The Future Energy Jobs Act is a new piece of legislation in Illinois that requires utilities to source 25% of their energy from renewables by 2025. This has created a huge demand for new solar and wind power development, and the industry is hiring. A number of nonprofit organizations are organizing a series of Solar Job Training Orientation Events, and one of them is on December 11th (tomorrow).
Here are the details:
by Michelle Giles for SUST 350
Food is an interesting topic. It is not at all unique, since we all eat. And yet, no two people assign food and particular dishes the same value. We may be the only species to consider food as something more than sustenance (many lacking the taste bud infrastructure to pick up on sweetness and saltiness) and routine (my cat, for instance, will bite me if she is not fed her breakfast by 7:01).
Humans culturized food. Often this was based on produce and livestock availability, as well as socioeconomic status. Now with global trade, we enjoy the luxury of habitualizing ourselves to products that North America could never grow (but first, coffee) and sensualize meals that were originally eaten out of necessity (lobster was considered fit only to be fed to Northeast prisoners, an insect of the sea).
As Scott Sawyer points out in the “Food System Lessons from Vermont” chapter of The Community Resilience Reader: Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval, the food system operating at present does not reflect our gastronomical likes and dislikes. Nor is it culturally significant. Instead, it craves fossil fuels and splurges on cash crops. The idyllic patchwork quilt of grain and green imagined of our countryside is better personified by Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The land that cries year after year with every pesticide application and relentless monocropping. Production is toxic and waste is too affordable for large producers to consider it a problem worth avoiding.
Many millennials are aware that this isn’t working for anyone and are choosing alternative diets that emphasize organic and local. Purchasing power alone, though, is not going to heal our broken food system. These kind of consumer choices are being amplified in states like Vermont which put people to policy and policy to action.
Source: VT Sustainable Jobs Fund
The Vermont Farm to Plate initiative is a highly collaborative platform for connecting local people to local food by providing the network for supply-demand connections between farmers, non-profits, government agencies and retail suppliers. The possibilities are virtually endless since, as noted above, everybody eats! It also supports young farmers and provides funding for land to get people started. To round off the effort, a pillar of the initiative is to reduce waste by providing for foodbanks and supporting the Universal Recycling Law which includes composting organic material (Sawyer, 2017).
The real success of the program is in the people. While Farm to Plate is policy driven, it has an extremely grassroots feel to it. Food can break many boundaries and so those organic smoothie drinking millennials are participating right alongside hog butchers and corner store owners. There also is an effort to include job training in all related fields. The education element lends to a constructive rippling through communities. There is a sense of pride about Vermont providing for Vermont. The regulatory elements of mandatory composting and waste reduction next to the marketplace -friendly local farm economy makes it a plan that appeals to both sides of the aisle.
I think many of the elements of the program are suitable elsewhere. This kind of resilience-oriented, forward, creative, and collaborative food network should especially be prioritized in cities. There is built-in tension in our landscape that results from areas of high population density being only consumers of food. It places unfair burden on our rural land and peoples. That thinking simultaneously robs cities of the opportunities to build those communities and places that local food can generate.
Food is special. It is very much a personal and cultural experience. A fitly run, local food system creates a sense of place. But, as Sawyer points out, the work is relentless. The effort must be sustained which provides the sort of systems thinking and regulatory cooperation that only policy makers can dish out. The Vermont Farm to Plate Initiative is ripe for replication. It is about time the countryside quilt be rejuvenated with creative systems thinking patchwork.
References
Check out this article informing about Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law put out to the public by the Natural Resource Defense Council last year.
Sawyer, S. (2017). Food system lessons from Vermont. In D. Lerch (ed.), The Community Resilience Reader (ch. 13). Washington DC: Island Press.
Michelle Giles is a senior SUST major @RooseveltU and president of the RU Green student organization. During the Fall 2018 semester, students in Prof. Mike Bryson’s SUST 240 Waste and 350 Service & Sustainability classes at Roosevelt University are contributing blog posts on urban and suburban sustainability issues to the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future website.
This year, Roosevelt University is participating in the October EcoChallenge, a 21-day sustainability engagement program. The challenge takes place October 3 – October 24, 2018 and involves universities, businesses, schools, all competing internally and with each other. Participants track and share their progress online in a robust platform and earn points for taking action. The combination of collective action, camaraderie, and friendly competition makes change a little easier — and a lot more fun.
EcoChallenge provides tools and inspiration to turn intention into action, and gives participants a fun and social way to think about and act on proven solutions that make a difference for you, your community, and the planet. Over 100 actions within nine Challenge categories provide participants with diverse options to take action. You can also Create Your Own challenge.
The Environmental Sustainability Committee and RU Green invite YOU to join the EcoChallenge before October 3rd. To join, you just need an email address to create an account. Follow these easy steps:
At the end of the EcoChallenge, we can tally up our individual and collective scores and see what we’ve accomplished! This will be our first year participating in the EcoChallenge, so help us build some momentum by signing up now!
Please join the Roosevelt University community for the kickoff to the American Dream Reconsidered Conference today!
Ida B. Wells Lounge Dedication Reception | 430 S. Michigan Avenue, 2nd Floor East | 5 p.m. Monday 9/10
The reception will honor Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her many contributions to the struggle for civil rights and equality for African Americans. Featuring guest of honor, Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and professor at Columbia College Chicago.
The Historical Oddity of American Health Care | Ganz Hall | 6:30 p.m. Monday 9/10
The panel will explore the post-WWII history of American health care. Panelists will attempt to untangle the web of influences that have given rise to the complicated arena of health care in America. Featuring Dr. Lawrence D. Brown, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health professor; Guian McKee, University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs associate professor; and Dr. Stephanie Vomvouras, BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois vice president of healthcare delivery and chief medical officer.
Join in the Conversation — Submit your questions for the American Dream Reconsidered panelists
The American Dream Reconsidered Conference begins today and now is your chance to join the conversation. Submit your questions today for the American Dream Reconsidered Conference’s keynote speaker events, led by the Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr. and musician and actor Common.
For “A Conversation with Common: Activism in an Age of Polarization,” questions can also be submitted for fellow panelists Dr. Mary Ellen Caron, PhD, chief executive officer of After School Matters, and Dr. Janice K. Jackson, PhD, chief executive officer for Chicago Public Schools. During these events, a selection of the submitted questions will appear onscreen for the attending audience.
Don’t wait to engage in the conversation. Submit your questions now for the Eric Holder and Common keynote panels!
RU President Ali harvests greens from the WB Rooftop Garden during the #AmDreamConf service day, 15 Sept 2016 (photo: RU)
Service Day, Sept. 14 – Volunteers are Needed
We need volunteers! Opportunities are still available at both Chicago and Schaumburg. Sign up at americandreamconference.com/service-day.
Schaumburg: Meet between 8:30 a.m. – 9 a.m. in Room 126 for Service Day T-shirt pickup and designated meeting area.
Chicago: Meet between 9 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. – Fainman Lounge, AUD Bldg. 2nd Floor Service Day T-shirt pick up. Check your confirmation for room number and time to meet.
SUST alumni & students on the WB Rooftop Garden during Service Day 2017. L to R: Moses Viveros, Diana Ramirez, Beeka Quesnell, & Maria Cancilla (photo: M. Bryson)
For more information:
The Village of Schaumburg recently partnered with the Barrington Area Conservation Trust to assist the Field Museum with their Urban Monarch Project. We are looking for volunteer Urban Monarch Technicians to monitor monarch butterfly habitat at selected sites in Schaumburg. The Field Museum will train all volunteers in Schaumburg on Monday, June 18th from 9am to 12 noon. RU students, alumni, and faculty may be interested in volunteering on this project.
Photo: Field Museum
Applications are now being accepted through Friday, June 8th, 2018. Please contact Martha D. Dooley, Landscape and Sustainability Planner with the Village of Schaumburg, with any questions and to apply. See detailed application info here (pdf).
Martha D. Dooley | Landscape and Sustainability Planner
Village of Schaumburg | 101 Schaumburg Court |Schaumburg, IL 60193
Office: 847-923-3855 | Fax: 847-923-2335
Email: mdooley@schaumburg.com
MIT Press has published an interesting new book on suburban planning and design entitled A Sequel to Suburbia: Glimpses of America’s Post-Suburban Future. Penned by Nicholas A. Phelps, a professor of urban and regional development at University College London, the book includes a lengthy case-study on Schaumburg IL as well as on two other paradigmatic suburbs: downtown Kendall, Florida near Miami; and Tysons (formerly Tysons Corner) near Alexandria, Virginia.
The book’s highlighting of Schaumburg as “a regional capital for Chicago’s northwest suburbs” is of particular interest to the authors and readers of Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future blog, and further establishes Schaumburg’s relevance in the scholarly literature on suburban planning and sustainable development.
See this informative review by Kevin Sloan on The Nature of Cities blog, and check out the book’s website here, from which the following is quoted.
In the years after World War II, a distinctly American model for suburban development emerged. The expansive rings of outer suburbs that formed around major cities were decentralized and automobile oriented, an embodiment of America’s postwar mass-production, mass-consumption economy. But alternate models for suburbia, including “transit-oriented development,” “smart growth,” and “New Urbanism,” have inspired critiques of suburbanization and experiments in post-suburban ways of living. In Sequel to Suburbia, Nicholas Phelps considers the possible post-suburban future, offering historical and theoretical context as well as case studies of transforming communities.
Phelps first locates these outer suburban rings within wider metropolitan spaces, describes the suburbs as a “spatial fix” for the postwar capitalist economy, and examines the political and governmental obstacles to reworking suburban space. He then presents three glimpses of post-suburban America, looking at Kendall-Dadeland (in Miami-Dade County, Florida), Tysons Corner (in Fairfax County, Virginia), and Schaumburg, Illinois (near Chicago). He shows Kendall-Dadeland to be an isolated New Urbanism success; describes the re-planning of Tysons Corner to include a retrofitted central downtown area; and examines Schaumburg’s position as a regional capital for Chicago’s northwest suburbs. As these cases show, the reworking of suburban space and the accompanying political process will not be left to a small group of architects, planners, and politicians. Post-suburban politics will have to command the approval of the residents of suburbia.
2015. ISBN: 9780262029834. MIT Press. 248 pages.
RUrbanPioneer gardeners and volunteers spread compost on the expanded garden in 2012
(photo: L. Bryson)
Roosevelt’s Schaumburg Campus Community Garden is one of the origin sites for our university’s sustainability movement, and is a thriving hub of gardening innovation and community building. Right now, three 5×5 plots are still available for this year’s growing season. The only cost associated with joining the Community Garden would be for the materials that you personally purchase for your garden plot (seeds, soil amendment, etc.).
With the gardening season now moving into high gear, the time is ripe to claim a plot! If you are interested, please reach out to Rebecca Quesnell, Sustainable Operations Coordinator, Dept. of Physical Resources (rquesnell@roosevelt.edu). Plots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
SUST at RU Blog
