School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences
Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Food Systems
- All Subjects: public health
The original intent of the project was to attempt to mitigate the complex sustainability issue of systematic food waste via creating a guide that would educate users how to create a food saving organization that prevents edible food from ending up in landfills. The guide was going to be based on a nonprofit organization my family and I founded called Epic Cure, that has activated programs that serve to relieve community food insecurity, encourage community connectedness, support environmental health, and empower youth with entrepreneurial opportunity. The development of the guide was going to be based on my personal experience developing and running the organization, as well as my understanding of sustainable systems and frameworks. However, the original scope and plan of this project has shifted considerably since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. I have decided to put the guide on hold so that I can step into a space of agency via working in real time, to adapt my organization so that we can continue to operate when we are most needed. This shift is a response to the health and economic crisis that continues to unfold daily. In order to sustain the wellbeing of communities, the adaptation of a food aid service in the time of the crisis is an imminent need. This project shift not only serves to provide emergency relief, but also to identify gaps in the food distribution system and the supply chains that NGOs like Epic-Cure rely on so that we might be more resilient in the face of future shocks to the systems.
This project is an exploration of a K-3 Early Childhood Center and the Roosevelt School District’s progress towards the Farm to School movement and focuses on the transformations and strategic partnerships required to maintain gardens as an educational resource over the long term. Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center is a Title 1 elementary school in South Mountain Village, Phoenix and is the primary research location for this study. South Mountain Village contains a series of urban food deserts which are low-income regions without adequate access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food options. The baseline for the school garden’s integration status was measured through the usage and adaptation of the Garden Resources Education and Environmental Nexus (GREEN) tool for well-integrated school gardens. The school has existing partnerships with the University of Arizona Co-operative Extension, and Farm at South Mountain to help establish their school garden and organize a series of educational field trips centered around sustainable agricultural practices. As a part of this Culminating Experience, I also worked with the Sustainability Teachers Academy to create, plan and execute Sustainability and School Gardening workshop on March 11-12 for teachers, and members of the Farm to School Network across Arizona. The end goal of this project and workshop is to create a framework to cultivate and sustain critical partnerships for farms and schools interested in being a part of the Farm-to-School program in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.
For the community engagement piece of the project, existing community engagement protocols and frameworks were compared. The most effective strategies were then selected and combined into a single adaptive framework. Assets Based Community Development, the Sustainable Neighborhood for Happiness Index, and the six types of capital are used as the foundational structure of the Community System Map. A Community Food System map was then organized using a “hub” approach, and the Residential Edible Landscaping map was organized based off of field experience. The nested systems illustrate just how complex the community food system really is. The outcome of the project is the first iteration of an adaptive tool that can be used by for-profit or non-profit organizations to co-create and interdependently manage local community food systems.
A city based on tourism, military installations, agriculture, and home to the first landing of Jamestown colonists, Virginia Beach boasts 28 miles of coastline along the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. Comparable to other beaches worldwide, the utter volume of visitors has taken its toll on the city, resulting in unsightly destruction and pollution. It is not unusual to read or hear about marine animals dying from eating or being trapped by waste that is deposited into oceans, or how oil spills are harmful to marine mammals, birds, and fish; yet somehow, it is uncommon to come upon the mentioning of butt litter, the most frequently littered item on Earth. Cigarette butts are strewn about the Virginia Beach boardwalk, resort strip, and the beach. In 2014, Clean Virginia Waterways collected more than 47,600 butts along streams, rivers, bays, and coastlines (CVW, 2015). With no smoking restrictions on the beach (or boardwalk,) tourists and local beachgoers alike frequently discard their butts on the sand and face no known consequences. Small but mighty, both smoked and unsmoked butts have severe impacts on waterways, economies, air quality, and public health. An economic analysis found that cities the size of San Francisco spend, on average, between $500,000 and $6 million annually to keep their beaches, streets, and parks clear of cigarette litter (Schneider et al., 2011).
This paper examines strategies to:
1. Drastically reduce butt litter within the city - Disposable/pocket ashtrays, additional butt/ash receptacles. 2. Increase community awareness on the economic impacts of litter - Organized cleanups, advertisements /marketing, partnerships with local NGOs.
3. Enhance citations and alternative penalties for those who discard their butts on the sand.
Additionally, this paper aims to discuss the potential implementation of a beach-wide smoking ban.
The project focuses on the creation of 300 pest identification booklets that provide five villages in Kaffrine the proper education to prevent locust plagues from forming. I have partnered with the Global Locust Initiative (GLI) to help make these booklets come to fruition as the booklets target the lack of early detection awareness that is at the root of locust plagues. By providing the villages with these booklets, the farmers and community members, will be more educated on how to identify and act on the early threats of a plague. Additional outcomes of creating these booklets are as follows: improved well-being of the farming community, increased millet yields, and enhanced global food system sustainability. As locusts are a migratory pest, it is recommended that more stakeholders are provided the proper educational material to help them identify the early threats of a locust plague to prevent negative externalities from being imposed on the surrounding ecology, individuals, and agriculture.
