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Foresight Design's Jason Phillip recently spoke with George Nassos about the efforts at the Center for Sustainable Enterprise to communicate and demonstrate sustainability in Chicago.
How did the Center for Sustainable Enterprise get started? Was it always part of the business school at IIT?
John Paul Kusz, an adjunct professor, approached me in the summer of 2000 to talk about founding the Center for Sustainable Enterprise. The idea was to take advantage of the expertise of all of the colleges of IIT—engineering, architecture, design, law, business—to work with the city, residents and businesses to foster greater sustainability.
We hosted a two-hour breakfast meeting and invited representatives from a broad array of companies. Approximately 50 people, plus a representative from each of the colleges of IIT, attended. The responses were overwhelmingly positive. So, we created the Center here at the business school.
We’ve hosted conferences, done research, and gotten involved with projects like the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance. It’s been the effort of basically two people, John Paul Kusz and me. With the arrival of a new dean, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to significantly increase our capacity.
What services are offered by the Center? Is it a think tank, a consulting business, or an educational institution?
The Center is part of the Master’s of Science in Environmental Management program. We started that 12 years ago as a degree for traditional environmental management. By “traditional” I mean: ‘produce all the product you want, produce all the waste you want, and I will make sure it doesn’t pollute the air, the water, the soil, in compliance with all the regulations’. It grew from there so that we currently have five courses that really focus on sustainability. Our managers now say ‘produce all the product you want, but let’s do it without producing waste and be more efficient with our natural resources’. That’s the real reason we’re here. We have about 200 alumni who have graduated from the program. I would guess about 75% of those are in the Chicago area. About 40 students are currently enrolled in the program.
The Center is an opportunity to do consulting for companies interested in pursuing greater sustainability. We also host conferences like Sustainable Innovation ’06 (SI ’06) that we held last year.
We also have students work on research projects as independent study. For example, one student of mine is doing a lifecycle analysis of a new product for SC Johnson. The project will deepen our relationship with them. Another student is doing a project for Chicago Climate Exchange. Through the Center we’ve done some GIS research for Exelon where we develop layers of environmentally sensitive areas so they can see if they want to expand their infrastructure network where they are going to come into contact with sensitive areas. They didn’t have that information before they worked with the Center.
Where do the ideas for these projects come from?
They’re developed in various ways, through existing relationships, or alumni, or faculty members. In many cases, the companies have heard about us and they call asking for help.
How would you describe to someone how the Center contributes to creating successful sustainable businesses?
I could probably best do that through an example. The Chicago Manufacturing Center (CMC) had a client that wanted to be sustainable. They asked CMC for help. CMC put us in contact with them, and we did a lifecycle overview of their products to see the use of embedded carbon in their products. We looked at the carbon emissions—not just the energy that they use at their plant, but from the beginning of the product to the end all the different components that increase the CO2 emissions of that particular product. So, we helped them to be more sustainable. In fact, that company won two awards last year: a GreenWorks award from the city and an Illinois Governor’s Pollution Prevention Award.
Another company I hope to start working with soon is a bakery in Chicago with plants all over the world. We’re going to do a study to see how they can be more sustainable in terms of their product usage, their energy usage, and so on. We’ll use the study as a model for their other facilities, and for other bakeries.
You talked about product lifecycle analysis and carbon footprint analysis. Why is there a need for both?
The lifecycle analysis looks at the usage of materials, not just the energy involved. There are a lot of components to the lifecycle: material usage, energy, labor, other materials that go into a product.
The carbon footprint really deals with the energy usage in all aspects of the product’s lifecycle. This is the carbon that’s used in transporting the raw material to your facility, for example. The company where we did the carbon footprint analysis has its plant here in Chicago, but it delivers all over the country. So we’re asking them, “Why not produce your product on the West Coast instead of shipping it to customers there?” Setting up facilities in other parts of the country would cut down on the use of carbon during shipping.
How did the project involving the urban wind turbine get started?
A company in France produced two prototypes of a small 12 kilowatt wind turbine that provides at least 45% more power for its size than any other turbine on the market. One prototype was shipped to the Antarctic to be tested under the most extreme conditions of wind and temperature. The other they wanted to bring to the Midwest, primarily in an urban market rather than a wind farm. They were referred to the Chicago Manufacturing Center, who referred them to us.
I sought funding and bought the wind turbine and the city agreed to pay for the installation in partnership. We put it up in the summer of ’04 in front of the Field Museum. It ran for three months, but for political reasons it had to come down. I’m working diligently to get it up again by the end of the year.
What disciplines do students who work with the Center come from? Is there an academic field—say, engineering—that will be crucial for building a sustainable economy in the future?
Most our students have a technical background, but it’s not a requirement. It has no relationship to success in our program and what they do afterward.
I think the most important attribute, and it is common to almost all our students, is having a passion for the environment. If they really care, that’s all it takes. I have another student, I don’t even know what his undergraduate degree was, but before he came here he taught English in Taiwan for six months and then was a scuba diving instructor for six months in Thailand, just before the tsunami. Then he finished our program, and now he works for Ernst & Young as part of a small consulting group that consults with the firm’s clients on how to be sustainable.
What are your ambitions for the Center? What kind of struggles have you had fulfilling its mission?
Our single biggest obstacle is funding. I’d like to hire three people, build the Center, and create more sustained income. Two senior people would basically write proposals to do research and consulting. The junior person would organize executive education courses, seminars, conferences, and so on. The proposals they would write and the contracts they would get would cover their expenses. The point is not to give them work, but to utilize our students. Our students would be doing a lot of the research, a lot of the legwork, for these projects.
Eventually I would like to develop a PhD program, which would allow us to have students work on bigger projects. The MS students only have one quarter in their coursework, 11 weeks, to work on a project.
How do you think being part of the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance will help your efforts at the Center?
I truly believe that every company in the Chicago area, whether it’s a manufacturing or service company, of a certain size or bigger—and I don’t know what that size would be; it might be $10 million a year in sales or it might be $50 million—needs to hire one of my graduates. Or they need to send one of their employees through this program, but they don’t know it.
The Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance is a vehicle to let all these companies know what role we can play in their business. If they truly want to be sustainable and they need help, they can hire us to do some consulting. Better they should send one of their employees through our program or hire one of our graduates. For less money they could get someone on staff permanently. The opportunity to be visible to other companies is the major value in the CSBA, and that’s why we agreed to be a Founding Member.
What does “sustainability” mean to the Center?
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