Sustainability Commons^™

Forward Osmosis For Wastewater Treatment And Energy Recovery: A Techno-Economic Analysis, Patrick William Buckwalter

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

A novel wastewater treatment system was investigated using forward osmosis membranes to treat municipal wastewater. Treatment by forward osmosis was determined to cost $10 million per million gallons per day (MGD) of wastewater capacity over a 20-year lifetime, with an energy consumption of 870 kWh per million gallons. A case study at the Arcata Wastewater Treatment Plant was conducted to investigate a treatment system that combines energy recovery from algae biomass with forward osmosis membrane treatment using local seawater as a draw solution. Total system cost was calculated to be $29.7 million over a 20-year lifetime with a 2.3 MGD …

Assessing The Efficiency Of Different Sustainable Farming Practices In Reducing The Environmental Impacts Caused By Aquaculture, Rajee Olaganathan, Alicia Tang Kar Mun

Publications

Sustainability of aquaculture is achieved when aquaculture farming systems are capable of preserving the natural resource base and involves an institutional change to the environment by the attainment and continued satisfaction for present and future generations. Sustainable farming practices produce sufficient aquaculture output to satisfy the seafood demand while not burdening the environment more. The potentiality and efficiency of different sustainable aqua farming practices in reducing anthropogenic impacts to the environment by aquaculture are assessed in this paper. Polyculture is mostly adopted by small-scale rural farmers as it requires low entry barrier and help in income diversification. The input of …

Technological Modernization And Its Impact On Agriculture, Fisheries And Fossil Fuel Utilization In The Asia Pacific Countries With Emphasis On Sustainability Perspective, Rajee Olaganathan, Kathleen Quigley

Publications

Modernization is a process that moves towards efficiency. This affects most of the fields such as agriculture, fisheries, forestry, urban planning, policy, fossil fuel usage, manufacturing, technology, economic growth etc. This process plays a major role in moving forward making things faster, better and basically more efficient. The effects of modernization on all these fields bring about the major changes to aspects such as social, economic and the environment. The level of operation has increased from a domestic level; small family scale business to large commercial levels. As the level of operation increased, the utilization of natural resources increased gradually …

Tourism Business Resilience For Coastal Virginia Assessment Report, Lindsay E. Usher, Michelle Covi, Juita-Elena Wie Yusuf, Kaitlin Giles, Elizabeth Armistead Andrews, Angela King, Sashenka Brauer, Rebecca Ribley

Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency (CCRFR): Reports

This report summarizes the results of the Tourism Business Resilience Project conducted by the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency and Virginia Sea Grant. This project was a joint effort by faculty and students from the Old Dominion University Resilience Collaborative and the Virginia Coastal Policy Center at the William & Mary Law School.

The Environmental Impacts Of Alternative Food Waste Treatment Technologies In The U.S., Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted to determine the environmental impacts of several waste treatment scenarios for a suburban New York (U.S.) municipality. The study goal was to determine if separate food waste recovery and management was environmentally sounder than waste-to-energy incineration (the baseline case). Three alternatives, enclosed tunnel composting, enclosed windrow composting, and anaerobic digestion with subsequent enclosed windrow composting of residuals, were examined considering the entire residual waste stream (not just separated food wastes). Impact categories assessed were climate change, environmental eutrophication and acidification, resource depletion, and stratospheric ozone depletion. A normalized, aggregated impact assessment was created …

More Than Food: An Analysis Of Multidimensional Relationships In Our Food System, Jessica Erin Newnan

Honors Theses and Capstones

Food is an integral part of everyday life for human beings, thus meriting particular attention from research and education. Looking further in depth at the factors that influence food, it becomes apparent that this is a complex topic that is related to several systems within the constructs of society. Here, the food system is approached with the understanding that several systems influence food consumption options and decisions including the agricultural, economic, education, energy, health, and political systems. To identify the relationships more closely, a three-dimensional model was built to represent the food system and depict several key factors, their relationships, …

Smart Home Energy Management: An Analysis Of A Novel Dynamic Pricing And Demand Response Aware Control Algorithm For Households With Distributed Renewable Energy Generation And Storage, Jamal Abushnaf

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Home energy management systems (HEMS) technology can provide a smart and efficient way of optimising energy usage in residential buildings. One of the main goals of the Smart Grid is to achieve Demand Response (DR) by increasing end users’ participation in decision making and increasing the level of awareness that will lead them to manage their energy consumption in an efficient way. This research presents an intelligent HEMS algorithm that manages and controls a range of household appliances with different demand response (DR) limits in an automated way without requiring consumer intervention. In addition, a novel Multiple Users and Load …

Achieving Sustainability In Hazard-Prone Territories: A Case Study, Denise J. Roberts

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Achieving sustained economic growth and development has been an area of concern for policy-makers in the Anglophone Caribbean since the transition from colonial rule to self-governance. To date, the researcher did not find any research that has explicitly examined the role of policy-making effectiveness as a strategy for achieving the goals of sustainable development. This qualitative multiple case study of Barbados and Grenada was conceptualized from the perspective of critical theory from the World Commission on Environment and Development to explore and understand why sustainability has not been sufficiently realized and how sustainable development may be pursued in territories that …

The Effects Of Early Pruning On The Near-Ground Branch Density Of Four Live Fencing Species, Aric Devens

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Crop losses in home gardens greatly impact the wellbeing of rural West African families. Herbivory by migratory or local livestock represents a significant source of crop loss. Live-fencing gardens with thorny hedges is a low-cost and sustainable strategy for reducing losses due to herbivory. However, guidance on the establishment of thorny hedges is inconsistent, poorly publicized, and often anecdotal. Therefore, this study evaluated the effects of three early pruning treatments on near-ground branch density of four thorny species: Vachellia nilotica, Senegalia laeta, Senegalia mellifera, and Prosopis juliflora. Physical measurements and photographic data indicated that after one growing season, V. …

Sugar Versus Lipid For Sustainable Biofuels, Yaşar Demirel

Yaşar Demirel Publications

Introduction

First‐generation biofuels, namely, ethanol and biodiesel, have led to far reaching impact on the peoples’ life world‐wide.[1] However, they inter-fere with the food supply chain and may not be sustainable although some of the biomass are converted to biofuels after those biomasses have met the human needs. Still, the first‐generation–based biofuels have proved that sugar and lipid platforms can be an answer to energy security and global warming concerns without the need for new infrastructure for feedstock delivery as well as for biomass‐to‐biofuel conversion tech-nologies. At the same time, we are discovering and assessing the long‐term environmental im-plications on …

Environmental Hazard Identification, Assessment And Control For A Sustainable Maritime Transportation System, Lizzette Marie Pérez Lespier

Doctoral Dissertations

"A demand exists to contribute towards the widening awareness of the need for sustainable maritime development and for coordinated maritime policies worldwide. Maritime shipping is considered the most eco-efficient mean of transportation and yet, is responsible for negative environmental impacts.

This dissertation focuses on developing data-driven decision support tools to evaluate the sustainable performance of MTS by focusing on the elements of the MTS that place stress on the environment. The first research contribution is a System Dynamics simulation model that examines the MTS resiliency after an extreme event and determines the sequence needed to restore the ocean-going port to …

Agricultural Adaptation To Climate Change: How Risk Influences Decision-Making, Brandon Araujo

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is currently threatening the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries. Psychological models have been developed to identify factors associated with adapting to climate change; however, little work has investigated the role of farmers’ risk attitudes in these models. We assessed perceptions of adaptation cost and adaptation intentions for five drought- specific adaptive behaviors among 550 farmers from 12 villages in the dry zone of Sri Lanka, as well as their attitudes toward risk. Results suggest that perceived adaptation cost and risk attitude are negatively associated with adaptation intentions. The conditional effect of adaptation cost on adaptation intention as …

Dynamics Of Wild Red Raspberry (Rubus Idaeus L.) And The Influence On Tree Regeneration Within Silvicultural Openings In A Northern Hardwood Stand, Matthew J. Widen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Previous studies have investigated how the abundance of raspberries (Rubus idaeus L.) impacts tree regeneration, but few have linked these impacts to location within canopy openings with a legacy tree. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated the presence, abundance, and location of raspberries within openings containing legacy trees and the resulting impacts on tree regeneration. During the winter of 2003, 49 openings were created of three sizes: small, medium, large and 20 reference single-tree selection sites in a northern hardwood stand in Ford Forest near Alberta, Michigan. Tree regeneration and vegetative species cover were recorded in 2005 and …

Public Perception Of Environmental Programs In The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, Landa De Matamoros, Queretaro, Mexico, Danielle Marie Salisbury

Bard Center for Environmental Policy

Biological or ecological corridors have recently been sought out as a solution to biodiversity loss due to habitat fragmentation. In eastern Mexico, the Mexican and German governments are collaborating to connect fragmented landscapes and Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) over five states across a Madrean Pine-Oak biodiversity hotspot through the implementation of the Ecological Corridor of the Sierra Madre Oriental (CESMO). One of the ways the CESMO is accomplishing its conservation goals is by extending environmental programs that are currently in place within NPAs to other areas within the corridor, but outside of NPA borders. However, the success of the corridor …

The Relationship Between Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Stakeholder Pressure, And Financial Performance, Zulfiya Tchaikovsky

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Corporate sustainability confronts significant challenges when supply chain managers pursue short-term financial performance to meet stakeholders' expectations. To achieve sustainable economic success, organizational managers need to understand the relationship between corporate sustainability and long-term financial performance. Based on the resource dependence theory, the purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between sustainable supply chain management (SCM), stakeholder pressure, and corporate sustainability performance. The population consisted of worldwide public organizations from Newsweek Global Green Ranking 2016 list engaged in sustainable SCM. The secondary data for the study were collected from databases hosted by Sustainalytics and Standard & Poor's. …

Sustainability Practices That Influence Profitability In The Petroleum Industry, Lionel Bryan Small

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Petroleum industries in the U.S. attract increased scrutiny from governmental bodies, businesses, and the civil society for their lack of sustainability practices, such as air emissions control, the use of cleaner fuels, and water pollution mitigation. Although the short-term cost of implementing these practices may be high as stated by a sample of the industry's leaders, long-term benefits include lower business costs and a reduction of the adverse impacts on society, the environment, and the economy. This multiple-case study highlighted the practices of several petroleum industry leaders who demonstrated an exception to these practices-who have been clear thought leaders in …

The Relationship Between Ethical Leadership And Sustainability In Small Businesses, David Amisano

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Since the 2008 financial crisis, business leaders' ethical behaviors have been under scrutiny. These leaders face uncertainty regarding ethical leadership behaviors and their impact. Because small business leadership involves multiple facets of behavior and decision-making, small business leaders may have an insufficient understanding of the impact of ethical leadership behaviors on the sustainability of their businesses. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between ethical leadership and financial, social, and environmental sustainability in small businesses. Integrated social contracts theory was the theoretical framework. The participants consisted of 80 members of a chamber of commerce located in …

Effective Leadership And Nonprofit Sustainability, Vaughn Orsborne Gleaves

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A sustainability plan of an organization is useless without effective leadership in its design and execution. The purpose of this case study was to explore strategies that church leaders having at least 7 continuous years of organizational fiscal sustainability and leadership used to ensure fiscal sustainability. The study included 8 face-to-face and 2 phone interviews with 4 senior pastors, 3 associate pastors, a treasurer, a finance committee chair, and a certified public accountant who lived in the Akron, Ohio area along with a review of documents including a leadership meeting agenda and financial committee meeting agenda, provided by study participants. …

Implications Of A Health Careers Exploration Program For Minority Student Matriculation, Angelica Ellman Christie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Organizations that deliver programs to promote the entry of students from marginalized populations into the U.S. health workforce often struggle to demonstrate the effective achievement of outcomes, and face diminishing fiscal resources. This study was an empirical examination of the extent and manner that a statewide, precollege, health careers exploration program fostered the matriculation of underrepresented minority students into health degree education programs. Schneider and Stevenson's aligned ambitions framework provided the theoretical foundation. The research questions for this study examined the relationship between program participation and the successful health degree matriculation of racial minority students based on the extent of …

Small To Medium Enterprise Succession Planning: Millennial Employee Development, Mark Tarmann Jr.

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Increased mobility and a growing presence in the workforce by millennial employees are pushing sustainability to the forefront of concerns for business leaders. Especially for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) with limited human capital resources and no formal succession plans. Thus, increasing the need for insight on millennial employee development to mitigate voluntary turnover. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore successful millennial employee developmental strategies employed by 3 SMEs leaders in southern New Jersey. These SMEs leaders were the ideal population with millennial employees with 3 or more years of employment and not solely family-run organizations. …