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As "going green" increasingly captures the public's attention, Brown students are finding their own ways to contribute, on and off College Hill.
These on- and off-campus experiences come together in ENVS 2010: "Special Topics in Environmental Studies," a seminar required of all first-year environmental studies graduate students. The seminar's topic changes every year, and this semester's focus is carbon neutrality.
The nine students in the class were divided into three groups, each working with a different client to address issues related to climate change.
One group is working on carbon assessment for the city of Providence, while another is thinking of ways for the Ecological Society of America to be more ecologically friendly when holding conferences. The third group is working with a pallet manufacturer.
"It's an unbelievable amount of waste," said Nat Manning '08, who is in the group working with a manufacturer of pallets, which are structures used to ship goods. "(We're) figuring out how that industry can just literally be greener."
Manning said pallets require more wood than any other product, except paper.
Manning, the only undergraduate in the course this semester, is concurrently pursuing a B.A. in religious studies and an M.A. in environmental studies.
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Steven Hamburg, who teaches the course, said he encourages his students to understand the theoretical basis of their work while acknowledging the constraints of the real world.
"It's a blend of the two that will effect real change," Hamburg said. "We often get sidetracked with the theoretical, with what people should do instead of what we expect them to be able to do. When we merge those two, we come up with some really effective solutions."
Beyond the course, Hamburg has encouraged student engagement off College Hill by helping them find jobs after graduation.
Hamburg has advised Wal-Mart on energy efficiency, and he connected Noam Ross '06 and Josh Apte '04 with the retail giant, which hired the two recent graduates to work toward making their operations more environmentally friendly.
Apte, who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, worked with Wal-Mart to increase sales of compact fluorescent light bulbs.
"Wal-Mart sells about a quarter of all the lights in the U.S.," Apte said. "And a compact fluorescent light bulb uses about two-thirds less energy."
Apte said Wal-Mart was very receptive to suggestions about how to improve the reputation and quality of compact fluorescent light bulbs. He called the project "an unqualified success" with a "huge national and global impact."
For Apte, this post-graduation experience was well-matched with his academic interests.
"I did my undergraduate thesis on opportunities for saving energy in buildings in the U.S.," he said, "so this fit in perfectly."
Brown students can also pursue their environmental interests by working with the Watson International Scholars of the Environment Program, which brings leaders in the environmental field from around the world to Brown for a semester.
The scholars come from developing countries, bringing with them diverse backgrounds. "They have experiences that I have no way of talking about," said Hamburg, the program's director.
Christina Tang '09 traveled to Kerala, India, last summer to work with N. Anil Kumar, a 2007 Watson International Scholar of the Environment. Her research, which was funded by the Luce Undergraduate Environmental Fellows Program, was about the quality of drinking water available to the inhabitants of a village in the area.
"The water that we use to water our lawn and wash our cars is a thousand times better than the water they drink every day," Tang said. "Because we're privileged to receive an education, I want to use that education to pull that gap together."
After interviewing villagers about the sources of water they use, analyzing the levels of contamination in the various sources available to them and performing an economic analysis of the situation, Tang concluded that building a rainwater harvesting unit would save villagers money in the long run.
"I went back to the village to present my findings to the community," Tang said. She and her colleagues at the Mahatma Gandhi University have been trying to persuade the local government to act on the results of her study.
"My long-term goal ... from this project is the installation of a rainwater harvesting unit in the village so people will have a clean and reliable source of water," Tang said.
Tang's interdisciplinary interest in economic development and environmental science is not unusual in the Department of Environmental Studies.
"What's amazing about the concept of the environmental studies is right in the name. The world is our environment," Manning said. "While it seems like a pinpointed concentration, you can study science, policy or economics."
