The 7th SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time)
Subject: “Sustainable Development Strategy for
Speakers: Peter
Braithwaite, Head of Sustainability for the Olympics Delivery Partner, Ch2M
Hill
Meeting Number: 551 160 805
Meeting Password: SEF1234
The focus of the presentation will be to summarize the
approach that planners for the Olympic Park to make sustainability a key
feature in the design and construction of a regenerated property that will
become the Olympic Park.
Please click the link below to see more information, or to join the meeting.
-------------------------------------------------------
To join the online meeting
-------------------------------------------------------
1.
Go to https://aiche.webex.com/aiche/j.php?ED=100686252&UID=0&PW=48ec7f08077f617f70
2. Enter your name and email address.
3. Enter the meeting password: SEF1234
4. Click "Join Now".
-------------------------------------------------------
To join the teleconference only
-------------------------------------------------------
303 928 2693
Teleconference meeting number 3329706
-------------------------------------------------------
For assistance
-------------------------------------------------------
1. Go to https://aiche.webex.com/aiche/mc
2. On the left navigation bar, click "Support".
You
can contact Darlene Schuster at: darls@aiche.org
or 1-410-458-5870
To add this meeting to your calendar program (for example Microsoft Outlook), click this link:
The playback of UCF (Universal Communications Format) rich media files requires appropriate players. To view this type of rich media files in the meeting, please check whether you have the players installed on your computer by going to https://aiche.webex.com/aiche/systemdiagnosis.php
Sign up for a free trial of WebEx
http://www.webex.com/go/mcemfreetrial
We've got to start meeting like this(TM)
IMPORTANT
NOTICE: This WebEx service includes a feature that allows audio and any
documents and other materials exchanged or viewed during the session to be
recorded. By joining this session, you automatically consent to such
recordings. If you do not consent to the recording, do not join the session.
=================================================================================
The 6th SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time)
Subject: “Center for Sustainable Technology
Practices Sustainability Guide”
Speakers: Carol English (Cytec),
Dave Taschler (Air Products), and Charlene Wall
(BASF)
Call-in number: (303) 928 2693
Toll-free number for students and retired or unemployed
participants: (800) 531 3250
Access Code/Meeting Number: 3329706
Slides are posted at: http://www.aiche.org/IFS/Products/Virtual.aspx or contact ifs@aiche.org for a copy.
The Center for Sustainable Technology Practices (CSTP), an industry
consortium of AIChE, has developed a conceptual guide
that connects the critical corporate functions of a company with important
sustainability considerations. The
Sustainability Guide can support organizations that are either interested in
integrating new sustainability considerations into their business or enhancing
existing sustainability-related initiatives. The CSTP Sustainability Guide is
flexible, may be edited, and was developed such that users can customize the
tool for use by their specific organization. In this presentation, the guide will be
reviewed, and the The Business Strategy Alignment and
Upstream Supply functions will be highlighted to show both the utility and outcomes
of the use of the guide in decision making.
=================================================================================
The 5th SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Friday, August 29, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM-3:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time)
Subject: “AIChE
Sustainability Index”
Speakers: Calvin Cobb and Beth Beloff
Call-in number: (303) 928 2693
Toll-free number for students and retired or unemployed
participants: (800) 531 3250
Access Code/Meeting Number: 3329706
Slides are posted at: http://www.aiche.org/IFS/Products/Virtual.aspx Any difficulties contact Earl Beaver for a copy.
Additional information at: http://www.aiche.org/ifs/sustainability/about.aspx
Corporate benchmarking of practices and initiatives is important to a companies progress in meetings it's goals, the investment community, and to internal management and employees. Many companies are developing corporate wide sustainability initiatives and setting goals. How to measure their improvements can be accomplished by benchmarking with external credibility. This presentation will provide an overview of different sustainability index that have appeared to provide guidance to financial investors, and the AIChE Sustainability Index (sm) which was developed to provide guidance to internal company management on comparison to their peers.
=================================================================================
The 4th SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time)
Subject: “Sustainability: Ethics and Engineering
Practice”
Speakers: Earl R. Beaver, FAIChE
Call-in number: (303) 928 2693
Toll-free number: (800) 531 3250
Access Code/Meeting Number: 3329706
To prepare for
the meeting, please check the Global Footprint Network's www.footprintnetwork.org two newest
reports on Africa and
Also for the discussion, go to AIChE's website and view the "Code of Ethics" http://www.aiche.org/About/Code.aspx so that we can discuss whether changes are indicated/desired.
Attachment:
Sustainability: Ethics and Engineering Practice
=================================================================================
The 3rd SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Thursday, May 29
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time)
Subject: “Livestock’s Long Shadow”
– Sustainability Aspects of Confined Animal Feeding
Speakers: Earl R. Beaver and
Louis Dupree
Call-in number: (303) 928 2693
Toll-free number: (800) 532 3250
Access Code/Meeting Number: 3329706
Background
information is available on Wikepedia or by accessing
the Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO) report Livestock's Long
Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options. at http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
or at http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf.
It "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock
sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy
approaches to mitigation."
The assessment is based on the most recent and complete
data available, taking into account direct impacts, along with the impacts of
feed crop agriculture required for livestock production. The livestock sector
emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the
most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The
findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when
dealing with problems of land degradation, climate
change and air pollution, water
shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
In the report, senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization
official Henning Steinfeld reports that the meat
industry is “one of the most significant contributors to
today's most serious environmental problems" and that "urgent action
is required to remedy the situation." Other points the report makes
are that the world's livestock industry "generates 65 per cent of
human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global
Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2"] and "that livestock are
responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse
gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport."
Agenda
Introductions and instructions - Earl
Beaver
Main Presentation -
Livestock in transition
Production systems and local
economics
Livestock's role in climate change,
air pollution, freshwater use and biological diversity
Mitigating impacts by
technology, by policy, by sustainable decision-making
Discussion:
> What are the ultimate impacts of changes in the
health of water ecosystems?
> Public Reaction to Ethanol Plants, Biomass Electricity
Plants and Similarities to CAFO.
> Opposition to continued expansion of livestock for
food.
> What sustainability tools can be used to improve
outcomes? How can the Institute for Sustainability and SEF help?
Attachment:
Background review of literature (word file)
Livestocks long shadow (pdf file)
FAO news (pdf
file)
Note-takers are needed; please volunteer. Also, if
you have a short presentation or discussion of some related items for this
topic, please let Dr. Beaver know soon.
Any questions or just want to fight about it? E-mail
him Erbeav@aol.com.
=================================================================================
The 2nd SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Tuesday, February 19
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM (Eastern
Daylight Time)
Subject: “Impacts of
Freshwater Pollutants on the
Speaker: Frederick Tutman
(See Biography Below)
Log on procedure: To access the meeting
itself, please browse to http://aiche2.webex.com
a few minutes before 2 pm on February 19, 2008. Click on the webinar
name, fill in your name and email address and finally click 'Join Now'.
After a few moments, you will be brought in to the WebEx viewer where you will
be presented with a popup window that gives call-in details (phone number for
several nations, meeting number and attendee ID). Dr. Beaver will be joining and
facilitating the meeting from
Background
information:
What is happening in the
Agenda:
Introductions and
instructions - Earl Beaver
Main Presentation - Fred Tutman
Discussion -
·
What are the ultimate
impacts of changes in the health of water ecosystems?
·
What sustainability
tools can be used to improve outcomes?
·
How does this link to
earlier SEF Virtual Meetings on sea level rise, salt water intrusion and costs
to society?
Frederick Tutman -
Biography
Fred Tutman a full time
environmental advocate who serves as the Patuxent Riverkeeper. Previously, as a volunteer activist, Tutman has served as the President of the Conservation
Federation of Maryland during the 1990’s (a National Wildlife Federation
affiliate), helped found the Environmental Fund for MD, served as President of
the Patuxent River Civic Association, served on the
MD Department of Natural Resources “Outdoor Caucus” and as a
Governor appointed State Patuxent River Commissioner.
He currently coordinates an annual statewide cleanup of the
Map
Details Human Impact on Oceans
By
AP
Posted: 2008-02-16 06:52:56
NCEAS
Ocean Regions Threatened
Scientists revealed a new map on Thursday that shows marine ecosystems around the world that have been affected by human activities. Click through the photos to see the areas that have suffered the most. High impact areas are shown in red, followed by dark orange, light orange, yellow, green and blue, which signals low impact. Researchers studying 17 different activities ranging from fishing to pollution compiled a new map showing how and where people have impacted the seas.
The map was
released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in
"Our
results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up, the
big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was
certainly a surprise to me," said lead author Ben Halpern,
an assistant research scientist at the
USGS
Areas at Risk From
Scientists at the University of Arizona in September created maps based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey that show areas around the U.S. that would become flooded if the sea rose one meter. Above, the northeast is shown. Click through the photos to see other regions.
The areas most affected include the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, Caribbean Sea, the east coast of North America, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bering Sea and parts of the western Pacific, the study found. It said the least affected areas are near the poles.
However, the researchers said it is likely that human activities will affect polar regions more and more as climate change warms those areas.
Damage includes reductions in fish and sea animals as well as problems for coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, rocky reefs and shelves and seamounts.
"There were two things we didn't anticipate," Halpern said in a telephone interview. "Every single spot in the oceans was affected by at least one human activity ... we figured there'd be places people just hadn't gotten to yet."
And "more than 40 percent is impacted by multiple different activities," he added. "The oceans are not in good shape."
Yet Halpern did find room for hope.
"There are some areas in fairly good condition. They are small and scattered, but have fairly low impact," he said. "That suggests that with effort from all of us, we can try to protect these patches and use them as a guideline for what we'd like the rest of the ocean to start looking like."
The 19-member research team mapped the varying impacts on the oceans and then through overlays of the maps they were able to compile which areas were most affected.
"This research is a critically needed synthesis of the impact of human activity on ocean ecosystems," David Garrison, biological oceanography program director at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement.
Impacts studied by the researchers included the effects of structures such as oil rigs, commercial shipping, species invasion, climate-change impacts including acidification, ultraviolet radiation and sea temperature, various types of fishing and several types of human-related pollution.
In a separate
paper in the same issue of Science, researchers reported that oxygen levels in
some of the shallow waters along the coast of
The research
team led by Francis Chan at
In the region upwelling currents bring nutrient-rich but oxygen-poor water onto shallow areas where the nutrients support an abundance of life, but they are also vulnerable to the risk of low-oxygen events.
Halpern's study was funded by the
Chan's research was funded by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In Congress on Thursday, the House voted 352-49 to approve $454 million over the next seven years for two ocean exploration programs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., the bill's sponsor, said it would coordinate efforts to study marine ecosystems, organisms and geology.
About 95 percent of the ocean floor remains unexplored, he said. "This vast area teems with undiscovered species and natural and cultural resources."
==================================================================================
The 1st SEF Virtual Meeting
in 2008
Date: Tuesday, January 22nd
Time: 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Eastern
Daylight Time)
Subject: “Reducing non Power Plant Mercury Emissions”
Speaker: Bill Byers, CH2MHill Company
In order to view the web portion of this event, access
the WebEx viewer through your web browser at http://aiche2.webex.com a few minutes before the
meeting. Click the current topic, fill in your name and email address and
finally click ‘Join Now’.
After a few moments, you will be brought in to the WebEx viewer where
you will be presented with a pop-up window that gives call-in details (phone
number, meeting number and attendee ID). If you will be participating on both
the phone and web portions of this meeting, please login in to the WebEx view
first.
Background information:
Mercury is a highly toxic metal, causing damage to the human nervous
system even at relatively low levels of exposure. It is particularly harmful to the
development of unborn children. It collects in human and animal
bodies and can be concentrated through the food chain, especially in certain
types of fish. Once emitted, mercury contaminates both the local and global
environment as it can travel long distances through the atmosphere. Much US regulatory attention has
focused on mercury emissions for coal fired power plants, a substantial
anthropogenic source of mercury emissions. However, there are other important
worldwide sources of mercury emissions and there are actions that we can take
to reduce these emissions as well as those from power plants.
Non power plant emissions
include mercury impurities mobilized from other raw materials such as in the
manufacture of Portland cement, and emissions resulting from mercury used
intentionally in products and processes.
Topics:
· Reducing mercury mining and consumption of raw materials and products that generate releases;
·
Substitution of products and processes
containing or using mercury;
· Controlling mercury releases through end-of-pipe controls; and
· Mercury waste management.
Attachment:
Reducing non power plant mercury emissions
Questions and
Discussion