Megan Krause / uni: mhk2152

Sustainability Issue

By 2050, it is projected that more than two-thirds of the world population will live in urban areas. The issue is the existing infrastructure in most of these metropolises was not created with the population increase and influx in mind. Therefore, as more people descend on urban areas, its infrastructure and its technology will face an unprecedented safety, mobility, health, and resource challenge.

Article with Interesting Technology

• Unfortunately, commonly an influx of people comes with more cars. Many cities were not built to handle the simultaneous pedestrian, bike, and automobile traffic. In fact, there has been a 41% increase in pedestrian deaths since 2008. There are many solutions coming out to try to gather more automated street level information to allow for meaningful changes
• Numina is a computer vision sensor solution built for streets to capture information about frequency and congestion of the three transport methods
• With the information captured, they aim to make recommendations to cities about how to make a more connected environment with safer bike lines, more pedestrian walkways, and ultimately fluid, accessible no-car location.
• Typically, these technologies involve camera analysis, where Numina is trying to capture through put information while maintaining anonymity of the travelers as much as possible.

Organizational Stakeholders

In order to make this technology effective, a city has to be interested in a carless model and have baseline infrastructure to make connected walkways and bike paths a success. The prioritization of this must come from city leadership. Once the mayor’s office is on board, city planning of public parks, transportation, and accessibility would need to work together to select and prioritize the locations of deployment.

Deployment

1. Procurement of the technology from department of transportation
2. Creation of working group with Department of transportation, mayor’s office, public parks, accessibility, and MTA to determine location of placement and develop overall strategy
3. Installation of technology at selected sites

Sources

1. https://numina.co/why/
2. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html

Megan Krause / uni: mhk2152

Issue

The amount of trash across the world is piling up with nowhere to go. Landfill space is diminishing and with land being a controlled good, there’s only so many more places we can go. In the US, one-third of the material in landfills is compostable and 79% of recyclable material ends up in landfills. One of the biggest barriers to having waste minimized and be disposed of correctly is waste sorting education and available resources.

Solution:

• Environmental education around waste management is necessary to achieve meaningful change in this space. In the Innovative Waste Technology Space, EvoEco is hoping to do just that with their Evobin technology.
• The Evobin tells a user which items should be composted, recycled, or thrown away in landfill that is at a given organization. As objects are tossed, the scale in the bin can detect the change in weight and trigger a customizable message to appear on the screen.
• Across the US, Evobins have helped to divert an average of 77 percent of waste from landfill into compost and recycling. The bins also provide a way to educate consumers while effectively removing waste from landfill.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders needed to move this forward would be leadership at private organizations to purchase the bins, the office management / procurement team to provide the proper information about the materials in the office, and the facilities team to install and manage the Evobins.

Next Steps:

1. Scoping of the specific space and proper areas for placement of the technology
2. Identification of the materials that would be processed in the bins
3. Procurement of the proper number of bins based on the estimates created.

Sources:

1. https://www.dumpsters.com/blog/smart-waste-management-technology
2. https://evoeco.com/
3. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment#:~:text=You%20can’t%20manage%20what%20you%20don’t%20measure&text=Of%20that%2C%20only%20nine%20percent,the%20natural%20environment%20as%20litter.

Megan Krause

UNI: mhk2152

Problem
Industrial pollution and smog is a major issue resulting in poor quality of life and ultimately posing a significant human health and safety issues. Accordingly to the EPA, the level of pollution indoors is 2 to 5 times higher than outdoors and the average American spends about 90% of their lifetime inside.

Proposed Solution

• Artveoli is an Air Panel that removes CO2 and converts it into fresh air through photosynthetic algae cells.
• The product looks like a beautiful piece of art while actually composed of the material necessary to remove the CO2 from the air in the room.
• Artveoli solves for the issue of true removal of carbon instead of cyclical filtering in more polluted air. One of the largest issues is that many filtration systems pull in air from the outdoors while that only replaces polluted indoor air with polluted outdoor air
• The article they were mentioned in was “Office Art that Clears the Air” and the company hopes to make the item competitive in both the art and air filtration markets.

Stakeholders

The key organizational stakeholders necessary to use the technology will be workplace services in office buildings and the facilities management team who would replace old air with the updated installations of the Artveoli technology.

Technology Deployment

1. Buy-in from leadership to spend the additional money on the Artveoli system instead of traditional office art
2. Workplace services team working with Artveoli to procure the system
3. Facilities to hang and replace old artwork with the Artveoli system

Sources

1. http://www.artveoli.com/
2. https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/office-art-that-clears-the-air/85440/
3. https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/inside-story-guide-indoor-air-quality

Megan Krause / uni: mhk2152

Summary of Problem

Managing the waste generated in urban centers is costly and requires flexibility and certainty. Cities generate roughly 1.3 billion tons of solid waste per year and is expected to rise to 2.2 billion tons by 2025, an increase of 70%. The global costs associated are expected to increase from $205 billion per year in 2010 to $375 billion per year by 2025.

NYC singularly generates approximately 12,000 tons of solid waste every day and faces uncertainty of stability as its budget is continually cut. During the pandemic the budget of sanitation budget was cut by more than $100 million, leading to trash pile-ups on the sidewalks and in NYC Parks. NYC’s struggle to match the sanitation department’s budget with the needs of the city is not unique. Smarter waste management is needed to make a difference.

Technology Solution

• Enevo is a technology mentioned in “3 Sustainable Uses of the Internet of Things” that monitors waste bins to understand the pattern of volume, use, and frequency visited
• The technology intuitively gives users the information necessary to design thoughtful pickup strategies, address systematically overflowing waste bins, and reduce schedule for bins that are not filled
• The proper cost of a sanitation department in places like NYC can be more exactly predicted and extraneous routes eliminated to ensure that the department is running most efficiently while matching the residents’ demand for quality of life
• After steady use and monitoring of the information collected with Enevo, it may be possible to better analyze where most of the solid waste is being generated and develop strategies on how to lower it.
  
  

Organizational Stakeholders

In order to successfully implement this technology in a city, it would be necessary to have leadership buy in from the mayor’s office in order to ensure that this is a strategic focus and financial necessity for the city. There would also need to be a leadership champion at the department of sanitation to advocate for the technology.

The data analytics team at the department of sanitation would likely be responsible for consuming the information and making recommendations to route adjustments. And the logistics teams who coordinate the routes will need to use this information to proactively adjust the plan.

Implementation

1. Identify task force based on important organizational stakeholders
2. Plan for a one-year pilot to prove effectiveness. The one-year timeline will secure budget and also provide an opportunity to show projected savings of technology use over time.
3. Prioritize installation of Enevo by ranking location of highest volume and lowest volume collection sites and then simultaneously install at highest and lowest sites until met in the middle.

Sources

https://www.enevo.com/waste-analytics-technology

https://www.brinknews.com/growing-cities-growing-waste/#:~:text=Solid%20waste%20management%20is%20a,urban%20areas%20around%20the%20world.&text=Cities%20generate%20roughly%201.3%20billion,an%20increase%20of%2070%20percent.

https://www.grownyc.org/recycling/facts

Sustainable Internet of Things

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-29/for-cities-2020-really-is-a-garbage-year

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8581375/Trash-piling-NYC-sanitation-departments-budget-cut-106million.html