Jan 13, 2021
Photo Credit: Maya Ezzeddine
Written By: Maya Ezzeddine
Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) production has the opportunity to provide a sustainable alternative to conventional farming. A lot of focus has already been placed on CEA's ability to be very water-efficient and space-efficient, and various studies have looked at its energy use. One area which has not yet been fully studied is the current waste outputs from the CEA production process.
Under the advisorship of Dr. Anu Rangarajan, Cornell PhD student Maya Ezzeddine is conducting research to better understand the types of waste streams that come out of typical CEA production processes, and conducting analyses to suggest best practices for sustainability in CEA, minimizing waste-to-landfill without compromising efficiency and without high spending or extra labor costs.
Maya has been interviewing commercial CEA facility owners, operators, or growers, or academics or consultants who work with CEA, collecting anonymous information about waste streams generated at CEA facilities and typical management practices of these waste streams. Knowing that there are variations from municipality to municipality in terms of waste services provided (such as municipal compost pickup), the study examines CEA facilities in various localities to gain a deeper understanding of how waste management practices could differ from region to region.
Participate in this exciting study! Participation will take about 1 hour and 15 minutes, consisting of a 15 minute company profile questionnaire followed by a one hour video call. To get started, please select a time for the video meeting by using this Calendly link, and complete this online questionnaire at any time prior to your selected meeting time. Please also feel free to reach out to Maya directly at me438@cornell.edu to discuss.
Participation is completely voluntary, and participants can withdraw at any time. All gathered information will be kept confidential, and stored securely on password protected servers accessible only by the research team. All data will be anonymized and aggregated before any results are published and respondents will be completely unidentifiable. Any waste management recommendations which arise from the study will be made available to the participating CEA producers.
