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Rosenblum, Eric; Davis, Martina; Grossman, Marianna; Clark, Drew; Davis, Jim; Risberg, Jeff
2011 International Journal of Innovation Science
South Bay Water Recycling (SBWR) is a regional recycled water distribution system serving industrial and commercial customers in the area of northern California (USA) known as "Silicon Valley." In early 2008 the City of San José, as administering agency of the San José/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant, implemented a Cooling Tower Initiative to encourage recycled water use by commercial and industrial facilities. In 2009, Sustainable Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization dedicated to a sustainable future, convened a meeting of utilities, high-tech and academics to discuss how local stakeholders might collaborate to improve the sustainable use of water in Silicon Valley. Out of these discussions emerged the concept of the EcoCloud™, a coalition of private companies, public utilities, environmental organizations and academic researchers who encourage each other to adopt sustainable practices, supported by the latest social networking and data analysis tools. While the initial focus of the EcoCloud™ is to help industrial facilities use water sustainably—especially by using recycled water for cooling—its long-term goal is to support all aspects of sustainability, including energy reduction, materials management and land use. The EcoCloud™ allowed the City of San José to move from a serial marketing to a group marketing model, reaching more potential customers and connecting more facilities to the recycled water system.Inspired by the concept of industrial ecology, the EcoCloud™ is designed to be a "virtual" industrial ecosystem where industry, government and educational institutions can work together to share information about all aspects of sustainability. Although industries in the EcoCloud™ are not located next to each other, they share a common interest in reducing energy usage, conserving resources, eliminating waste, and cutting costs to improve their bottom line. Just as "cloud computing" uses the distributed power of the internet for more efficient data processing, the EcoCloud™ harnesses the power of web-based social networking tools so local business leaders and facility managers can work with industry experts, technology innovators, university researchers and government agencies to make their enterprises more sustainable and more profitable.
Shastri, Yogendra; Diwekar, Urmila; Mehrotra, Sanjay
2011 International Journal of Innovation Science
This work proposes an innovative approach of watershed level mercury trading for sustainable management of mercury pollution. An optimization based decision-making framework has been developed to optimize the selection of mercury treatment technologies by industries in a watershed in the presence of nonlinearity and uncertainty in technology cost models. The impact of the regulation on technology selection by industries, often ignored in existing trading literature, has been quantified. A particularly novel contribution of this framework is the consideration of health care cost as an objective. The application of the framework to the Savannah River watershed case study in US emphasizes the importance of health care cost while evaluating the benefits of trading. Nonlinearity and uncertainty in the cost models is shown to significantly affect technology selection. The ecological perspective of innovation comes from the proposal of using water body liming to mitigate mercury bioaccumulation and concerns of mercury hotspots.
Mohan, Dhananjai; Athreya, Ramana
2011 International Journal of Innovation Science
Arunachal Pradesh is the most biodiverse Indian state situated in its north-east with the second highest breeding bird diversity in the world. Despite this, the area did not exist in bird-based tourism map till as late as a few years back owing to remoteness and lack of proper infrastructure and documentation. An innovative community based ecotourism initiative started in 2006, has catapulted one of the protected areas, namely Eagle-nest Wildlife Sanctuary of this state to one of the top birding destination of the world in a very short time. After a thorough documentation of the birdlife of the area by a qualified researchers' team, basic infrastructure was created through grants from external donors. Today the high quality low volume bird based ecotourism is completely managed by local Bugun tribal community and provides employment to few locals besides contributing to Bugun community welfare funds in a sustainable manner without any external support. The community today takes pride in the activity and also ensures that the forests are well preserved. The innovative aspect of the initiative is a complete management by the community with no support from the Government, making it truly sustainable.
2011 International Journal of Innovation Science
In a time of global climate change, thousands of cities across the United States are taking action to become more sustainable by forging alliances, collaborating on innovative projects, and developing programs to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In spite of significant challenges, such as decreased revenues, reduced organizational capacity, or lack of a formalized long-term sustainability vision, U.S. cities in many cases are leading the charge in the governmental arena. Due to a city's inherent ability to influence people's actions through leading by example, city sustainability efforts are already having a substantial impact in the areas of natural resource conservation and social equity. This article examines how a number of cities in the San Francisco Bay Area are heeding the call to action by reducing their carbon footprints, conserving precious natural resources, and creating more livable, sustainable cities for current and future generations to enjoy.
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