School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences
Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.
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- All Subjects: Special events--Planning
- All Subjects: Leadership
Description
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to fund research for cures and treatments for blood-related cancer. Light The Night is one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising events, with approximately 1 million participants in 140 locations throughout the United States and Canada. Participants walk with illuminated lanterns to commemorate survivors, friends, family, and supporters. Sustainability has become a recent concern for the organization's corporate partners and participants. LLS has shown an increased dedication to sustainability by creating an Environmental Social Governance (ESG) council and has started taking steps toward creating a national plan for sustainability at its Light The Night events.
In order to extend sustainability efforts to all Light The Night events, the client requests
the Sustainable Light Knights team to:
1. Perform a materiality assessment for the Light The Night event, accounting for the recent changes that seek to minimize sustainability practices.
2. Rank the event's most material activities, considering food and beverage, waste, lanterns, and t-shirts.
3. Assess the best practices for managing the highest material impacts.
4. Identify short, medium, and long-term goals to help LLS plan for the next steps.
The Sustainable Light Knights consist of four Arizona State University graduate students from the Masters of Sustainability Solutions program. The team undertook an analytical approach to understand P2P events, including conducting a landscape analysis, identifying best practices, and completing a TOWS (threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths) analysis. This served as the foundation for the materiality assessment for Light The Night, which guided what impact topics were most relevant.
To bring the findings of the materiality matrix to life, The Sustainable Light Knights created a sustainable event planning checklist, procurement guidelines, and a vendor pledge for use by Light The Night staff. We grouped the recommendations for sustainable actions into low, medium, and high priority and short, medium, and long-term goals. While this assessment focused on Light The Night, the recommendations outlined in this action plan can extend to other fundraising events organized by LLS. The design of the action plan is to help LLS leadership and staff take steps to lower the impact of Light The Night events nationwide and transform LLS into a leader within sustainable events that can serve as an example for other nonprofit organizations to follow.
ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
Description
Domestic energy is an important component of our day to day lives and is something we cannot live without. Imagine how life would be without a means to cook our food, to warm our house, life would be unbearable. As we enjoy these comforts rarely do we stop to think what the opportunity cost is. For those using renewable sources, it is not a big issue, but for those who rely on wood fuel, they have to strike a delicate balance between need for fuel and the need to conserve the greatest support systems of their livelihoods, the forests. The main source of energy for households in many developing countries is biomass, mainly from forests and woodlands. The continued use of firewood and charcoal fuel puts a strain on forests, resulting in adverse effects on the environment such as prolonged droughts, loss of biodiversity, dwindling water resources, changing weather patterns among other sustainability challenges. An alternative to firewood to charcoal lies in biochar briquettes. This paper discusses the role of biochar briquettes in mitigating climate change and serves as a step by step guide on how biochar briquettes may be produced.
ContributorsNganga, Patrick M. (Author)
Created2018
Description
People everywhere should be doing everything they can to be more sustainable so that climate change can begin to be mitigated. We are already feeling the negative effects of climate change, and they are thoroughly documented. Despite this people are not changing to be more sustainable fast enough. Many either reject the idea of climate change, do not know what they could do, or are unaware of how climate change affects them. Sustainability also impacts more than just climate change. Living more sustainably can have positive impacts economically as well as positive impacts on human health. In a world that is so connected and with such a wealth of information, we can no longer afford to have communities in the dark. Leaders need to rise on a community level to make a difference. Leadership is an aspect of an organization or a project that can elevate it to new heights. A leader is not everything, but the difference a good leader makes is universal. In this paper I will teach you about organizing a sustainability fair that educates and engages marginalized communities that typically are not included in the conversation on how to save our world.
ContributorsSalinas, Jorge (Author)
Created2018-11-10
Description
Small local organizations are rightfully preoccupied with the hard work they're doing and often see no incentives, for example fiscal or social, to review or improve the environmental sustainability of their operations. Small businesses make up the vast majority of firms in the United States and therefore, while their impact seems small independently, they are unknowingly wasting the greatest amounts of resources: energy, water, paper, plastic, and labor. Addressing the sustainability of local business operations will save our finite resources, cut their expenses, improve their brand image, and help secure the future of their business in this rapidly changing world.
ContributorsVitale, Sophia (Author)
Created2019-05-16