18 thoughts on “Industry sustainability”

  1. RongHui Wu,Sikandar, Anish, ouedraogo Sory I

    To have public transportiaon (MTA) improve and be more sustainable they need to work on lots of things. some improvement would be like lowering the fare, better service, having the train arrive on time and less delays, update the trains and busses more eco friendly and more secure subways. some steps that need to be taken to achieve these , there need to be more maintenance and repair workers, on-location incident and emergency response teams, police and EMT presence. these improves will not just keeps the trains running on time it will also make subways much safer. To measure the progress made, we will just look at the number of ridders per year, and if the number happens to increase that means MTA is a improved and sustainable place.

    1. The proposals you have made are a good place to start. How could a realignment of city and state resources
      make a reduction in fares possible? Why is this an important goal? What specific kinds of
      updates would you propose? How would the changes you propose,
      such as result in greater efficiency throughout the system overall?

    2. This is a good beginning. How might city and state government prioritize public transportation and allocate more revenue toward
      achieving these changes? What specific kinds of changes could result in better service and fewer delays?

    3. I agree with your ideas and messages for the MTA. However having those personnel as you said would require money, where would the money come from?

      By what method can you hire these workers and keep the metro card cheap as well?

      The method of measuring data might need to be revised. I’m not sure how the MTA keeps track, but if it’s by surveys… I don’t think the average New Yorker has time for that.

  2. Our group selected the healthcare industry and group members included Angel Campbell, Hemra J Mohabir, and Rachel Broomes.

    We considered the following goals ….
    a. Effectiveness in meeting basic needs: In order to meet basic human needs in the healthcare industry, we must ensure that patients have access to care and there are a sufficient number of physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals to meet the needs of a growing population.Hospitals must also provide a sufficient number of beds to meet patient needs. Hospitals must provide safe drinking water. Education must also play a role in the healthcare industry. By educating patients on disease prevention, healthy eating, and environmental triggers for conditions such as asthma, we can improve quality of life for patients.

    b. Efficiency in use of resources: According to Practice Greenhealth, the healthcare industry utilizes more than 800 trillion BTU of energy each year.This costs approximately 6.5 billion.Hospitals can also utilize close to 300,000 gallons of water annually. In order for the healthcare industry to be more sustainable , action must be taken to reduce the consumption of these resources.This can be done by using motion sensors on sink faucets and facility lights. In addition, hospitals should enforce a recycling program.Multiple bins should be placed on each floor and within individual departments. The disposal of hazardous waste must also be closely monitored. Hospital waste disposal costs are extremely high. It is essential that only hazardous waste be disposed in red trash bags and all other trash be discarded in the appropriate place. Departmental supervisors should enforce the importance of these interventions.
    c. Environmental cleanliness: Hospitals must minimize exposure to harmful pollutants. Staff such as laboratory employees must be properly trained on the handling and disposal of harmful or carcinogenic chemicals such as formalin. By improperly discarding these chemicals in sinks, we are polluting the water supply. Department managers or supervisors should conduct random inspections to ensure that staff are complying with the proper procedures. It is essential that hospital cooling towers are properly maintained to prevent potential spread of harmful bacteria spread through water droplets.
    d.Sustainability of the built environment: By creating a green space on hospital grounds, not only are we improving the environment by reducing pollutants in the air, but there are also physical and psychological benefits for patients. Recreational or occupational therapists may decide to utilize a green space as a therapeutic intervention for patients. Patients can reduce stress by enjoying a green space or they can be actively involved in horticulture to improve self esteem, reduce anxiety, and improve physical mobility.
    Commitment to future sustainability: By reducing the overutilization of water and electricity and cutting costs through the proper disposal of waste, hospitals can invest this savings in improving the quality of healthcare. This may include the hiring of additional clinical staff to meet the needs of a growing population or by investing in new technology to improve patient care.

    In order to measure progress towards our goals, the utilization of water and electricity would be monitored regularly. Departmental managers would also ensure that staff are following protocols pertaining to waste disposal and recycling;this could be done through random departmental inspections.

    1. Rachel, Hemra and Angel,

      Your examination of how the health care industry can be made more sustainable on each of these dimensions is very thoughtful and thorough.
      Indeed there are many issues that might often be overlooked,such as the importance of green space as a therapeutic, healing resource. At the
      same time, you have given thought to how hospitals and other providers can implement a reduction in resource use into the future. Well done.

  3. Our group chose the Public Transportation industry and group members include Sarah Adams, Taissa Cottrell, and Junzhao Li.

    While talking about the public transportation industry we considered the following thing such as one, encouraging people to have more bikes so they can ride it to the train station instead of always riding a car. Also to make bikes more easily accessible and to make it more convenient to ride bikes by giving them more space for their own lanes. When they would get to the train stations with their bikes there would be an area for them put their bikes such as some kind of storage that might go under ground and is very secure. To add more incentive to use bikes and the trains more often there could possibly be some kind of lower fare for people who ride their bikes and ride citi bikes. This would meet their basic needs for making it to the train without having a car and making it as convenient as possible. If more people are riding trains then the transit system is making more money. This would greatly help with environmental cleanliness because with less cars riding around that would reduce the burning of fossil fuels. This is surely something that can be maintained in definitively. Currently millions of new yorkers use metro cards on the daily and get rid of them just as fast. A way to have better efficiency in the use of our resources would be to stop making metro cards and have a system where we use our phones instead and for the people would dont have phones then they can use metro however few that is. This would cut down on money and resources spent to make the metro cards. In brazil they have it where cars can only ride on certain days of the week and its determine some how by their license plate. The average person who owns a car usually only owns one car. If half a population of car users were not able to use their cars on a certain day continuously this would greatly reduce the burning of fossil fuels. And combine that with pushing people to use more electric cars. As an incentive for getting electric cars people could get a big discount for trading their old cars in or something along those lines. This surely sustainable considered when they can’t use their cars they can ride their bikes to the trains. Another idea we thought of is uber should make it where carpooling is the main option and uber x is for people with big or a lot of luggage. To make significant improvements over the next decade these proposals would need to be implemented as soon as possible such as pushing more riding bikes, adding more bikes lanes, and adding some incentives. Also pushing the use of electrics cars slowly implementing the idea of cars driving on specific days and see how that works. To measure the progress made we could measure how much the burning of fossil fuels have decreased and how much more money the city is making.

    1. Good ideas. To measure progress, you could also look at number of Citi bike rentals from one year to the next. Did the added
      conveniences coincide with an increase in bike rentals over the year? The same information might be obtained following
      the installation of more bike lanes, etc. Incentives or tax credits at the state level for the purchase of fuel efficient/
      electric vehicles could also go a long way, given the planned phase-out of the federal tax credit for such purchases.

  4. Group: Farid Rodriguez, Jose Calderon, Wenjie Long
    Our group chose to evaluate public transportation, specifically the MTA trains and buses. To be effective in meeting the basic needs of transportation the MTA must be clean and efficient. Since all the train cars do not have trash bins and people usually leave trash inside the train car or throws the garbage to tracks, as a result, this can cause a fire in the tracks, and at the same time delays. To help people not to keep throwing trash to the tracks we can also add a barrier between the train and the platform, this way we can cease many fire incidents on the tracks, and also people falling to it. According to the MTA, in 2015, 168 people were involved in a train accident, from which 18 people died.

    There is also the idea of making buses more environmentally friendly and efficient by adding solar panels. With little harm, they can cut down costs as the power gained can be reused elsewhere. This ties into the concept of sustainability, which is vital to success.

    Success must not be the only parameter considered. In order for the system to be usable, resources must be efficiently used, otherwise, the cost of the plan would be unfeasible. There are many things to take into account, like what it takes for the system to be sustainable. One way efficiency could be achieved is that the wasted resources could be recycled and turned into something usable. An direct example would be recycling the trash in the subway tracks. This is a way to increase the resources available. Another thing to worry about when it comes to efficiency could be managed. There are often times what seems to be an inefficient operation with things like delays and long repair times. By reducing the time it takes and making these issues less prominent, the time could be spent on other things, such as updating the system.

    Environmental cleanliness is a major part of this evaluation. The majority of issues experienced by riders is caused by negligence by the riders themselves, as there are people who freely litter. The solutions proposed is a direct address of these problems since they have a clear, lasting impact that is clearly felt even today.

    Commitment to its future sustainability seen by the fact that the economy of the state depends on its residents arriving to work. Barriers will help future generations from polluting the train tracks and having accidents.

    The step that we need to take in consideration is not to destroy this equipment since people might have bad intentions, progress can only be made if the equipment is maintained.

    If these ideas were to be proposed progress can be measured by the number of train delays after implementation (of barriers and trash cans), electrical power (watts) saved by solar panels, and number of accidents on the tracks. Although things like power can be difficult to be judged and measured by the general public, the change in number of delays and accidents can be felt clearly and visibly. Identifying progress and measuring it would be a simple task as seeing the number of complaints from everyday commuters. Alternatively, sign of an improved public transportation would be seen in the number of commuters. If the system were to improve significantly, there should be a rise in the number of riders, showing that public transportation would’ve become a viable method of getting around the city.

    1. Okay – some good suggestions here. You suggest that the collected trash could be recycled into something else – how else could it
      be used? And what kinds of system updates would you recommend? There are a number of things that could be updated that could
      generate improvements, such as the signaling system that dates to the 1930’s. Any suggestions on how this could be improved
      upon – and how might these changes generate more revenue?
      You offer some good proposals as to how to measure progress.

  5. Souleymane Minte, Marvin Williams, Alvin Martinez

    The industry vital to the economy of New York that we chose was public transportation More specifically the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).
    The goals we considered were:

    a. Effectiveness in meeting basic needs:
    Ensure that fare prices are affordable to the mass population using the MTA. Provide customers with trains and buses that arrive on time and minimize delays. Also provide security and ensure the safety of all the customers using the subway or buses.

    b. Efficiency in use of resources:
    We considered recycling bus tires. Provide efficient lighting for example, switching to LED light bulbs which consume less power and last longer than fluorescent bulbs. Although majority of the buses are hybrids, we suggest switching to fully electric buses, and eliminate the use of gasoline. Also we plan to seek energy efficient and environmentally friendly ways to generate power such as wind and solar power.

    c. Environmental Cleanliness:
    Provide customers with more garbage bins and also bins for recyclable garbage. Posters to encourage riders not to litter and making them aware of the effects of littering such as track fires which lead to delays in the subway.

    d. Sustainability of the built environment:
    Make sure in areas being repaired such as train stations/tracks, try to use materials that would do less harm and if possible no harm to the environment. Another would be extending the expiration dates on metro cards so that they’ll last longer and won’t have to be replaced as frequently resulting in plastic waste. Create areas more specifically high traffic areas where cars are not allowed which would force people to use public transportation and reduce the number of cars on the road.

    e. Commitment to future sustainability
    We could monitor and measure our progress towards our goals. For example, compare the number of recyclable tires used vs non-recyclable. We could monitor our green house gas emissions per year. Also, our electrical power consumption per year and seek to lower the power consumption annually. We could also survey the daily riders for their feedback on the changes made.

  6. Henry Lam, Joshua Veliz, Pablo Sanchez
    For our group we discussed about package deliveries.
    we discussed how companies such as FedEx, UPS and USPS have trucks that can save so much more on money and help save the environment by going hybird. The reason behind this is that they have so much trucks going around the world and its running on oil. If they were to go hybird and have solar panels; they will save a lot more money and use less harmful fuel.
    Some specific test that we think should happen is gather a few trucks and turn them hybird. After turning them hybird, we can see if it will help the environment and at the same time help the companies still do their job. If big companies such as FedEx, UPS and USPS end up changing to hybird other companies will too.
    The best way to track down the cost and how it can help the companies is if they track down the data on how much money they spend or save on the hybird trucks vs their normal trucks.

    1. Okay – delivery has been a growing economic sector and likely has had an increasing environmental impact.
      In terms of measuring progress, can you think more specifically about how and whether there is an environmental
      benefit and something specific that could be measured? And yes, evaluating the cost savings to the companies of switching
      to hybrid trucks is definitely something that can be looked at.

  7. My team member was Phillip Jiang

    We chose the public transportation as an area of interest to fix. Specifically we chose the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). For the MTA I’d like to lower the subway fare.

    Methods of lowering subway fare
    1) Autonomous Card swiping machine.
    We can use our phones as metrocard through an app. This idea is inspired by apple pay or google pay. Sometimes our cards also expire with this, there is no worry for that. On the card we could have 20 cents or 5 dollars even! Once it expires the money is lost. Through the app there is no worries for that.

    The progress can be monitored by how many people use this machine. We can have a seperate stand or section for people to use it if need be. Through this we can gain the data to see if such a change is needed. With this idea we can release some workers which in turn would save more money and fare on the metrocard.

    2) The second idea is training the janitors to clean the tracks of the train so that track fires happen less frequently which in turn would save money on the metrocard. Due to track fires, large expenditures from the MTA could be prevented.

    1. Okay – these are definitely good ideas. Would an increase is the number of people leaving their cars behind
      and using public transportation be a measure of progress? What would be the expected environmental and
      economic benefits of these changes? A more affordable fare would be one. Are there other ways that an economic
      benefit might be realized?

  8. Marvin Williams and Souleymane Minte : assignment #2 …. 02/26/19
    The sustainable business model we selected is Cradle to Cradle and the company name is ” fashion over style” which produces designer clothing from recycle clothing . For example a person brings his used jacket and we would add accessories, color and alter to produce fashionable jacket.
    This is the Cradle to Cradle model which would eliminate waste hence reducing GHG emissions.

    My research topic : Indoor Air Quality in home, offices and industries.

    1. Okay, great. And how readily could this model be adopted in the clothing industry more broadly? There appear to be a growing number of companies that have sustainable fashion in mind – such that if practiced more widely, this could have a significant positive impact.

      The topic of indoor air quality is good. Your may want to talk about the importance of indoor and workplace air quality to health. This is something that likely impacts many people. What are some of the biggest problems with workplace air quality and how have these been addressed? Why is this an important economic and environmental issue?

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