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- Creators: School of Sustainability
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Water scarcity has become an especially urgent problem in Maasailand. Maasailand is one of the major worldwide destinations for wildlife game drives in Africa. In this project, a recyclable car wash system is considered for design in Maasailand, Kenya. Background research was conducted to see the feasibility of the design. Water filtration methods such as coagulation were researched, analyzed and tested to ensure all the customer needs were met. The washing and collection aspects of the car wash were also further explored and designed. This joint project which is part of capstone is to also be implemented into the bigger project known as the Maasai Autotmotive Education Center and in support of the Mara Guide Association (MGA), an organization run by the Masaai people in Kenya.
Students completing a Cross-Sector Leadership certificate through ASU's Next Generation Service Corps program are required to take a course on social entrepreneurship. In partnership with the program and Tony's Chocolonely, a Dutch chocolate company working to make 100% slave free the norm in the chocolate industry, a semester-long course has been designed for this, including a week-long study abroad element to the company headquarters in Amsterdam. This required designing 15 weeks of academic content from start to finish; planning a trip itinerary and budget; collaborating with employees from Tony's Chocolonely, the ASU Global Education Office, the UNDP, and the Next Generation Service Corps at ASU; and preparing all of the material necessary for proposing a study abroad course for a future course instructor to present to the Global Education Office when it is ready to be implemented.
Food insecurity and hunger are strongly interconnected with poverty and are major concerns across the world. Poverty stems from many interconnected issues and creates what are known as Food Deserts. The challenge then becomes: How do we mitigate the effects of food deserts to achieve food security? This paper proposes a design and a potential solution to address this question of food insecurity with the modification of a traditional aquaponics system that can potentially deliver the same product at a lower cost. Stakeholder input was key to the product design and was captured through a set of carefully conducted interviews. An in-depth literature review also informed the redesign process, and a final, viable product was proposed. Thus far, the proposed aquaponics system has demonstrated to be a promising cost-effective, sustainable, solution that could provide a majority of the food needs for a family.
The project goal is aimed to research the most pressing issues facing the lithium supply chain today. It then is tasked with charting a path into the future through strategic recommendations that will help reduce risk, and make a greener, cleaner, and more ethical supply chain.
Urban heat island effect is caused by the built environment and impervious surfaces in urban areas causing the local air temperature to be significantly higher than that of near-by rural areas. This effect continues to worsen and spread nationwide as urban sprawl increases through land development. As more land gets paved over, more heat energy is produced and radiated into the local atmosphere. In Phoenix, urban heat island effect is expected to be the most prominent when the city has been the fastest growing metro area in the United States in this decade and continues to grow at a rapid pace. As urban heat island effects increase, climate change caused by anthropogenic activities continues to worsen. This causes drought conditions to worsen all across the American Southwest. California was the first state to enact water restrictions in response to the current drought conditions in 2015, with Nevada and Colorado following in 2021 in efforts to preserve water. Sustainable urban water systems management and design have been an emerging research area. One of the most effective systems being the reuse of greywater in irrigation. With this use of greywater for all outdoor water needs, excluding swimming pools, there is the ability to use equal amounts of outdoor water as indoor water. This increases the amount of available water for all landscaping. With increased amounts of available water, plants and vegetation will most often grow fast and larger. Larger and healthier vegetation both increase shade as well as evaporative-transpiration. Both of these can decrease the local air temperature. This research aims to investigate if and how the reuse of greywater for landscape irrigation can ultimately lead to cooler air temperatures, decreasing the urban heat island effect. In Spring 2022, I partnered with a local landscape architecture firm to examine a case study of a pilot greywater reuse system. The pilot was the basis for a larger greywater reuse system integrated into a multifamily apartment complex, currently under construction, in downtown Phoenix.