Upcoming National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) Briefing webinars

Is there going to be National P2 Conference? Does NPPR still have workgroups? Are there plans for P2 Week? What kind of advocacy is NPPR doing at the federal level?

WHAT:  The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) is hosting a webinar this summer to highlight current activities and future plans for the organization.

WHO:  The FREE webinar is open to anyone interested in learning more about the organization and how all stakeholders can work together to better advance and share our pollution prevention (P2) knowledge, successes and opportunities.

WHEN:  There are two separate occasions to participate. Join us on one of the following interactive sessions to learn more:

NPPR:  As the only membership organization in the United States devoted solely to Pollution Prevention (P2), NPPR acts as a window on the P2 community and offers a national forum for promoting the development, implementation, and evaluation of efforts to avoid, eliminate, or reduce pollution at the source.

NPPR’s members are comprised of the country’s preeminent P2 experts from state and local government programs, small business assistance networks, non-profit groups, industry associations, federal agencies and academia, along with representatives from industrial and commercial facilities and interested individuals. There’s a membership level for everyone!

Visit www.p2.org to learn more about NPPR.

ESRC’s Sustainable Business Training Series

The Environmental Sustainability Resource Center (ESRC), GLRPPR’s P2Rx partner serving EPA regions 3 and 4, is hosting a series of training webinars intended to enhance business operations through applied sustainability strategies. The four-part webinar series is designed to educate commercial and industrial facilities on the business case for environmental sustainability, identify building blocks for a successful program and provide examples and resources to help turn actions into outcomes.

Topics include:

  • Waste minimization
  • The “Cost of Doing Nothing”
  • Chemical substitution, reuse and waste exchanges
  • Evaluation tools and resources
  • Success story presentation
  • Technical assistance

You can find links to these and other P2 training opportunities on the Training Videos and Webinars page of the Pollution Prevention 101 LibGuide.

Green Lunchroom Challenge Webinar Oct. 13: Waste Reduction with SCARCE

Join the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) Thursday, October 13 for a Green Lunchroom Challenge Webinar, “Waste Reduction with SCARCE.” The webinar will be broadcast from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM Central, and will be recorded and posted to the Challenge web site for later viewing. Register online at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6855430088212534276.

School and Community Assistance for Recycling and Composting Education (SCARCE), is an environmental education and assistance organization based in DuPage County, IL. Kay McKeen, SCARCE Founder and Executive Director, and Erin Kennedy, Environmental Educator and LEED GA, will discuss resources and guidance available from SCARCE to help your school or district achieve food waste reduction and diversion goals.

Coordinated by ISTC with funding from US EPA Region 5, the Green Lunchroom Challenge is a voluntary pledge program for schools to improve the sustainability of their food service operations. By registering, participants are accepting the challenge to reduce and prevent food waste in their facilities. The Challenge involves suggested activities that range in complexity and commitment, to allow participants to best suit their situation, budget and available community resources. Participants are not required to complete activities, but with each activity that is completed successfully, they earn points and can be recognized as having achieved different levels of accomplishment. Learn more, and register your school or district, at www.greenlunchroom.org.

SCARCElogo

Green Lunchroom Challenge Webinar, Sept. 30, Features Innovative School Projects

Join us on Friday, September 30, 2016 for a Green Lunchroom Challenge Webinar, “School Gardening and Composting at Salem High School (MA).” The webinar will be broadcast from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM Central, and will be recorded and posted to the Challenge web site for later viewing. Register online at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2878734024751555843.

Learn about innovative on-site gardening and composting efforts at Salem High School (Salem, MA). These projects not only provide fresh produce for school meals, but also engaging experiential learning opportunities for students. Our presenters will be Graeme Marcoux, Salem High School science teacher, and Deborah Jeffers, Food Services Director. This school not only has traditional garden plots, but also grows produce in a modified, climate controlled shipping container from Freight Farms. This atypical approach to on-site gardening allows the school to generate more fresh produce than they would with their traditional plots alone, and can allow growing during any season. This CBS Boston feature on the school’s efforts provides more information, and may help you formulate questions you’d like to ask during the webinar: http://boston.cbslocal.com/video/category/news-general/3411386-eye-on-education-students-grow-fresh-healthy-food-for-cafeteria/#.V1cjQm52EV9.wordpress.

Coordinated by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) with funding from US EPA Region 5, the Green Lunchroom Challenge is a voluntary pledge program for schools to improve the sustainability of their food service operations. By registering, participants are accepting the challenge to reduce and prevent food waste in their facilities. The Challenge involves suggested activities that range in complexity and commitment, to allow participants to best suit their situation, budget and available community resources. Participants are not required to complete activities, but with each activity that is completed successfully, they earn points and can be recognized as having achieved different levels of accomplishment. Learn more, and register your school or district, at www.greenlunchroom.org.

Green Lunchroom Challenge Logo

Webinar: Corporate Sustainability and TRI: Exploring P2 Information for Facilities and Parent Companies

Date: Wednesday, February 4, 1:00-2:00 p.m. CST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/ register/312174544

Do you know which companies are taking steps to reduce their environmental footprint in the U.S.?

For the past two years, TRI’s Pollution Prevention (P2) Tool has been an excellent resource for learning what industrial facilities are doing to reduce toxic chemical pollution. Now, all the facility-level P2 and waste management data reported to EPA’s TRI Program is also available at the parent company level.

Join this webinar to:

  • learn how the TRI P2 Tool can help you identify P2 successes and visually compare environmental performance at both the facility and corporate level
  • find out how to compare toxic chemical management and greenhouse gas emissions data at the corporate level
  • see what companies are doing to prevent the release of pollutants to the environment
  • get a live demonstration of the newly expanded TRI P2 Tool
  • see the latest industry- and chemical-level P2 trends featured in the 2013 TRI National Analysis report

University of Minnesota Institute on Environment’s Fall 2014 Frontiers in the Environment Series focusing on big questions

Read the full post from the University of Minnesota Institute on Environment.

This fall, the Institute on the Environment is refreshing our popular Frontiers in the Environment series. We’ll ask some Big Questions and host solutions-focused conversations about the next wave of research and discovery.

Below is the schedule from the web site.

Frontiers in the Environment: Big Questions

Solutions-focused conversations about the next wave of research and discovery.

Wednesdays, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. CST
IonE Seminar Room R380, Learning & Environmental Sciences Bldg., St. Paul
Free and open to the public; no registration required
Join us online via UMConnect

September 24 — Can We Build a More Resilient Food Distribution System?

Matteo Convertino, IonE Resident Fellow and Assistant Professor, School of Public Health; and Craig Hedberg, Professor, School of Public Health

Despite being a global concern, food safety is addressed in a systematic way only in some developed countries. We need an integrated ‘”system science” approach to managing the global food system that considers multiple needs and constraints, as well as an efficient system for transporting food and rapidly detecting food contamination and adulterations. Matteo Convertino and Craig Hedberg will describe a project that’s using computer modeling to predict and deal with food-borne disease outbreaks worldwide based on food supply chain structures and epidemiological data.

October 1 — How can the University of Minnesota assist the energy transition?

Hari Osofsky, IonE Resident Fellow, Law School Professor and Energy Transition Lab Faculty Director; and Ellen Anderson, Energy Transition Lab Executive Director

Our energy system is transitioning in ways that create critical challenges. Evolving approaches to sources of energy, electricity and transportation, energy infrastructure, energy efficiency, climate change, and environmental and energy justice affect every community and region and every sector of the economy. We need to remove barriers to needed change at local, state, regional, national, and international levels, and identify a holistic strategy for moving forward. Energy Transition Lab faculty director, IonE resident fellow, and Law School professor Hari Osofsky, and Energy Transition Lab executive director Ellen Anderson see Minnesota and beyond as a living laboratory for finding innovative solutions. They will explore how the lab will collaborate with business, government, NGO, community leaders, and university-based experts to make progress on these challenges.

October 8 — How Might the Twin Cities Help Catalyze Needed Global Urban Innovations?

Patrick Hamilton, Ione Resident Fellow and Director, Science Museum of Minnesota’s Global Change Initiatives; Anne Hunt, Environmental Policy Director, City of Saint Paul; Peter Frosch, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Greater MSP; and Mike Greco, Lecturer, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

By 2050, more than 6 billion people will live in cities. The quality of life in these cities of the future — and, by extension, our planet — is being shaped by decisions we make today. Patrick Hamilton will engage panelists Anne Hunt, Peter Frosch, and Mike Greco in a lively discussion of how the Twin Cities — one of the healthiest, wealthiest, best educated, and most innovative, creative and connected urban centers in the world — might use its considerable academic, nonprofit and business acumen to shape initiatives that directly benefit its residents while also helping to advance creative urbanism everywhere.

October 15 — Should Society Put a Price Tag on Nature?

Steve Polasky, Ione Resident Fellow; Project Lead, Natural Capital Project; and Professor, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences

Natural environments such as grasslands, forests and wetlands provide ecosystem services —benefits such as clean air and water and eye-pleasing landscapes. We value these amenities in the abstract, yet rarely figure them into a budget or balance sheet when developing a shopping mall or planting a cornfield. Steve Polasky will moderate a discussion about whether society could or should place a monetary value on nature — and if so, how to incorporate that value into decisions about resource management, conservation and environmental regulation.

October 22 — What Does a Sustainable Clean Water Future for Minnesota Look Like?

Bonnie Keeler, Lead Scientist, Natural Capital Project; Deb Swackhamer, Program Director, Water Resources Center; and John Linc Stine, Commissioner, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Minnesota has a reputation as a land of abundant, high-quality lakes and rivers. But is our water clean enough? Addressing surface water quality problems is expensive and not without trade-offs, such as lost industry, agricultural production and development. Bonnie Keeler, Deb Swackhamer and John Linc Stine will share their visions of a sustainable clean water future for Minnesota.

October 29 — What Is the Role of the Environment in This Year’s Minnesota Elections?

David Gillette, Special Correspondent, Twin Cities Public Television; Amy Koch, Small Business Owner and Former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader; and Mark Andrew, President, Greenmark

With all the statewide constitutional offices up for grabs — plus a federal senate seat — it’s a busy election year in Minnesota. Surveys show that while people care about the environment, they often don’t make it the top issue when voting. How important are environmental issues in this fall’s elections? How are environmental issues being framed? What impact might the election have on environmental policy in the state? And what can University of Minnesota faculty, staff and students do to help voters understand what’s at stake?

November 5 —  How Can We Make the Most of the Agriculture’s 21st Century Transformation?

Nicholas Jordan, IonE Resident Fellow and Professor of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences; and Carissa Schively Slotterback, Associate Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Agriculture is in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Output is rapidly shifting from a few predominant crops and commodities to a wide array of new foods, feeds, bioproducts and biofuels. At the same time, emphasis is shifting from minimizing adverse impacts to capitalizing on the potential of agriculture to improve soil, water, biodiversity and climate. Nicholas Jordan and Carissa Schively Slotterback will describe emerging opportunities and explore how one initiative in southern Minnesota is bringing science, social science and humanities together to develop and test a process for helping rural communities make the most of the economic and environmental benefits of the new bioeconomy as it develops around them .

November 12 — How Can We Help Children Connect to the Natural World?

Cathy Jordan, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota Extension Children, Youth, and Family Consortium

These days, kids spend more time staring at a computer monitor or playing with electronic games than they do interacting with nature. Cathy Jordan will address questions such as: What effect does this have on children’s well-being and, ultimately, the well-being of our planet? What are the benefits of connecting children to nature? What can urban planners, landscape architects, educators and parents do to foster engagement between children and the natural world?

November 29 — Environmentalists and Corporations Make Strange Bedfellows . . . Or Do They?

Steve Polasky, Ione Resident Fellow; Project Lead, Natural Capital Project; and Professor, College Of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences with [panelists to be named]

When we think of a group of environmentalists fighting to protect fragile habitat, we may imagine an angry mob outside the gates of a manufacturer, chanting and waving signs. Or circulating an online petition. Or maybe boycotting a product. But the times, they are a-changin.’ Modern-day environmentalists are taking seats in boardrooms and influencing business practices on a global scale. Steve Polasky and panelists will share insights, challenges and successes in this lively conversation about these 21st century partnerships.

Two upcoming webinars in the P2Rx Behavior Change Webinar Series

View archived webinars in the P2Rx Behavior Change Webinar Series.

Tools for Successfully Deploying and Measuring Behavior Change for the Littering Public
Tuesday, May 13, 2014 1:30-2:30 pm CDT
Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/378905274

Donna Walden will begin by presenting a step-by-step model on community based social marketing (CBSM) to help P2 programs properly selecting behaviors, establish a baseline, and develop strategies that can successfully measure behavior change.

Then UC Santa Barbara Masters candidates Jessica Midbust, Michael Mori, Paula Richter, and Bill Vosti will present a Master’s group thesis undertaken for the Algalita Marine Research Institute on reducing plastic debris in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel River Watersheds using some CBSM techniques.

Participants will learn some valuable behavior change techniques and hear recommendations made from the graduate students on how to change the behavior of the littering public.

Designing Employee Engagement Programs that Impact a Company’s Triple Bottom Line
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 1-2 pm CDT
Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/752485802

BAE Systems is a $14.4 billion multinational corporation that reduced its total utility costs by 48% over a three year period with a utility cost takeout (UCT) energy efficiency program.  This would not have been possible without first enrolling BAE’s 43,000 employees across the globe in its sustainability plan.

Morgan Rooney, Sustainability Communications Specialist for BAE Systems was responsible for initiating and running the employee engagement program to support BAE Sustainability goals.  Morgan will share her strategies and successes for getting employees to buy into a corporate sustainability mandate for the long haul and how this affected and continues to affect BAE’s triple bottom line.

Webinar attendees will learn education tactics, how to set up a task force or green team, employee challenges, and awards and recognition programs that work towards initiating and sustaining behavior change for large communities.

National P2 Roundtable offers P2 101 training as three-webinar series

This course will provide an outline allowing your organization to pursue P2 action while increasing your long-term profits.  The course will consist of three one-hour webinars.

Why should you take this training?

  • Your organization will learn how to involve employees and management to participate in addressing pollution sources and contribute to developing P2 solutions.
  • This training will demonstrate how P2 will support other green initiatives employed by your organization.
  • P2 101 is ideal for engineers, scientist, technical assistance providers, environmental health and safety managers, plant managers, production personnel and regulators who are interested in learning about the foundations and applications of P2.

Webinar Dates

  • Wednesday, May 21, 2014 at 2 PM ET
  • Wednesday, May 28, 2014 at 2 PM ET
  • Wednesday, June 11, 2014 at 2 PM ET

Cost

  • This three-part webinar training series will be offered for $500 for up to three participants from your organization.

Please contact Kim Richards at kim@p2.org to register or request more information.

**If you register for the course but are unavailable to participate in one or more of the webinars, the webinar recording will be made available for your use.

WaterSense H2Otel Challenge Webinars

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially launched the WaterSense H2Otel Challenge one month ago to help hotels assess, change, and track their water use using best management practices. Interested hotels can dive right in and take the pledge today, and any organization can help spread the word and recruit hotels.

As part of the H2Otel Challenge, WaterSense is offering a series of technical training webinars that begin this week. To learn more about the WaterSense H2Otel Challenge, review specific water best management practices, and hear from professionals who are using water more efficiently, register now:

Celebrate P2 Week by learning from P2 Pioneers

Thu, Sep 19, 2013 noon – 1:00 PM CDT
Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8720411790387065856

This webinar, designed specifically for P2 Week 2013, will bring together a sampling of the pioneers in the pollution prevention field to discuss the development and progression of pollution prevention in policies, industries, and other institutions. This webinar will review the evolution of our field from waste minimization to pollution prevention to sustainability. It will include a discussion on the use of tools such as P2 and energy efficiency assessments, the emergence of voluntary programs, the growth of networks and partnerships, the stabilization and expansion of performance metrics, and the skill sets needed to carry out these programs.

Presenters:
Cam Metcalf, Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center, University of Louisville
Cindy McComas, University of Minnesota
Gary Hunt, North Carolina State University

Cam Metcalf is a national leader in pollution prevention and energy efficiency technical assistance, training and applied research with a career that spans more than 30 years. He joined KPPC – Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center – as Executive Director in 1995.

Cindy McComas is a co-project manager for the Safer Chemistry Challenge Program, a program of the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Minnesota teaching a fall course on pollution prevention and energy efficiency. Cindy served as Director of the Minnesota Technical Assistance Program (MnTAP) at the University of Minnesota from 1985 through 2010.

Gary Hunt is a founding member of the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable and former Director of the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance. He started as the program’s first technical staff member in 1985 and then became Director of the program for 21 years. He was also Director of P2Rx’s Southeast Waste Reduction Resource Center serving EPA Regions 3 and 4.