not dependent on but can easily interface with existing energy, storm water and sanitary systems. Such blocks would also be able to interconnect with other microgrids or broader systems but each block would be designed for resiliency with each having its own identity and character.

Re-designing water infrastructure is a major sustainable component that the Eco-BLOCK™ is seeking to quantify and model. Creating a net zero water block requires addressing stormwater, potable water, gray water and black water with an integrated design approach that must also “coexist” with or restore existing infrastructure.

#fall 2017 ecoblock water

The final site map from the EcoBlock Water team.

#fall 2017 #ecoblock water #fall 2017 ecoblock water

EcoBlock Water Blog Post

We have been drafting preliminary schematic designs of the entire Eco-Block with a focus on how water elements will be incorporated. Our client emphasized our need to balance a commons-centered design and the most efficient use of space, an aspect that we’ve come closer to achieving through our design refinement process.

We’ve decided that a centralized rain garden, swales, mixed-use buildings, and interactive water features will be important elements of our design. We’re also researching the benefits of extensive versus intensive green roofs and pervious pavements which will be focused on the street side of the block. In most of our designs we’ve also included a greenhouse in hopes that it could be used in conjunction with restaurants or cafes. Ideally this greenhouse would be maintained by residents, and would allow residents to have access to a garden and fresh produce all year round. However, we got a tad caught up in the architectural and qualitative elements of our project- it’s difficult to design a water system without first having a design for the overlying structure- and neglected the quantitative elements of water usage. To hone in on this aspect of the project, we plan to arrange a meeting with a plumbing engineer through Dan Hellmuth.

After presenting our project and progress to date last week, we received some helpful feedback and will continue working to refine our definition of “net-zero” or “self-contained” water system in the context of the Eco-Block. We allowed our classmates to do designs of the block themselves (pictured below) which helped us see what their idea of an eco-block would look like. Our definition needs to address the fact that our water system must still connect to the municipal sewer system and the feasibility of greywater reuse in our system. We plan to estimate incoming and outgoing water metrics overall in our proposed system to quantify this definition. In making our final project more focused on the water infrastructure than the building/block architecture of the Eco-Block, we hope to address the matter of ownership and maintenance of especially the water storage and treatment features of greywater and stormwater. We ran into the issue of whether we will actually be able to treat stormwater for consumption as drinking water, due to liability and public health concerns, so we continue to look into the logistics of that as well.

As we approached midterm season, and now as we approach the end of the semester, we had some challenges scheduling group meetings outside of class. We’ve also had trouble narrowing the scope of our project; the water system of a block is quite complex, and it’s easy to get lost in the details of our project. Since it’s impossible for us to become familiar with every aspect of the system, we’ve had to rely on Dan and Hannah’s expertise, and choose a few select things to focus on, while making broader generalizations elsewhere. We hope to continue to develop this project with all of this in mind so that we can present a solidified water solution design for the eco-block movement!

#fall 2017 #ecoblock water #fall 2017 ecoblock water

CHICKEN BILL AND FOOD POLICY INITIATIVE

Sponsor: Missouri Coalition for the Environment

Adviser: Scott Krummenacher

This semester, the Urban Agriculture team created an informative flyer providing chicken care information in response to the recently passed chicken bill. They also worked on broader issues in continuance with the greater Food Policy theme.

#fall 2017 urban ag

The mid-semester deliverable—an educational flyer detailing the logistics and affordability of raising chickens.

#fall 2017 #urban ag #fall 2017 urban ag

Urban Agriculture Blog Post 2

In the month since our first blog post, our group has made substantive progress towards both of our projects for the semester. Over the first two weeks, we spent the bulk of our time completing the chicken flyers. This meant transferring the design and reformatting it within Canva (a poster design software), then putting on final touches (citing sources via footnotes, homogenizing fonts, reorganizing the flyer layout). The latter half of the past month has consisted of researching local food practices in grocery stores.

The process of final revision and editing was a strenuous one—we had to navigate both the opportunities and challenges that working with a real client brought. A boon to our future success was the introduction of Canva, the software from which the original MCE flyer for Ordinance 70608 was designed. Melissa Vadderott’s suggestion to use this lended a measure of consistency to our work. It allowed us to unite the current flyer with the past, creating a series of educational handouts rather than haphazard bits of information. Although Canva was extremely useful in this manner, it brought with it significant challenges. Unlike Google Docs, one of our previous design processors, Canva does not allow for simultaneous workflow, so we had to work on it one-at-a-time. This both hurt our ability to collaborate, but was also a significant time-drain for us. This was also a rather late development in our project, so in some sense we had to scramble to find the requisite time to produce a deliverable that met both our and Melissa’s standards. Other difficulties that played into this were struggles to pinpoint the fonts used on the previous flyer, as well as miscommunication between our group and Melissa in terms of final edits expected of us.

Over the course of the most recent two weeks, we have shifted focus towards researching grocery stores with local food programs. As we have started, we have encountered some roadblocks that we will have to maneuver around. Chief among these are determining which grocery stores to research and once that is completed, getting adequate response from those stores. At MCE’s behest, we have decided to broaden our scope to the entire country. While this increases our ability to find diverse and novel local food initiatives, it makes it more difficult to search in depth and find the types of stores that we are trying to target. For the most part, we have identified regional chains that conform to our requirements; however, our main method of contact (online contact forms) has not yielded an extremely fruitful response. As we move towards the end of the semester, these are problems that we will need to address.

#fall 2017 #urban ag #fall 2017 urban ag

Urban Agriculture Blog Post 1

In the August 2017, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen voted to enact Bill 52, an amendment to City of St. Louis Ordinance 70608. The new law pertained to the keeping of chickens on residential property, allowing residents to keep up to eight chickens instead of the previous four. As of today, October 10th, 2017, we are on the brink of finalizing two educational flyers explaining the basics of backyard chicken ownership to the local St. Louis Community.

To this end, we have completed research on chicken care, coop building, predator protection, maintenance costs and various other factors that go into taking care of backyard chickens. Moreover, we have been responsible for synthesizing this research into two concise, readable documents and working with Melissa Vatterott and other representatives from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment to ensure our product is up to their standards.

Navigating these responsibilities has been both a challenging and rewarding experience. None of us have any background in design or have experience in a project of this nature, so we’ve all had a lot to learn, not only from each other, but also from the MCE. While Melissa has been providing us insight with what people need information on, we’ve been relying on each other’s unique perspectives to produce our deliverables.

One of the principle challenges we’ve faced with our project has been condensing our information. During the initial stages of our project, we were each tasked with gathering information about a specific aspect of chicken care. When we all met up to share our findings, we each had upwards of two pages of information that had to be condensed, in some cases, into single paragraphs. This presented us with a challenge, as we had to not only finesse our writing to pack as much information into as few words as possible, but also prioritize what information would be most important to prospective chicken-owners.

Additionally, we’ve faced hurdles with regard to technology. We’ve used both Word and Pages processors to design our one-pagers, with some of us being more proficient in one than the other. This has made exchanging drafts and prototypes difficult, as we’ve experienced when trying to convert fonts and images from one processor to another.

While challenging, we have approached and overcome these barriers by adhering to the principles of the work plan we developed at the start of the semester. Through consistent communication and group meetings outside of class time, we have been able to remain oriented towards a cohesive vision for the remainder of the semester

#fall 2017 #urban ag #fall 2017 urban ag

CARBON SEQUESTRATION IN BUILDING MATERIALS

Adviser: Hannah Roth, [email protected]

Metrics used to measure the environmentally sustainable attributes of building materials and products have advanced continuously over the past two decades. During the Spring 2017, the SX class will investigate what is intended by Carbon Sequestration and the proposals regarding how to measure it. Referencing new Carbon Sequestration announcements from Interface Carpet and Midwest Brick & Block the class will attempt to understand what new advances have been made by industry and what new challenges are on the horizon. In addition, the class will contact a member of the ASTM Standard Development committee for Carbon Sequestration to better understand the proposed national standard.

#spring 2017 building materials

GREEN BUILDING GUIDELINES FOR OFF CAMPUS HOUSING

Partner: Washington University in St. Louis

Adviser: Phil Valko, [email protected]

Washington University has a strong commitment to green building. Major successes to-date include twenty-two LEED-certified projects and the Living Building certified Tyson Living Learning Center. While green building strategies are widely used on-campus, there remain many opportunities to incorporate these same principles and practices into the construction, renovation, and operations of off-campus housing. As a key step, the university’s 2015-2020 Strategic Plan for Sustainable Operations calls for the development of sustainable building guidelines for off-campus housing. This Sustainability Exchange project will challenge an interdisciplinary team of students with creating sustainable building guidelines for off-campus housing that the university will ultimately adopt. The project will require the team to: research best practices for sustainable design, construction, renovation, and operations; engage university stakeholders to gather input and learn about current practices; identify model sustainable building guidelines; and create a proposed sustainable building guideline. The project will benefit from team members with a broad range of backgrounds and interests, including architecture, engineering, environmental studies/policy, graphic design, and business.

#spring 2017 housing

FOOD POLICY INITIATIVE

Partner: Missouri Coalition for the Environment

Adviser: Scott Krummenacher, [email protected]

A growing number of cities have taken steps to ensure their food systems are more equitable and sustainable. In the St. Louis region, policy incentives heavily favor industrial agriculture and rarely support sustainable farming practices. The Missouri Coalition for the Environment (MCE) is working on a major food policy initiative that aims to shift these incentives. Preliminary efforts will address policies that enhance or expand opportunities for urban agriculture in St. Louis City and County. Improved zoning, local sourcing and the creation of a food hub are key elements of a sustainable regional food system likely to be addressed by the initiative. Student teams will work to identify best practices for urban agriculture policy, assess appropriate stakeholders to engage in the campaign and develop materials to market the MCE’s policy initiative. The final deliverable will be a project report that includes content for each project area (policy best practices, stakeholder engagement, and marketing). This project holds to potential for long-term engagement as the policy action progresses. This project will build on work by Sustainability Exchange teams in 2015 and 2016.

ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION OF TRANSPORTATION

Partner: East-West Gateway Council of Governments

Adviser: Ray Ehrhard, [email protected]

The students will be working with the East-West Gateway Council of Governments (EWGCOG) on this project. EWGCOG is the Metropolitan Planning Agency (MPO) for the St. Louis region. It conducts the planning for all federally funded transportation projects in the region, and to this end is responsible for modeling transportation volume and vehicle emissions. EWGCOG developed a package written in the Python language that facilitates analysis and visualization of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions at sub-county scales. Known as the Small Area Greenhouse Gas Estimation Tool (SAGGET), the toolkit uses outputs from the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) emission model to create emissions estimates and projections for user defined geographies. The students will learn about transportation related emission models and data bases developed for the St. Louis area. The students will use the tools available to analyze one or more discrete areas in the region and consider impacts of various mitigation scenarios. Additional simulations may be run on alternate inputs to test the tool’s capabilities.

#spring 2017 transport

QUADRANGLE GREEN REHAB EXPERIMENT

Partners: Office of Sustainability, Quadrangle Housing & Don Koster

Advisor: Phil Valko, [email protected]

The Fall 2016 Green Rehab Experiment project will continue Washington University and Quadrangle Housing’s ongoing work to transform 100-year old multi-family apartment buildings into net zero energy (NZE) buildings. The project is truly interdisciplinary in nature, involving: learning about renewable energy and building systems; energy data analysis; occupant behavior change; and local and state policy. The experiment consists of previously identical Quadrangle Housing buildings that have been rehabbed as a control building (standard Quadrangle rehabilitation) and an experimental building (highly energy efficient design with solar panels). With access to detailed energy use data and the new renewable energy data, the team will build on the foundation of work produced by Sustainability Exchange teams in 2015 and 2016. The students will compile and analyze solar energy and energy use data from the control and experimental buildings in order to identify opportunities for moving the project closer to NZE. The team will share their findings with Quadrangle Housing and develop recommendations for reducing energy use in the experimental building, as well as future Quadrangle rehabs. The students will use previous work and best practices to develop testable strategies for engaging occupants in behavior change to reduce their energy usage.

#fall 2016 green remodeling

GRANITE CITY CLIMATE PLANNING SUPPORT

Partner: City of Granite City; Granite City Cool Cities Committee; ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability; American Geophysical Union (AGU) Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX)

Adviser: Jay Turner, [email protected]

The City of Granite City, IL is at a crossroads. Its historical manufacturing base is dwindling and it ranks below much of the metropolitan St. Louis area for many economic indicators. As the City works to address these issues, it also recognizes the need to do so in a sustainable manner and that, in general, urban sustainability is a component of urban vitality. In August 2015, Granite City published an Economic Development Strategic Action Plan (EDSAP) which included several elements focused on environment and sustainability, including the development of a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory. This inventory should measure the amount of greenhouse gas being produced by city operations, and also include measurements of household and business carbon footprints. Using this information, the city can set and seek to achieve greenhouse gas goals. The team will develop the first GHG inventory for Granite City, with a focus on government infrastructure and operations, with community-scale emissions (residential, commercial, industrial) being included as time permits. The inventory will be conducted using the Clearpath inventory module developed and maintained by ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability.

#fall 2016 greenhouse gas

WEIL HALL MATERIALS SELECTION

Partners: KieranTimberlake Architects, Grace Corbin of Christner Architects, Dan Hellmuth of Hellmuth-Bicknese Architects

Adviser: Hannah Roth, [email protected]

Progress moves forward on the design of Weil Hall, the new building for the Sam Fox School. One important task is the selection of building materials. While it is imperative to meet Washington University’s standard criteria for a “100-year-building,” there also exists a desire to consider the environmental impacts of materials and products. This will require a delicate balancing act. In consultation with KieranTimberlake, architects of Weil Hall, the team will review current available materials, environmental materials standards & evaluations, and the project’s design goals to make recommendations. The project will consider interior flooring, walls and wall protection, acoustical mitigation, and furniture selection.

#fall 2016 weil hall

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Sustainability Exchange