Winning!

2011 I2S Winning Team.  Click to Play Video

Urban RePeel, a team consisting of Jared McGrath and Ryan Ravanelle from the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, and Nicole Sullivan from Environmental Engineering, won the 2011 Georgia Tech  Ideas To SERVE competition. In addition, the team also picked up the People’s Choice Award for the poster competition and runner-up in the overall People’s Choice Award. Urban RePeel aims to collect food waste from densely populated urban areas, where food waste rates approach 50%, and transform it into high quality fertilizer with the help of red wriggler worms grown on an industrial scale.  The worms can eat their own weight in food waste every day, and excrete an organic fertilizer that is highly coveted by gardeners as an alternative to chemical fertilizers. This cyclical solution solves several problems at once. 

• American municipalities pay $1 billion a year to haul food waste to rapidly filling landfills where it decomposes releasing greenhouse gases. 
• The substitution of synthetic fertilizers with an organic alternative prevents pollution of waterways from runoff and results in healthier and more productive plants.
• Organic fertilizers also reduce dependence on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions because their production is energy intensive and uses natural gas as a feedstock.

Ideas To SERVE (I2S) is an annual student competition where teams present ideas for products, ventures or services that simultaneously solve social and environmental problems as well as demonstrate that they can be financially self-sustaining.  The I2S competition is organized by the Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship at the Georgia Tech College of Management.  This year’s sponsors are:

• Gray Ghost Ventures
• MaRC Sustainable Design & Manufacturing
• Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
• College of Management
• Tedd Munchak Chair in Entrepreneurship
• Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship

Additional Links:

• ILE
• I2S Competition Page
• Urban RePeel Poster
• Urban RePeel Short Video 
• Georgia Tech News Item
• Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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How to Earn a Degree in Sustainability at Georgia Tech

In the latter half of the 1800s, there was no better career advice than to “go West young man.”[1] In the latter half of the 1900s, success was summarized and made famous in one word: “plastics.”[2] And so it is that every generation gets advice on how to succeed, and today there is no higher career calling than one that is “sustainable.” Nations concerned about security, scientists concerned about climate change, corporations concerned about costs, consumers concerned about value, and parents concerned about the world that their children will inherit are all pointing towards a future world painted green. It is no surprise then that the students now on the doorstep of our colleges and universities are wanting to prepare themselves to seize what could be the greatest opportunity since the first Industrial Revolution. At Georgia Tech, many enterprising students have already figured out how to get a degree in sustainability, even if those words are not stamped on their diploma at graduation. For the many more yearning for clearer direction, here is your roadmap.

There are a handful of universities and colleges that in recent years have begun to offer explicitly a BS, MS, or PhD degree in sustainability. Like any other discipline, students enter these programs and are introduced and indoctrinated into the theory and practice of the field, but at the same time, are isolated from the population of other students and worldviews that are being taught at the same place of higher learning. Within these schools and colleges, faculty are hired, courses are developed, and degree curriculum requirements are established. Follow the formula and one can earn her BS in four years, MS in two, and PhD in five. This is good. It offers students a clear means to a clear end. But it is not the Georgia Tech way (easy never is).

There is a long running series of commercials for canned tuna that always includes the lines: “Starkist doesn’t want tuna with good taste. Starkist wants tuna that tastes good.” With a twist of a few words, that could be Georgia Tech’s approach to sustainability education. “Georgia Tech doesn’t want practicing sustainable engineers. Georgia Tech wants engineers practicing sustainability.”  From the Institute’s first dalliances in sustainability in the early 1990s, a conscious decision was made to not create a new discipline within a new school and offering new courses and new degrees. Instead, it was decided to infuse and incorporate sustainability into all of the existing degree programs already at Georgia Tech. With a $1 million grant from the General Electric Foundation in 1992, the Institute leaped into the challenge and quickly accomplished this aim. Today, there are elements of sustainability in every program of study. Rather than just teach about technology, faculty will now challenge students to consider the social, economic, and environmental impacts of technology (and more often than not, it is the students that challenge the faculty). A couple decades ago, this was a radical change for a technological research university. Georgia Tech’s Dean of Engineering at the time characterized it as “a change in mindset, not just a change in problem set.” Today, it is probably safe to say that such integration is expected, and some other universities have even caught on and are taking the same steps that Georgia Tech did years ago. Their students are demanding it. Their young faculty are demanding it. The market is demanding it.

Today, empathy is still a necessary characteristic of sustainability, but it is not sufficient. Proficiency is also required, and for enterprising students, this is where Georgia Tech shines. Few universities have as few barriers as Georgia Tech – intellectual or administrative – to the movement of students, faculty, and ideas in and out of its schools and colleges. Such flexibility allows students to piece together programs of study that on the surface appear to be distant and disconnected, but are wholly necessary for the world they are entering. Take the college career path of one recent Georgia Tech graduate, a Udall Scholarship winner. Thomas Christian earned simultaneous degrees in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences and International Affairs while also serving in an internship with the CIA. One short generation ago, fresh graduates hit the streets as newly minted engineers, or scientists, or businessmen, or doctors, or lawyers, or any of tens or hundreds of other identities. I’m still not sure what Thomas is (Scientist? Diplomat? Information Analyst?), and by no means could a university bureaucracy be creative enough or nimble enough to create an a priori program of study like his. But to solve the most vexing problems that we might see in the next 50 to 100 years (like negotiating carbon emissions agreements between nations, or the humanitarian caring of environmental refugees, or understanding the opportunities that present themselves as variations in culture across a global economic marketplace), my money is much more on the men and women that have figured it out, like Thomas Christian, than it is on the focused single minded majority that are still the norm (no matter how competent they are).


Real degrees in sustainability don’t have the word “sustainability” scrawled across them in 32 point Old English type. But a fully credentialed graduate of sustainability is easy to spot. They are the ones that are using their choices in electives, minors, co-ops, internships, and research programs to reach outside of their primary degree disciplines. They are the ones leaving Georgia Tech with resumes that sport an abundance of “&’s” such as: BS degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering & Public Policy; or MS in Mechanical Engineering & Minor in Economics; or PhD in Biology, Thesis: Honeybee Production & the Logistics of Industrial Manufacturing. And after they graduate, they are the ones that are making the greatest positive difference in the lives of people, & the health of the planet, & the wealth of all.

One day soon, Georgia Tech may be able to offer a clearer path to a degree in sustainability. In early 2011, a committee was formed to explore the creation of Georgia Tech’s 7^th college. If the faculty can figure out how to make it work, the “X College” will join the Colleges of Engineering, Science, Architecture, Management, Computing, and Liberal Arts. “‘The X-College Initiative grew from the very strong recommendations from students and faculty in the strategic planning process that Georgia Tech needs to increase student-faculty interaction and allow more flexibility in curricula,’ said Richard Barke, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy and chair of the X-College planning committee. ‘For example, the X-College is considering whether to allow students — with strong faculty guidance — to compose programs of study that focus on particular grand challenges facing society, using knowledge from a wide range of relevant fields. The committee is investigating how to achieve these goals while balancing disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning, maintaining the traditional rigor of a Tech education, innovating in learning techniques and educational technologies, and respecting the expectations of graduate schools and employers.’”[3] Thus if X is the future, a few years from now, my advice to students seeking degrees in sustainability will be to “Go ‘X’ young man!” But until that time, “Go ‘&’ young man!” will have to do.

By Michael E. Chang

Deputy Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems

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[1] Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune certainly popularized the phrase though there seems to be some uncertainty in whether or not he was the original source.


[2] From the movie “The Graduate” (1967).


[3] Provost Forms Committee to Develop ‘X-College’ Initiative; GT News Release; January 7, 2011; Atlanta, GA; http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=63418

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Extreme Makeover - Urban Edition

By Michael E. Chang

Deputy Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems

May 2010

When the question was asked “Why do you rob banks?” the infamous retort was “Because that is where the money is.” And so it is with sustainability and cities. Globally, more people now live in urban areas than in rural areas. While we passed that majority urban milestone in Georgia about 50 years ago, and in the US almost 100 years ago, this is only a recent occurrence for humanity as a whole. With trends still increasing in both the developed and developing world, urban living looks to be firmly rooted as the new norm, displacing the rural form that was the standard for the previous 200,000 years. But while cities may be the new norm, they are certainly not normal, at least not by nature’s laws. Cities are agglomerations of high concentrations of people, materials, and energy of the order and like of which have no counterpart in the natural world. Cities, as we know them, do not exist in nature because they are not sustainable. If cities – both big and small – are now the desired form of human settlement though, and if they are to serve as a viable home for us forevermore, we must solve this problem.

Up to now, cities have been built and continue to thrive as a result of relentless injections of fossil fuels, mined minerals, and harvested stocks, and the equally relentless export of wastes and pollution. This was fine when urban expanses were small and the world and all of its resources seemed enormously big, but now the resource pie doesn’t seem to be big enough to feed all of our appetites, and the places we used to dump our wastes are now overflowing. If sustainability is defined as living within the means of nature, then cities are not meeting the standard. They consume more resources than nature can replenish and produce more wastes than nature can assimilate. And likely they always will. A sustainable city is like a perfect union – an ideal that one can move closer towards, yet never quite attain. In the United States, we pursue a “more perfect union.” In the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, our internal research efforts and external research exhortations focus on creating more sustainable cities.

The cities we built are good, but they can’t go on as they have. The signals – from economic globalization to global climate change – scream the need for substantial change. But where does one begin? How about at the beginning! If cities are to reduce their carbon emissions by 80% in the next 50 to 100 years, or provide enough water to quench the thirst of 50 to 100% more residents, incremental change is not going to get the job done. The cities of today were conceived by ancient Roman engineers and optimized through history. But we’ve squeezed about as much as we can out of the designs that we have. Our cities must now be re-envisioned, redesigned, re-engineered, and rebuilt, and the place to start is infrastructure.

Infrastructure consists of those major systems that constitute the backbone of a city. Infrastructure includes the transportation system, the energy system, the water supply system, the wastewater system, the buildings and the parks, the technologies we use to communicate, the means we employ for education, and all those pieces that provide safety, security, and comfort. Infrastructure is those really big elements that we often take for granted when they are working, and find disastrous when they fail. To change infrastructure is not easy, but we have opportunities that the Romans didn’t consider. Chief among them is a systems mindset, or rather a “system of systems” mindset. The greatest opportunity to make cities more sustainable in the not too distant future, while also creating jobs and prosperity for all, is to reconsider how all the infrastructure pieces fit and function together as a whole, rather than as individual elements. Such integration is only possible when the different parties that designed, built, or operate these components are brought together, all at once, to consider how they might leverage each others’ resources for their own objectives. And therein lays the purpose of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.

On February 9, the BBISS submitted a major proposal to the National Science Foundation to establish an Engineering Research Center focused on sustainable and resilient urban infrastructure. In this project, a team of nearly 100 researchers from seven different universities proposed to build the cyber-infrastructure one needs to design, test, and optimize whole urban systems. On April 15, the BBISS assisted the Georgia Water Resources Institute with its own major proposal to the NSF on water, sustainability, and climate. Here, a multidisciplinary team from three universities planned to develop the means to understand the whole of Georgia’s water resources in regards to its municipal, industrial, ecological, and economic utilities in the face of a changing southeastern US climate dynamic. In both regards, it was through leadership, communication, decision-making, and human and financial resource development that the BBISS is seeking to drive the research that will provide the sound fundamental basis for the transformations that our state, our nation, and the world need to survive and thrive now and in the future.

Atlanta: Birthplace of Sustainability?

By Michael E. Chang
Deputy Director
Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
December 2009

Atlanta, Georgia – a proud but generally unassuming city founded in 1837 on the Appalachian Piedmont of the Southeastern United States – has been the backdrop from which the world has been inspired to fundamentally change on two fronts: economic growth and social equity. Interestingly enough, these form two of the three legs of sustainability. So why shouldn’t Atlanta also inspire the third leg: environment? And couldn’t an integrating of these three factors – economy, equity, and environment – serve as the driving force behind the re-envisioning and re-engineering of what is now an unsustainable Atlanta with ripples of reinvention lapping outwards throughout Georgia, the nation, and the planet?

One aim of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems is to do just that: inspire. Beginning with this essay and continuing in this space in the months ahead, we will host a forum for “BIG IDEAS.” We’re looking for concepts and challenges that seek to change this unsustainable present that we are in, into a sustainable future in which economic prosperity is achieved justly, and within the ability of nature to provide resources and assimilate wastes. From time to time, guest “editorialists” – of prominence and anonymity, of young and old, of black and white, of rich and poor, and of expert and lay – will be invited to share their big ideas through this forum. Can we find the next great idea to follow the “New South” of Henry Grady, or the “Dream” of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Time will tell. The only certainty we have is that the odds are higher when we actively look for it. In this first essay, the challenge is laid down to find it here, in Atlanta, Georgia, and to complete the sustainability triad.

Atlanta, and indeed most of the South, was very poor after the Civil War. With the end of Reconstruction and the federal aid that came with it, the city was forced to figure out a plan to right itself. Though absent in financial capital, land was abundant, labor was cheap, resources were plenty, taxes were low, and government was tolerant. Such alternative wealth was packaged under a “New South” brand, so brilliantly articulated by Atlanta’s Henry Grady, and sold to investors far and wide. With the subsequent century long infusion of capital, the South, and no city more so than Atlanta, rose from obscurity to prosperity. Others caught on and it isn’t too far of a stretch to say that by the latter part of the 20th and the first part of the 21st Centuries, places like Mexico, and later China and India were soon “out-New Southing” the New South. What Atlanta invented, perfected, and then shared with the world was an economic roadmap for transforming poor and developing areas into wealthy engines of success. This was Atlanta’s first major global contribution.

Its second contribution arose from the mid 20th Century struggle for human equality. As the “Cradle of Civil Rights,” Atlanta played an important role in redefining the creed that all men are created equal. In a city too busy to hate, leadership and a path forward was found here that shifted American and, by virtue of the example democracy it provides to the world, global perceptions about human dignity, human rights, and human equality. Here at home it transformed schools and neighborhoods, businesses and industries, and written laws and unwritten values. Abroad it transformed perceptions of what constitutes legitimate government and legitimate freedom. Dr. King’s Dream was born of Atlanta and exported to the world. While injustice sadly still exists, it is more readily recognized and vanquished because of lessons learned here.

Speaking as an Atlantan then, if the experiences of our 19th Century history begat an economic paradigm that would provide for the development and growth of cities, states, and nations, and if our 20th Century experiences led to a new social compass that guided the domestic and foreign agendas of democracies everywhere, certainly it must be reasonable to expect that here now in the 21st Century the tests we face will lead to something just as remarkable. But what are those challenges today that are testing our mettle? The air is dirty. Water is scarce and contaminated. We’re altering our climate. The land is less productive. Native flora and fauna are disappearing and invasive exotics are proliferating. Food safety is being questioned. Energy is expensive. Traffic is congested. Affordable housing is scant. And parks are lagging. Intuitively, it seems a common thread could be woven through these disparate problems (e.g. growth?), but a communal solution seems far from intuitive. There is this third piece of Atlanta that is missing. As the city became more economically prosperous over the last century and a half, and as it became more socially just over the last five decades, it did not necessarily become also more environmentally benign. Even the progress we seemingly did make may have been illusory. When we traded visible smoke for invisible carbon dioxide, the problems were not fixed, but merely transferred or put off. When we built more highway capacity to fix existing traffic problems, we also created inducements for more traffic and even tougher problems to follow. And every water solution proposed for Atlanta only seems to incite our downstream neighbors.

This third leg of the sustainability stool has as yet, eluded us here in Atlanta and because of it, we now face crises on many fronts. But from these crises are also opportunities. The New South paradigm arose from an economic crisis of mammoth proportions. Civil Rights leaped forward when a few brave souls created a crisis on the bus and at the lunch counter. If Atlanta was the crucible from which these two movements sprang forth, why shouldn’t Atlanta also be the place where a third movement will also originate – a third movement that will complete the sustainability triad and anoint Atlanta as the birthplace of sustainability? We in the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems look forward to your response.