dealing with waste at a young age I was
put in charge of my family’s trash my
job included a daily emptying of every
waste paper basket and trashcan in the
house and I had to take it outside but
my chore didn’t end there since we lived
outside the city limits we didn’t have
residential garbage pickup so I had to
take all the trash
I took outside and I had it divided into
two categories the stuff that would burn
and the stuff that wouldn’t I would take
the things that would burn and I would
take them way in the backyard and put
them in a large metal barrel and I would
burn them pretty good job for a young
kid then I would take all the things
that wouldn’t burn aerosol cans glass
jars and whatnot and I would put them in
garbage cans trash cans behind the
garage then when those trash cans were
full I needed to notify my dad and we
would take those trash cans and we would
load them up in his old car and we would
drive them out to the town dump I don’t
know why but I liked going to the town
dump
I liked traveling those gravel paths and
that alien-looking place filled with odd
sounds odd sights some odd smells with
piles of things smoldering of what knows
what smoke going into the air of what
knows what’s going up and then I have to
admit I like leaving the dump because my
trash cans were empty my trash was now
someone else’s problem Oh 40 years ago I
worked at Great America outside Chicago
and my job there was the empty trash
cans the job there was called doing
Garbo after we put the trash in the
large dumpsters in the back of the park
I don’t know what happened so over the
years I’ve worked at grocery stores I’ve
worked at restaurants
[Music]
and I’ve worked at other parks and it
seemed like every job I’ve ever had part
of my job was to deal with trash
so how come now as an academic dean at a
midsize comprehensive university am I
still talking trash well it started for
me when our students did a environmental
audit in 2001 and our University made a
commitment to become more sustainable we
entered into fair trade agreements we
put in renewable energy installations we
tried to manage waste
so as 24/7 living and working
communities universities are wonderful
places to model advancements of
sustainability one brief look at Sierra
Club magazines
school school program will allow you to
see all the amazing things that
universities across the country are
doing in the area of sustainability
among these are energy are renewable
energy installations such as
photovoltaic and solar panels wind
turbines geothermal systems green roofs
bioswales natural lighting and things
like that for universities of which I am
aware operate biogas plants so let me
give you one example of something
universities have to deal with we offer
flexible abundant food programs for our
students some which include cafeteria
buffet style selections
unfortunately these types of food
services lead to a lot of waste in fact
on average a college student throws away
about a hundred and forty two pounds of
food a year in total US universities
throw away about twenty two million
pounds of food now a lot of universities
are working on this problem through
trayless dining halls or compost
programs but this problem on our campus
led to the construction of our first dry
fermentation anaerobic bio digester
which is
about a quarter-mile from our main
campus this digester really contains
about for really large garage type
storage areas in which we put organic
waste anaerobic means the absence of
oxygen so what happens is anaerobic
microorganisms eat the waste and through
their digestive process they create
methane rich gas we capture that methane
gas and that methane gas is burned in a
generator and it creates electricity and
it creates heat also the leftover waste
is further composted and we sell it as
fertilizer so in some sense a digester
is just a souped up form of
decomposition and a technologically
efficient way to turn waste into energy
our digester process is about 11,000
tons of organic waste a year that’s
waste that is agricultural waste yard
waste and food waste including all of
the food waste on our campus so that’s
11,000 tons of waste that otherwise
would be put into landfills so why is
this important believe it or not as the
family trash master I have a lot of
experience knowing how fast trash
accumulates each American generates
about 4.5 4 pounds of trash per day so
that’s about 30 pounds a week 132 pounds
a month or 1,600 pounds per year so a
family of four accumulates over three
tons of trash in a single year coming
from a family of six I was a pretty busy
12 year old now of course not all of
that trash accumulates in the household
a lot of this trash is accumulated in
the whole process of living in the
United States and buying things and
working here so collectively
if you take it all together the United
States generates 254 million tons of
trash per year
now after recycling programs and other
things we’re left with about a hundred
and sixty-two million tons of trash that
has to be dealt with putting all that
trash into landfills is wreaking havoc
and I do mean wreaking think about that
a hundred and sixty two million tons a
year year after year left to decompose
in landfills creating lethal greenhouse
gases contributing to climate change and
global warming we often don’t think
about it in fact it’s easy not to think
about it because we put our trash where
we don’t have to look at it remember my
dad had me put those trash cans behind
the garage but something needs to be
done with all this trash so what can be
done what can we do how do we solve this
problem of working on trash so a lot of
that trash has to do with food waste of
that trash I’ll give you a couple of an
examples of that trash about forty five
million tons or forty five million tons
of that trash is food wastes of the 254
now this is food food waste that’s sold
or it is accumulated as food is produced
sold consumed all the way through the
process so let me give you kind of a
crappy example here people in the United
States eat about 40 pounds of cheese
per person per year in the United States
with Scott of the United States cheese
production Wisconsin produces about 25
percent or a quarter of that cheese we
have about a hundred and twenty seven
cheese plants just here in the state of
Wisconsin in the state of Wisconsin we
also have about ninety four hundred
dairies and Wisconsin is home to over a
million dairy cattle so what we have
here in Wisconsin is a lot of milk about
90% of our milk goes to cheese
production we have a lot of cheese and
forgive me we have a lot of poop so we
have this problem to deal with that’s
connected to food waste our second
digester that we worked on is on a 9,000
cow dairy which produces a lot of milk
in fact they produce about one tanker
truck of milk every 30 minutes in
addition all of their milk goes to
cheese production so in addition to all
the milk they produce they produce about
a hundred and ten thousand tons of
manure per year the manure that’s our
digester in the bottom that manure goes
into that digester and is turned into
electricity we create enough electricity
in that digester to power 1,100 US homes
which is equivalent to about 40 percent
of the electricity my University needs
the first digester is about 9 percent of
what our university needs in addition we
work with small dairies as well
the picture on the top is a pilot
project it’s a small portable digester
which is on a hundred and thirty five
cow dairy farm so our goal here is to
try to mitigate and reduce waste manage
that waste try to reduce our dependence
on fossil fuels reduce carbon emission
and try to increase use of renewable
energies in the United States we about
87% of our energy produced is produced
using fossil fuels that’s
environmentally unfriendly and fossil
fuels are finite so increasing our use
of renewables is one possible solution
to waste management as well as
increasing the use of renewable energies
and decreasing carbon emissions in 2009
my interest in waste management took me
to Germany at that time in the country
of Germany there were 6,000 biogas
plants across the country compared to
250 anaerobic digesters on u.s. farms
six thousand versus 250 why is that well
the answer is complicated but the answer
has a lot to do with the availability
and the abundance of natural resources
in the United States it has to do with
current policy around energy in the
United States and it has to do with
profit margin however this is where
universities come in in fact I was on
one of these tours of a biogas facility
in Germany and an operator asked me why
is an academic dean on a facility tour
the answer I wanted to say was well I
knew as an administrator I have to deal
with metaphoric BS and I thought I
should have some experience with the
real thing but the real reason is
universities can take the lead because
they are centers of innovation and
research the technology exists to turn
waste into energy it’s just not
economically profitable at this time but
how can the university take the lead as
living learning laboratories and show
that we can develop sound profitable
biogas plants that can help us mitigate
or
waste in addition to providing research
opportunities for our faculty staff and
students these facilities have enhanced
our programs in engineering economics
political science environmental studies
geology rural studies and environmental
health in addition we have the
opportunity to develop and demonstrate
these facilities as outreach programs
for k-12 schools for municipalities and
for businesses so our goal here again is
to try to educate and to try to research
and to try to find out what will work
and change the way we produce energy in
the next generation also our
international partnership has allowed
our faculty staff and students to look
at waste management and renewable
energies and energy policies from an
international perspective so we hope to
enhance our community we hope to educate
our students we hope to graduate
technically skilled knowledgeable
students who are able and willing to
enter the International and national
debate on waste management and renewable
energies I am NOT a physicist but the
first law of thermodynamics states that
energy can be neither created nor can it
be destroyed it can only be changed from
one form into another
in my youth I got rid of waste by either
burning it or by passing it on to
someone else I now know that waste is
energy and we can either use it or we
can waste it
thank you [Applause]