Systems-level approaches are required for addressing the world's major challenges at the food-energy-water nexus. Taking on complex issues, such as rising food insecurity, malnutrition, and food waste, concomitant with unprecedented levels of stress on environmental systems, will necessitate that future scholars and decision makers be prepared…

In recent years, solar-powered photocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen production has drawn great attention as a method to supply clean energy and reduce environmental pollution. This approach, driven by solar energy to synthesize hydrogen gas, is completely renewable and can be used to power hydrogen fuel cells to effectively solve the global…

A significant challenge for the global community is the increasing demand for clean and renewable energy technologies. However, a lack of knowledge of these technologies threatens to impede their adoption. The development of cheap, effective, and easy-to-use chemical and electrochemical storage technologies is crucial if countries are to move away…

In 2019, global youth powerfully expressed their concerns that not enough was being done to keep the planet's ecosystems in balance. Those voices have been heard, plain and simple. Environmental science is taught in schools using theory and laboratory sessions. This approach leaves a gap between school work and real life. In United Nations…

The development of nations depends on energy consumption, which is generally based on fossil fuels. This dependency produces irreversible and dramatic effects on the environment, e.g. large greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn cause global warming and climate changes, responsible for the rise of the sea level, floods, and other extreme weather…

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has experienced rapid growth in the last decade. In addition to educating over 17,000 students annually, UAB is a major research facility and academic healthcare center. Due to growth and expansion, UAB requires more and more water to sustain operations. The central chilled water system serves over…

For the past decade, academic institutions have made significant strides toward sustainability--creating greener facilities, and educating and engaging their students in the process. With budgets tight, any green initiatives need to be backed, first and foremost, by a compelling economic argument. Harper College in Palatine, Illinois is a 180-acre…

With its park-like campus location overlooking the Hudson River and Catskills Mountains in New York's Hudson Valley, it's no wonder that Bard College is committed to being green. At the liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, students learn and live in 25 geothermal buildings on campus that don't burn fossil fuels on site. Instead of driving…

This case study of the University of Toronto Sustainability Office's energy conservation project, Rewire, explores the implementation of a social marketing campaign that encourages energy efficient behavior. Energy conservation activities have reached approximately 3,000 students and staff members annually, and have saved electricity, thermal…

We discuss an experiment on wind energy performed with home-made apparatus. The experiment reproduces a laboratory windmill, which can pump water from a lower level to a higher one. By measuring the gain of the gravitational potential energy of the pumped water, one can determine the power extracted from the wind. The activity was carried out with…

Our community has faced many challenges since May 4, 2007. The rebuilding of all the town's school facilities was just one of them. However, as we approach the end of the first year in the new building, we are happy with the outcome. The facility already feels like home.

The modern food system involves high consumption of natural resources and other forms of environmental degradation. This paper is a presentation of internet resources such as scientific contributions, graphics, tables, images, animations and interactive atlases that can help to teach this subject. The discussion contains some subjects considered…

The influx of technology has brought significant improvements to school facilities. Many of those advancements can be found in classrooms, but when students head down the hall to use the washrooms, they are likely to find a host of technological innovations that have improved conditions in that part of the building. This article describes modern…

When schools and universities look at saving energy in their facilities, they are likely to review the efficiency of their heating and cooling systems, or the quality of their building envelopes. When facility managers focus attention on school bathrooms, they are more likely to consider issues such as cleanliness and safety as more critical than…

Many schools and universities want the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification for their facilities, but they are concerned about cost. This certification is tangible evidence that a facility is designed to conserve resources and use energy more efficiently. "Low-cost/no-cost" upgrades can be worked into a capital plan that provides a 3-…