Category: Case studies

Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU)

U.S. EPA’s CRWU initiative provides drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater (water sector) utilities with practical tools, training, and technical assistance needed to increase resilience to climate change. CRWU assists water sector utilities and stakeholders by promoting a clear understanding of climate change and helps to identify potential long-term adaptation options for decision-making related to implementation and infrastructure financing.

Risk assessment tools include:

The site also features:

Resilient Strategies Guide for Water Utilities

U.S. EPA’s Resilient Strategies Guide introduces drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities to the adaptation planning process. Utilities can use the Guide to identify their planning priorities, vulnerable assets, potential adaptation strategies and available funding sources.

Information in the Guide is based on the experiences of other utilities adapting to climate change and the resources available to support them in pursuing similar strategies. Users can provide information about their utility on the site to help the Guide identify the most relevant priorities, assets, strategies, and funding sources.

The Saving Gelato Project: Walmart Foundation Food Loss + Waste Implementation Program

Download the case study.

Objectives

Righteous Gelato is a small-batch gelato company with factory operations based in Calgary, Canada. Their mission is to enrich people’s lives, one tiny spoonful at a time. They use honest ingredients and nothing artificial.

The purpose of the project was to prevent and reduce food loss & waste at the Righteous Gelato manufacturing facility in Calgary, Canada as part of the Walmart Foundation funded Food Loss & Waste Prevention & Implementation Program.

Project

Anthesis’ partner, Enviro-Stewards, conducted an on-site waste prevention assessment utilizing our award-winning Food Loss + Waste Toolkit at the Righteous Gelato manufacturing facility. We measured the savings achieved from our previous Food Loss + Waste assessment, and re-engaged the team on opportunities not implemented or new solutions found. We quantified three opportunities to make sure as much gelato as possible was not wasted from the production line, and able to be enjoyed.

A treasure trove for rural and commercial-scale solar projects

Read the full story from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

It takes grace and dexterity to manage the policy and technical challenges of adopting renewable energy while also addressing disaster preparedness—bringing diverse stakeholders to the table at the same time. Eight teams in the second round of the Solar Energy Innovation Network (SEIN) tackled those challenges and more, providing a blueprint for other communities pursuing projects focused on solar-plus-storage, the resilience benefits of solar, and the value of solar in electric distribution systems.

Bob’s Red Mill sustainability manager talks food waste reduction initiative

Read the full story at Oregon Business.

Between May and October in 2022, Milwaukie food producer Bob’s Red Mill participated in a case study with Pacific Coast Collaborative, the World Wildlife Fund, and sustainability consultant TripleWin Advisory, with the aim of generating employee-driven, ground-floor ideas for increasing company sustainability through a reduction in food waste.

According to the World Wildlife Fund food waste accounts for approximately 6%-8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions – the carbon dioxide equivalent of 32.6 million cars.

The study, published through the World Wildlife Fund in December, found 22% of employees submitted food waste reduction ideas. For the study, Bob’s Red Mill chose to implement a conveyor belt technique which reduced oat overflow. The result was a 70% reduction in wasted food per pound of food produced on the line, according to the study.

Julia Person, sustainability manager at Bob’s Red Mill, tells Oregon Business the employee response, as well at the results of the study were better than the company could have imagined, and explained how employee-driven sustainability initiatives will be priority for the company moving forward.

MnTAP publication highlights work of 2022 P2 interns

The 2022 MnTAP Solutions magazine highlights the projects led by our 16 talented interns and the companies that supported their recommendations to reduce waste, water, energy. These projects resulted in proposed solutions that could save the companies $3,068,000 annually as well as significant environmental impacts.

Bridging the gap: Equitable investment in city greenspace

Read the full story from U.S. EPA.

Green infrastructure encompasses a variety of practices that use soil and vegetation including vegetated rooftops, roadside plantings, tree-lined streets with natural canopy cover, and absorbent gardens to capture, filter, and reduce stormwater. Manufactured materials such as porous pavement is another example of GI often used in sidewalks, parking lots and driveways to increase surface permeability. Porous pavement allows rainfall to seep through to underlying layers of soil that filter the surface water before becoming groundwater.

Creating more greenspace in urban areas not only adds natural beauty to the surrounding area but can also improve the health and well-being of its residents. The presence of parks, community gardens and other vegetation can create recreational spaces, revitalize ecosystems and boost the local economy – all of which are highly beneficial to people living within those urban areas. However, these services are not always distributed equitably and can result in or perpetuate environmental injustices in received benefits.

EPA actively supports the use of both constructed and natural GI as cost-effective alternatives to traditional stormwater infrastructure to help manage wet weather flows and conducts research to identify and quantify the effects of green infrastructure and urban greenspace.

As part of this effort, a team of EPA scientists led by Matt Hopton and Page Jordan focused on identifying benefits received from urban greenspace and supporting integration of these benefits into stormwater management planning. In 2019, Hopton and team began designing a framework to demonstrate a practical approach to help communities access benefits of greenspace while managing stormwater. This effort led to the team conducting a case study to test the framework and learn if those benefits could be used in underserved urban areas. 

Cooling system energy savings in three “easy” steps

Read the full story at Chiller & Cooling Best Practices.

An Illinois food service products manufacturer now saves nearly 60% of their base annual cooling energy costs through improvements made in three phases over several years. The plant, which has a 1200 ton chilled water plant, implemented upgrades including pump and tower fan VFDs and enhanced function controls, free cooling, and chiller compressor drive retrofits. The revisions built through successive phases to capture further benefits from more complete utilization of the preceding steps’ capabilities.

Packaging Recyclability & Design reports from RECOUP

RECOUP, a UK organization committed to securing sustainable, circular, and practical solutions for plastic resources, has released a series of reports related to recyclability and design of plastic packaging. The series includes:

Non-PFAS wetting agents for decorative chromium(VI) plating

Read the full story at Products Finishing.

This article is based on a presentation given at NASF SUR/FIN 2022, in Rosemont, Illinois, in Session 6, Responses to PFAS / PFOA.  It follows the case study of three facilities’ conversion from PFAS-containing wetting agents to non-PFAS equivalents, eliminating PFAS and moving forward with a smaller and more sustainable environmental footprint.  The journey of conversion from PFAS-containing wetting agents in both chromic-sulfuric etch and hexavalent decorative plating tanks can be complicated and winding due to deep rooted standard industry practices, as well as state and federal regulations.  Outlined here is a clear course of action that led to eliminating PFAS from the facilities’ wetting agent strategies.