Project Update #2

Radish greens: underrated

Is late September the official rainy season in Bloomington? I spent a few hours at the IU Campus Garden weeding in the rain this past Tuesday, until lightning reared its head and I was forced to head inside and spend my time sanitizing equipment (not as fun). Once the thunder subsided I headed back out into the drizzle with some other volunteers to help harvest vegetables for the RPS cafeterias. We had quite a nice haul: 5 large tubs worth of tomatoes, spinach, arugula, kale, chard, leeks, and radishes. After meeting the RPS required quota, we were allowed to head back out in the rain and sample some for ourselves. I don't normally like arugula, but right out of the ground it is delicious- very mild yet spicy. That night I prepared some fresh radishes using a new recipe- did you know radish greens are edible and oh so tasty!?

This morning I sat down and spoke with Jodee Ellett of the Bloomington Local Growers Guild  to talk about her efforts to build a distribution network for local food in the region. Right now, the best ways that local farmers can get their products to market is through farmers' markets, or by connections to individual restauranteurs- generally higher class operations such as FARM or Tallent who can pay the higher prices for local food at smaller volumes.

The other option for local growers is to sell to a conventional wholesaler such as Troyers, Piazza, or US Foods, who pay very low prices. The idea of a local distribution hub would be to act as a wholesaler for local farmers who might not be able to meet mass orders of a product by themselves, but combined with others could provide local restaurants and institutions with the fresh, healthy produce they are looking for.

And they are, in fact, looking for it. According to Jodee, many members of BIRA (the Bloomington Independent Restaurants Association)  would love to source more local food as a way to support the community as well as differentiate themselves from chain restaurants. Using local food improves your quality, and also your brand. However, aside from the upscale restaurants, most either cannot afford local food or cannot deal with the uncertainty of supply availability.

The distribution hub, planned to go online in spring of 2013, would hopefully solve some of these problems by pooling supply in order to reduce variability, and decreasing operating costs per order because higher volumes and economies of scale. Even though costs to the buyer would decrease, Jodee is confident that the farmers will still be getting paid the same or better prices compared to conventional wholesalers, in part because of the use of volunteer labor to begin with. But, if volumes became large enough there is even potential to someday turn a profit.

I have reached out to two other local food distribution organizations that have served as models for the Local Growers Guild: Green Bean Delivery in Indianapolis and Grasshoppers Distribution in Louisville KY. Hopefully I will get a chance to visit one of these sites and write about it in a future blog post!

GreenBiz Executive Network

This past week, for the second year in a row I got a chance to volunteer at the GreenBiz Executive Network, a semi-annual meeting of sustainability managers working at Fortune 500 companies across the company. At the two day meeting each manager presents about some initiative or program they have successfully implemented in the past year, followed by Q&A and discussion. I was impressed by the wide range of industries present, and the honesty and openness with which the participants were able to talk about the challenges they face, including quite a good deal of 'dirty laundry'. 

In order to create this environment of openness, all attendees sign a waiver promising not to attribute specific ideas or policies to the companies implementing them. So, for confidentiality's sake, in this post I will not be naming the companies.

Some examples of ideas presented:

• An industrial electronic controls company presented  their use of 'personal control'. Each employee is able to adjust heating/cooling to their own comfort in their cubicle or office, which it turns out saves a significant amount of energy over a centralized system. One might think that allowing employees to crank it to their liking would increase energy usage, but a study the company did shows that employees are at their cubicle a surprisingly little amount of time, and the control system shuts off automatically when the cubicle is vacated. 
• An aerospace manufacturer described its work with waste reduction. In the aerospace industry, orders are highly customized, expensive, relatively few in number. Because of this, there is less focus on waste reduction during the production process than with more commoditized products- normal ,mass quality control systems like Six Sigma  don't work as effectively. However, this customer found a large opportunity for waste and cost reduction in packaging. Instead of the normal pallet/box, the sustainability team developed a large dolly that takes the product of the assembly line, loads onto the truck, is delivered to the customer, then is returned in a loop that is totally waste-free from a packaging perspective. The manager talked about how for such a conservative company and industry, small successes like this are important for convincing the company to adopt a culture of sustainability and take on larger initatives.
• A paper manufacturer discussed its transformation to a 'fiber innovation' company, acknowledging trends toward less paper consumption because of digitization of information and environmental awareness. The company is investing significant amounts into biomass energy research, and currently 75% of energy needs for its manufacturing and office facilities are powered by biomass. They are also going into the business of 'personal care' (e.g. adult needs diapers).
• An apparel retailer described an opposite problem from most manufacturers: their relatively young employee base is excited and engaged about sustainability, but their customer base for the most part does not show interest. So instead of championing sustainable products, efforts towards sustainable operations and vendor management have been the focus, and mostly out of the public eye. The manager talked about successes they have had with ongoing dialogues with key suppliers, many of whom are in developing countries where just starting to monitor energy consumption can be seen as a success. 

It was a truly eye-opening experience to hear this room of around 20 sustainability managers talk about how these programs work at their company. Some were clearly passionate about sustainability, some realized the importance for marketing their company, and some were obviously doing it because their boss told them to. But I sense there is a wide array of attitudes within corporate sustainability, and a first step to making an impact in my own career is to understand those attitudes so I can help influence change wherever I do end up after school.

Regarding Toilets

In Chapter 5, Roseland discusses ways that our society uses water, and potential opportunities for conserving that water. I started thinking about one of the most consistent ways that we use water everyday: the toilet. According to the US Geological Survey, the average toilet uses 3 gallons per flush. At an average of 3 times a day, you are looking at 3285 gallons a year, probably the largest single culprit of water waste in your home (unless you are taking really really long showers).

So.. what are some ways to reduce toilet water? One method that popped up on several internet searches was to use a plastic bottle to convert your toilet to a low flush toilet. Watch this handy video below:

According to the video, this easy method can save 25% of the water with every flush, bringing your yearly output down to around 2464 gallons. Still a lot, but better.

Now, let's say you are willing to spend some dough on a toilet upgrade. What are your options? First is a dual flush toilet, that lets you choose your level of water output in a "binary fashion" between large and small, for obvious reasons. My first exposure to dual flush toilets was my first time to Japan, where all toilets have dual flush options (along with many other options, such as seat heating and bidet functionality, but we won't get into that here). Apparently the technology was first invented by an Australian!

大=big, 小=small

Although dual-flush is certainly not the standard in the U.S. yet, a quick look around online shows a range of dual-flush toilets available, generally around $400-800. That is a pretty hefty investment for a young homeowner, with a payback period of around 3-5 years, depending on the source. However, there is also a DIY approach to dual flush. Conversion kits are available for as low as $30.

So, let's do the math once again. If one converts to a dual-flush toilet, either by new model or DIY, let's assume two flushes per day are of the smaller quantity variety. With the changes our daily output comes to an average of 6 gallons a day, which with the low-flow conversion (plastic bottle) above turns into about 4.5 gallons a day, for an annual output of about 1640 gallons. Still a significant number, but about 1/2 as much as when we started, and for only $30 and at max a few hours of work!

Project Update #1

The Campus Garden on a beautiful misty Friday morning.

I have decided to focus the scope of my personal project, and concentrate on learning about the local food supply chain in a hands-on way. At the Big Red Eats Green Festival I had the chance to speak with some representatives from the IU Campus Garden initiative and wanted to get involved, so I went to my first workday last Friday. I spent the morning weeding, watering trees, and picking a lot of tomatoes of several varieties!

Just a small sample of the yellow cherry tomatoes I picked. Sweet like candy!

In addition to the tomatoes, I also harvested basil, kale, lemon cucumbers, bell peppers, and a whole watermelon to take home with me. There was also swiss chard, but I didn't take that as my wife hates swiss chard (she claims it tastes like beets.

Freshly picked watermelon! 

After the harvest, I sat down with Sara, the Campus Garden coordinator, to talk about ways to get involved with the garden outside of the regular workdays. The garden as a good relationship with  the IU RPS (residential programs & services), and contributes the bulk of its produce to be used in the dining halls. The biggest challenge in this program is making sure all food goes through correct sanitation procedures before delivery. We talked about possibly formalizing a process to make this easier for volunteers and increase the efficiency of food coming from the garden to the dining halls. 

In addition to food from the campus garden, there is a push to source more local food to the dining halls and student union in general. It is one thing when the food is free, but another when the campus has to purchase local food from outside farms. Sara said this can get tricky and there are sometimes complications and disagreements regarding pricing and regulations (for example, what level of organic certification is required?), but offered to put me in touch with one of the people managing this program. With my particular interest in supply chain and vendor management, I am very curious to see what the specific issues are involved in sustainable sourcing on the local level. 

So, it was a successful visit, and I look forward to not only getting more involved with the campus garden this semester, but also doing some research into the food supply chain of the IU RPS. Stay tuned for more!

Big Red Go Green

I like food, and when given the opportunity to eat something and write about it for class credit, you better believe I am going to show up! Last Friday I checked out the Big Red Go Green Food Fair to learn about some of the restaurants serving locally grown food, and campus initiatives to learn more about the local food movement.

Big Red Go Green Food Fair

The first restaurant I ate from was the Upland Brewery. Sadly they were not serving beer, but I did have a sample of a delicious mozzerela caprese sandwich, for only a dollar!

Upland Brewery Caprese Sandwich

Next, I visited the booth of the IU Community Gardens. I have been wanting to try my hand at gardening for a while now, and it could work well with my class project. So, I am planning to start volunteering there next week. Keep tuned for more blog posts about that.

IU Community Gardens: Campus Garden Initiative

One of my first memories of Bloomington was the Dean of the business school telling us incoming MBAs that his favorite restaurant was Restaurant Tallent. After looking at the pricey menu once, I never thought I would have a chance to sample their goods- well I was wrong!

I had myself a delicious BBQ squash sandwich and watermelon limeade.  

It was nice to see some of the more well known local restaurants out, but I would have liked a little more information on CSAs and where to buy local ingredients myself, other than the usual suspects like the farmers' market and Bloomingfoods. I suppose that will take a bit more research!