School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences

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.

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 electric transportation (ET) and electric vehicle (EV) landscape is currently inequitable and inaccessible for many living in the Phoenix area. This is especially true for people without single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs), who are reliant on public transit, or do not live in the Metropolitan center. Transit is intricately related to the environment and, due to societal and political structures, most of these environmental injustices are concentrated in low-income and minority communities. The lack of political representation within these communities has led to increased exposure to a variety of issues. Equitable transportation has also suffered due to a significant gap in addressing the needs of these underserved communities (Bolin, et al., 2005). The concentration of inequities and environmental injustices is a direct result of the lack of representation. Therefore, equitable and inclusive collaboration on solutions is required in order to maintain fairness and access, (Clement, 2020) considering the legacy of institutional harm within historically marginalized communities. The TE Activator was created by Salt River Project (SRP) and Anthesis Group, a sustainability consulting agency. The Activator is a group of Phoenix-area organizations interested in shaping the ET landscape to positively influence the well-being of Arizonans. With this in mind, they have asked our team to focus on making the transition to electric transportation equitable and inclusive. Our report details the current state of electric transportation nationally and locally, analyzes equitable EV/ET programs and utility plans across the country, and reviews the City of Tempe’s electric transportation related efforts. For this, we conducted listening sessions with a national expert, the City of Tempe, Tempe Community Action Agency, and CHISPA, creating a Community Listening Pilot Project based on the preliminary listening sessions. Through our research, listening, and discussions we compiled tiered recommendations for the TE Activator that suggest systemic policy changes based on community priorities. Accompanying the report is an Equity Roadmap, Community Listening Script, and one-page Debrief.

The electric transportation (ET) and electric vehicle (EV) landscape is currently inequitable and inaccessible for many living in the Phoenix area. This is especially true for people without single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs), who are reliant on public transit, or do not live in the Metropolitan center. Transit is intricately related to the environment and, due to societal and political structures, most of these environmental injustices are concentrated in low-income and minority communities. The lack of political representation within these communities has led to increased exposure to a variety of issues. Equitable transportation has also suffered due to a significant gap in addressing the needs of these underserved communities (Bolin, et al., 2005). The concentration of inequities and environmental injustices is a direct result of the lack of representation. Therefore, equitable and inclusive collaboration on solutions is required in order to maintain fairness and access, (Clement, 2020) considering the legacy of institutional harm within historically marginalized communities. The TE Activator was created by Salt River Project (SRP) and Anthesis Group, a sustainability consulting agency. The Activator is a group of Phoenix-area organizations interested in shaping the ET landscape to positively influence the well-being of Arizonans. With this in mind, they have asked our team to focus on making the transition to electric transportation equitable and inclusive. Our report details the current state of electric transportation nationally and locally, analyzes equitable EV/ET programs and utility plans across the country, and reviews the City of Tempe’s electric transportation related efforts. For this, we conducted listening sessions with a national expert, the City of Tempe, Tempe Community Action Agency, and CHISPA, creating a Community Listening Pilot Project based on the preliminary listening sessions. Through our research, listening, and discussions we compiled tiered recommendations for the TE Activator that suggest systemic policy changes based on community priorities. Accompanying the report is an Equity Roadmap, Community Listening Script, and one-page Debrief.

The electric transportation (ET) and electric vehicle (EV) landscape is currently inequitable and inaccessible for many living in the Phoenix area. This is especially true for people without single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs), who are reliant on public transit, or do not live in the Metropolitan center. Transit is intricately related to the environment and, due to societal and political structures, most of these environmental injustices are concentrated in low-income and minority communities. The lack of political representation within these communities has led to increased exposure to a variety of issues. Equitable transportation has also suffered due to a significant gap in addressing the needs of these underserved communities (Bolin, et al., 2005). The concentration of inequities and environmental injustices is a direct result of the lack of representation. Therefore, equitable and inclusive collaboration on solutions is required in order to maintain fairness and access, (Clement, 2020) considering the legacy of institutional harm within historically marginalized communities. The TE Activator was created by Salt River Project (SRP) and Anthesis Group, a sustainability consulting agency. The Activator is a group of Phoenix-area organizations interested in shaping the ET landscape to positively influence the well-being of Arizonans. With this in mind, they have asked our team to focus on making the transition to electric transportation equitable and inclusive. Our report details the current state of electric transportation nationally and locally, analyzes equitable EV/ET programs and utility plans across the country, and reviews the City of Tempe’s electric transportation related efforts. For this, we conducted listening sessions with a national expert, the City of Tempe, Tempe Community Action Agency, and CHISPA, creating a Community Listening Pilot Project based on the preliminary listening sessions. Through our research, listening, and discussions we compiled tiered recommendations for the TE Activator that suggest systemic policy changes based on community priorities. Accompanying the report is an Equity Roadmap, Community Listening Script, and one-page Debrief.

The electric transportation (ET) and electric vehicle (EV) landscape is currently inequitable and inaccessible for many living in the Phoenix area. This is especially true for people without single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs), who are reliant on public transit, or do not live in the Metropolitan center. Transit is intricately related to the environment and, due to societal and political structures, most of these environmental injustices are concentrated in low-income and minority communities. The lack of political representation within these communities has led to increased exposure to a variety of issues. Equitable transportation has also suffered due to a significant gap in addressing the needs of these underserved communities (Bolin, et al., 2005). The concentration of inequities and environmental injustices is a direct result of the lack of representation. Therefore, equitable and inclusive collaboration on solutions is required in order to maintain fairness and access, (Clement, 2020) considering the legacy of institutional harm within historically marginalized communities. The TE Activator was created by Salt River Project (SRP) and Anthesis Group, a sustainability consulting agency. The Activator is a group of Phoenix-area organizations interested in shaping the ET landscape to positively influence the well-being of Arizonans. With this in mind, they have asked our team to focus on making the transition to electric transportation equitable and inclusive. Our report details the current state of electric transportation nationally and locally, analyzes equitable EV/ET programs and utility plans across the country, and reviews the City of Tempe’s electric transportation related efforts. For this, we conducted listening sessions with a national expert, the City of Tempe, Tempe Community Action Agency, and CHISPA, creating a Community Listening Pilot Project based on the preliminary listening sessions. Through our research, listening, and discussions we compiled tiered recommendations for the TE Activator that suggest systemic policy changes based on community priorities. Accompanying the report is an Equity Roadmap, Community Listening Script, and one-page Debrief.

The electric transportation (ET) and electric vehicle (EV) landscape is currently inequitable and inaccessible for many living in the Phoenix area. This is especially true for people without single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs), who are reliant on public transit, or do not live in the Metropolitan center. Transit is intricately related to the environment and, due to societal and political structures, most of these environmental injustices are concentrated in low-income and minority communities. The lack of political representation within these communities has led to increased exposure to a variety of issues. Equitable transportation has also suffered due to a significant gap in addressing the needs of these underserved communities (Bolin, et al., 2005). The concentration of inequities and environmental injustices is a direct result of the lack of representation. Therefore, equitable and inclusive collaboration on solutions is required in order to maintain fairness and access, (Clement, 2020) considering the legacy of institutional harm within historically marginalized communities. The TE Activator was created by Salt River Project (SRP) and Anthesis Group, a sustainability consulting agency. The Activator is a group of Phoenix-area organizations interested in shaping the ET landscape to positively influence the well-being of Arizonans. With this in mind, they have asked our team to focus on making the transition to electric transportation equitable and inclusive. Our report details the current state of electric transportation nationally and locally, analyzes equitable EV/ET programs and utility plans across the country, and reviews the City of Tempe’s electric transportation related efforts. For this, we conducted listening sessions with a national expert, the City of Tempe, Tempe Community Action Agency, and CHISPA, creating a Community Listening Pilot Project based on the preliminary listening sessions. Through our research, listening, and discussions we compiled tiered recommendations for the TE Activator that suggest systemic policy changes based on community priorities. Accompanying the report is an Equity Roadmap, Community Listening Script, and one-page Debrief.

Underserved communities are disproportionately impacted by climate change, and current inequities present in our emissions-heavy transportation system only exacerbate these burdens. As of 2019, transportation accounted for 29% of total GHG emissions in the United States. Electric Vehicles (EVs) present an opportunity to lower emissions associated with transportation, as EVs emit zero tailpipe emissions. We define electric vehicles as cars, bikes, scooters, buses, and rail systems. As transitions to EVs occur, action can be taken to adopt more equitable practices within the transportation space, specifically in historically underserved communities.

In partnership with The City of Phoenix’s EV Department, and with additional support from the Housing Department, the EV Changers team developed a transportation-oriented survey to be distributed to the Edison-Eastlake Community (EEC) in Phoenix. Efforts to understand the EEC’s needs will lend to more efficient, connected, and accessible transportation in the upcoming transportation electrification movement.