News of 2005
SEF
Conference Call Minutes of
1.
Chair's observation (Subhas)
2004 Overview: successful year. SEF is in good financial shape and growing. Both SEF and
2.
Current Business:
SEF Programming in
SEF
organized 12 sessions for Spring 2005 meeting at
Yinlum
suggested that that we think about organizing a workshop to get involvement by
university community. Perhaps a
NSF/EPA/DOE workshop centered on sustainability issues and tools for the
academic community? (In later
development, it seems likely that EPA could lead and fund such a workshop)
INFORMS
has IE and Sustainability sessions in their October meeting. Urmila offered to cosponsored them on
SEF’s behalf. Perhaps an Exec.
Comm. member could volunteer to give a talk about SEF activities.
SEF Workshops (Earl)
5
workshops for Atlanta 2005. 1.
Science Behind Sustainability, 2. Business Case for Sustainability, 3. Tools of
Sustainability, 4. Individual Activism for Sustainability, 5. Free Workshop by
T. Morero of U. Missouri Columbia (case studies on companies using
sustainability concepts in business practice). 24 enrolled in Earl Beaver’s sessions. Green Chemistry/Engineering Conference:
Wed.
IfS/SEF partnerships (Darlene)
IfS
Managing Board has been working on a fee schedule for external partners
(ASME). Proposal to AWMA has been
submitted. IfS is considering to
expand its roundtable to others that can not pay now (CCR, ASEE, etc.). Cooperative agreements with ASEE and
ASCE is being worked on. IfS will
publish a Joint newsletter with ASCE and ASEE. A graduate student at Dept. of Food Sci. and Nutrition at
ACS-Washington (Subhas)
ACS/I&EC
– AIChE is organizing 6 sessions in collaboration with ACS for the ACS annual
meeting in
SEF Virtual Meeting (Earl)
Sequel
to hydrogen meeting set for March 18th. 24 people are registered. Keep to technology, science and policy. Several others are interested in
attending but cannot call for various reasons. The topics for the next two virtual meetings are: societal
implications of nanotechnology, and climate change. ASME and ETH (
Members' E-mail issue (Earl)
SEF
update and virtual meetings are encountering problems because firewalls at
various corporate locations block with e-mail list more than 10-25. Others with web links are blocked or
with attachments greater than 1 MB.
Earl is fixing these manually by sending to 4-5 addresses, and to
personal address. About 10% of the
350 or so addresses are rejected when emails are sent.
Website, webmaster, and
membership (Yinlun and Darlene)
Current
website has 7 sections. No idea
how frequently it is visited. Yinlun’s
Postdoc to create a mechanism to count visits. Events page constantly updated. Links to session names with descriptions. Newsletter monthly and/or quarterly
based might increase visits to SEF web site. This might also help solve the emails problem. Membership side: forms on the web
site. Asking for other web sites
on sustainability – contact Yinlun.
Publications: nothing there yet?
Subhas suggested that Exec. Comm. members should visit the web site and
provide Yinlun with suggestions for improvement. Increase membership of undergraduate students: suggestion to
contact student chapter advisors.
AIChE has a list of advisors.
Update on
Industry-Gov-Academe-NGO activities (Ralph)
Registration
format for information on organization/contacts. He and his students will work on this next week and get back
to Yinlun next week.
3.
Future Business:
Election of Officers to take
over in
SEF
will initiate the boarding process in the next 2-3 months. Shonnard and Subhas will discuss to get
the process started. Herb
discussed the rotation of leadership in the Environmental Division at AIChE,
where a Vice Chair is elected and rotated in when Chair’s term is up. This keeps continuity. Yinlun suggestion: Should we create 2-4
areas like other AIChE divisions?
This may be a good way to have each area can organize activities. Is this too early in SEF development?
Awards (Subhas and Bob S.)
Table
this for now. Create 2 awards for
students for free admissions to the
4.
Other Issues
AIChE
asked Subhas if we have plans to increase fee structure for 2006. Current dues is $20 for SEF and this is
in the middle of the range for AIChE organizations. Darlene suggested we keep it the way it is.
SIOC
(Societal Impacts Operation Committee) of AIChE: They are very interested in
SEF collaboration. Subhas will
follow up. Earl is a liaison
between SEF and SIOC. Also Subhas
is involved.
CCPS
wants to work with SEF to get involved in a AIChE design contest problem. Darlene is helping organize the P3
design contest (from EPA).
5. Next meeting: Timing was not discussed.
News of 2004
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Webmaster
SEF
welcomes our new webmaster, Qiang Xu.
Dr. Xu is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow, working with one of SEF’s
executive committee members, Yinlun Huang, in the Department of Chemical
Engineering and Materials Science at
Qiang has
three major thrusts to his current research:
·
Integrated Modeling and Statistical Hierarchical Optimization for
Improved Film-build and Defect Reduction on Automotive Polymeric Coating:
funded by NSF, Ford and DuPont.
·
Integrated Drag-out and Dynamic Water Allocation for Maximum Water and
Energy Reduction in the Electroplating Industry: funded by NSF.Chemical System
Safety and Security Enhancement Using Advanced Computing Methods: funded by
Qiang is an
excellent addition to our team.
First SEF Virtual Meeting
The first
SEF Virtual Meeting took place on April 22. The agenda was ambitious and the twenty-six participants
were very active, but unable to complete all of the items listed. We had two excellent note-takers who
have provided detailed material for proceedings. That will be sent to first meeting participants;
subsequently, it will be posted on the SEF website. A summary of the discussion of three of the questions
follows:
Do we have
a sufficiently common definition of Sustainability so that we can speak from
the same starting point?
Summary: Yes – the Brundtland definition works
fine as an overall definition, although there may be better definitions for
particular situations. Earl Beaver
and John Carberry will share their adaptations. (Earl offers this as a possible choice for further
discussion: “Meeting society’s needs for products and services with
progressively less net negative impact on the Earth.”).
Should sustainability
tools enable comparisons across an industry, or across products? Should a purchaser of materials be able
to compare my suppliers – while a manufacturer strives to not reveal too much?
Summary: No consensus on this, but much spirited
and interesting discussion. There
is likely no “one size fits all” set of metrics – numerators or
denominators. One needs to
consider who the user will be (R&D chemists, business management,
consumers, etc.), and what action they will take (chemical process, products
made, purchases, etc.).
Availability of data is also a potential constraint.
Sustainability
metrics and tools are still relatively immature. What are the short and long term objectives that will help
establish priorities for tool development?
Summary: No consensus on this either, but more
lively discussion. A key point
again is that there are different “right” answers to the question, depending on
the customer and the need. Metrics
can be good as benchmarks, but also need to make sure that use of metrics leads
to changes and improvements – since our ultimate goal is to improve life rather
than our metric score. Charlene
Wall reported some interesting work supported by BASF on social metrics, which
she will share.
ACTION
ITEMS:
John
Carberry to send Earl Beaver his chemical industry adaptation of Brundtland
statement.
Charlene
Wall to send Earl Beaver public information on the development of social
metrics by BASF.
Earl
Beaver to send those, plus the proposed IfS sustainability statement and
information on the value of life extension (Quality of Life-Years) to the
participants.
The next
meeting will be May 27th from
Please
notify me as soon as possible (Erbeav@aol.com
or inst4sust@sbcglobal.net) if you plan to
participate. As before,
pre-meeting material will be provided approximately one week prior to the call.
Green Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
The 8th
Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference will be held at The National
Academies in
2005 AIChE Spring National Meeting
SEF
volunteers are needed for the 2005 Spring National Meeting April 10-14, in
SEF Updates – General
If you
have comments for suggestions regarding these updates, e.g., frequency, length,
content or format, please contact me by E-mail. If you volunteer to assist in preparing future updates also
let me know.
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News from New Orleans AIChE
Spring Meeting
The Bylaws
of the Institute for Sustainability were approved without change. Copies of the bylaws are available by
contacting me at Erbeav@aol.com or by writing to IfS at inst4sust@sbcglobal.net
(new E-mail address). Earl Beaver
was named Chair of IfS. The
reception was held Tuesday evening with approximately fifty people attending.
The Green
Chemical Engineering Topical was quite successful and had attendance averaging
forty with a high of fifty-seven.
Six sessions took place, two per day on Monday through Wednesday. Copies of ten of the presentations have
already been received and PDF versions will be posted on SEF’s website, a link to which will appear on
AIChE’s website in May. I will
inform you of the link details and the papers posted when that occurs.
Presentations
were made on IfS, including SEF and YCS activities and plans for the Center for
Sustainable Technology Practices to the North American Alliance of Chemical
Engineers Board of Directors meeting and to the Executive Committee of the
World Chemical Engineering Council.
Our efforts and plans received great interest, strong encouragement and
requests for follow-up (membership applications, project interest, programming
contributions). We also received a
commitment from one NAAChE member to provide SEF student membership funding for
a limited number of applicants from nations outside the
SEF’s First Virtual Meeting
Twenty-four
SEF members and three invited guests participated in the first Virtual Meeting
of the Sustainable Engineering Forum on April 22. The subject was “Sustainability Tools - What are the needs
going forward?”
I have
received notes and comments from ten participants in the Virtual Meeting. A summary and plans for the next
virtual meeting will be provided in the next two weeks.
Volunteer(s) Needed
I need
help from one or two volunteers to contact those SEF members who paid dues and
applied, but gave incorrect or incomplete contact information. Please let me know if you could telephone
or write to as many as five members.
Youth Council on Sustainability
(Description)
Several of
you have asked about the Youth Council.
What follows was produced from information provided by the Youth Council
leaders, Emily Freeburg and Corinna Kester.
Forty NGO
and governmental stakeholders have been recruited and show interest. The Youth Council on Sustainability is
a sibling entity of SEF within the Institute for Sustainability and serves two
functions: education and participation. It will provide a forum for outreach to
youth and will facilitate youth participation in national and international
sustainability efforts, including reaching goals made in international
agreements such as Agenda 21 and the
How Does the Youth Council Work?
The exact
format of YCS is flexible, however:
Ÿ
Initially, the
Council consists of 20-30 youth members who will work year-round from their
respective places of residence.
Ÿ
Members come
together 2-3 times per year to learn about sustainability and the political
process, brainstorm and collaborate, and advocate their common goals to federal
officials.
Ÿ
Members will
be between 15 and 30 years old and will represent regional, cultural,
political, socioeconomic, and academic diversity.
Ÿ
Staff members
facilitate youth access to government officials and coordinate the education
and training of Council members.
Ÿ
The group will
be recognized in an official capacity as a legitimate representative of youth
and will work with federal officials.
The next
steps are to form an “Interim Steering Committee” to finalize YCS structure and
seek funding. For more
information, please email youthcouncil@SustainUS.org
or visit http://www.wise-intern.org/journal02/corinnakester.pdf
or contact me.
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