Green Innovation

Popular perception long has been that business and environmental protection are about as compatible as Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow.

It doesn’t have to be that way, say those behind a still-new certificate program at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. The Environmental Management and Business Institute marries the studies of the two together.

“It used to be that you didn’t take business courses if you majored in environmental science, and you didn’t take environmental science courses if you majored in business,” says John Stoll, professor of public and environmental affairs at UWGB and co-director of EMBI.

Now business majors feel they should have background in environmental systems and vice versa, he adds.

EMBI offers an 18-credit certificate, which includes an internship. Many of the internships arise from a company calling UWGB with an environmental-related problem or issue, while others are focused on opportunities at UW–Green Bay.

Instead of just courses in business or science, EMBI puts the topics in terms of their relevance in the real world, according to one UWGB alumnus.

“It shows why reducing pollution is a good business choice,” says Nick Reckinger, who graduated in 2005 with a degree in business, an emphasis in finance and a minor in environmental science, and a master’s degree in environmental science and policy in 2007.

Reducing pollution usually means using less fuel, which usually means saving money. Reducing waste or pollution also means smaller fines (or no more fines) for disposing of toxic waste, Reckinger points out.

“Right now there isn’t a huge regulatory burden on a lot of small companies, but a lot of companies will be facing the need to look at sustainability and record their carbon footprints,” he says. “With the EMBI program, you’d be well-suited to do this kind of work.”

SUBHEAD: Solving corporate problems

EMBI didn’t exist when Reckinger attended UWGB, but he says it would have made his studies a lot easier.

“I took business classes as my core, and I took environmental science, but it was hard to draw any connection between the two,” says Reckinger.

With EMBI, classes focusing on both are written into the syllabus.

“It would have been a huge help to me to draw those connections,” he says.

Reckinger uses his degrees in environmental science in his career in systems sales at FEECO International. FEECO is a Green Bay manufacturer of equipment and systems that transform waste from industries like farming, paper and the steel industry into usable materials. Manure from farms is one of the main types of waste conversion — FEECO and its offshoot company, ENCAP, make it into fertilizer pellets and garden additives.

“There are thousands of farms that have this problem” of too much manure, says Reckinger. “One of the main reasons I was brought into the company was to have ‘green’ eyes on the project.”

Converting thousands of pounds of steel dust from the steel industry into usable steel keeps it out of the landfills, Reckinger says.

“Many companies have products that go into landfills, and we come up with ways to re-introduce that material” into the supply chain, he says.

UWGB senior Angela Koenig, 21, an environmental policy and planning major, is working in an internship focusing on green retail at the Packer Pro Shop. She’s working with pro-shop management to see what can be done to encourage vendors and suppliers to minimize their use of non-reusable packaging.

“Lambeau Field is such a big piece of this city that it’s a good place to start getting the public thinking about sustainability,” says Koenig

It’s growing more and more necessary for business people to understand science and for science to understand business, says John Katers, associate professor of natural and applied sciences and engineering at UWGB and co-director of EMBI.

“As you develop environmental policy, typically you have to understand the science behind it,” he says. “You can’t operate in a vacuum; you need interaction. You need all players at the table.”

SUBHEAD: Corporations leading green movement

“The historical perspective is that making money and keeping the environment are mutually exclusive,” says Katers. “But businesses are beginning to realize that without natural resources, they aren’t going to stay in business for very long.”

In fact, some even say that big companies like Walmart are leading the way in cleaning up the environment by forcing their suppliers to track and reduce their carbon footprints, Stoll says.

“Because they are such a large business, they are actually driving a lot of the action,” he says.

Kaity Gilles, 21, a junior double-majoring in environmental planning and policy and public administration and minoring in political science, says business and the environment actually go hand in hand because environmental issues are going to affect businesses in the future.

“Businesses can save money and keep the environment in their consciousness,” she says. “A lot of things businesses should be doing to be sustainable are things that will eventually save them money.”

EMBI aims to connect business with science and science with business — and to connect both of them to the community. EMBI may offer minicourses to business groups and citizens who want to learn more about how business and nature impact each other, Stoll and Katers say.

EMBI is an undergraduate program. It doesn’t offer a degree but rather a certificate.

“Students look at this as something that might differentiate them from other students that have the same degree,” says Katers.

The program has garnered a lot of interest, even though it hasn’t been publicized and its class offerings haven’t appeared in the school’s catalog of classes yet.

“We are getting a lot of returning adult students and people who work for companies such as Kimberly–Clark, Banta Publishing (now R.R. Donnelley) printing and Oshkosh Corp., who get the itch to work their way through the process” toward a certificate or degree in an environmental sciences program, says Stoll.

SUBHEAD: From waste to fuel

Katers’ students have worked on several renewable energy projects, including studying and comparing different anaerobic digesters on local dairy farms. Anaerobic digestion is a process that can convert manure and other organic wastes into methane gas. Focus on Energy awarded the school a $23,000 grant for the digester-monitoring project.

“We have a lot of farmers looking at different manure management technologies,” says Katers.

Other methods have been looked at that transform the remaining solids into animal bedding and fertilizer pellets, Katers says. A $48,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection allowed students to work on manure separation trials in the laboratory and at a local dairy farm. Some of their research was used by the Brown County Waste Transformation Initiative, which sought to launch a waste transformation facility that would make use of the county’s countless millions of pounds of manure.

Katers and Stoll hope that five years from now, EMBI will be the hub for all campus and community environmental activities.

“There’s an effort in place right now to brand Northeast Wisconsin as sustainable,” says Katers, “and we’d like to be the go-to place for that.”

Source: http://www.marketplacemagazine.com/content/554_1.php

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