Panel shares ways to make jobs eco-friendly
A five-member panel discussed the future of green careers Wednesday and how almost every career can be more eco-friendly as part of Earth Week on campus at USU.
Career Services, the Sustainability Council and the Student Sustainability Office co-sponsored the panel, which met in the Merrill-Cazier Library.
“Our panel was a great combination of talents,” said Melissa Scheaffer, an associate director at Career Services. “They can give us an idea of what careers in the green industry mean. They talked about their expertise and their advice for students that are interested in green careers.”
Kristin Ladd, a Campus Outreach intern who helped organize the panel, said, “Earth Week caters to people who care about it, but this panel catered to people who are here to mainly get a better job. I wanted to reach out to more people on campus, because that’s what Blue Goes Green and the Student Sustainability Office is all about.”
Nat Frazer, former dean of the College of Natural Resources, said the college is all about the outdoors and being supportive of the environment.
“For one whole swath of green careers, and you like the outdoors, there’s a wide variety of things you can do,” Frazer said. “There are a plethora of private organizations that people in natural resources work for.”
He said it is impossible to think about a lot of career fields without thinking about green careers.
“Let me caution you,” Frazer said. “When you think about green careers, it is not just building windmills and working on hybrid cars. Those are the obvious things.”
Frazer provided examples of companies that have found creative ways to be environmentally friendly.
“UPS has developed a program where they plan out the route a truck is going to take, to take as few left turns as possible,” he said. “By instituting that plan, they’ve saved three million gallons of gas a year. Somebody who wasn’t in a green career saved UPS millions of dollars because they were thinking and asked a question.”
Transport companies are now using green, eco-friendly principles, such as not idling, slow acceleration and taking fewer left-hand turns, Frazer said.
“If you change your lights to LED, you can lower costs by 75 percent,” said panel member Ken Gardner, of Gardner Engineering.
Frazer also said innovative thinking benefits all careers.
“I encourage you all to think creatively and look around at the things that are happening,” he said. “And, as you learn more and more about the field that you are going in, ask yourself, ‘How can we lower costs and run efficiently?'”
“It’s a million different things going out and working together that will help us wean off of fossil fuels,” said Sam Powell, director of Washikie Renewable Energy.
Powell said his company works with USU’s Extension program to develop crop rotation with oil seeds.
“We are working on a pilot program for developing a way for farmers to use oil seed in rotation with their crops,” Powell said. “Eventually, I think you’ll see farmers and other people with land, planting oil seeds as a crop rotation.”
Denise Iverson, a panel member who represented workforce studies of the state of Utah, said there is training available for people interested in solar energy careers. She said the training is paid by a grant given to the state of Utah.
“There are several locations around the state that provide training,” Iverson said. “If you live in Cache Valley, it’s really easy to qualify.”
She said one of those locations is Bridgerland Applied Technology College, which also offers night courses.
The panel members discussed ways cities are becoming greener and more eco-friendly.
“If you’ve ever flown into any major city in the United States, you’ve seen the amount of flat rooftop space,” Frazer said. “There are several companies in the United States that are putting solar panels on top of these buildings and use that to subsidize the energy of universities and businesses to lower the operating cost. The company that lets them use their roof space gets a tax break. That’s an example of financial folks that are using empty, unused space.”
Frazer said there are two buildings on campus at USU that meet the lead platinum standard for energy – even the scrap material used was recycled.
Lt. Col. Greg Stuart represented USU’s Army ROTC on the panel and said the United States Army is also working to become more eco-friendly.
Stuart said there are two Army bases that depend on their own solar power to operate.
“The United States Army is taking going green very seriously. We are conscious of the need to go green,” Stuart said. “If you want to go green, it’s usually contractors. There’s not a specific field, but we are thinking green.”
Frazer said he believes each generation is going to be more eco-friendly.
“I guarantee you that the people in your generation have ideas that my generation never even thought of,” Frazer said.
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