Sustainability as Safety
When sustainability is no longer on the top of governmental agenda, people tend to describe environmental protection as a business case. That is helping businesses to be more environmentally friendly while meeting their financial goals. Sustainability language takes form of risk management and climate resilience. In manufacturing this often translates into million gallons of water saved, reduction in tons of material used or a percentage of recycled material used to produce a widget.
I was born in Kyiv, a few hours away from Chornobyl. My uncle was one of the liquidators of this largest human-made environmental disaster and very few conversations about Chernobyl left behind the fact of governmental mismanagement. Safety failures were directly tied to the environment.
Getting to the bottom of it - producing organic fertilizer
While getting both environmental management and MBA (Duke NSOE Article), I realized the importance of understanding foundations. Therefore, after graduation, I joined a startup where I led R&D effort in producing organic fertilizer from hog manure. If United Nations effort is ten thousand feet above the ground - this job in the ag space was surely the foundation as we all need food.
The company is tackling a critical for North Carolina environmental challenge - converting hog waste into an organic fertilizer. This process allows to ship nutrients where needed.
GIS Wind Farm Site Evaluation Final Project
As part of the GIS Fundamentals class, every student individually completed a project encompassing material from the entire class. Final project PDF.