Ultimate Sustainability

UI Researchers are beginning a project to help Idaho view and use manure, byproducts of food processing, and other agricultural and aquacultural materials as a resource. Lead researcher, Dr LillianAlessa explains the philosophy behind the project

Reclaiming and reusing nutrients can benefit Idaho businesses by giving them new sources of profit and reducing the state's dependence on external resources, said Lilian Alessa, the lead researcher for ReFEWS, UI President's Professor and co-director of the CRC.

"For example, waste is a raw material. It's something that we typically dispose of, but we're throwing money out when we do that," Alessa said. "We have technologies that we're developing here in Idaho to re-use nutrients in waste. Those technologies aren't new, but figuring out how they best fit into a whole social-ecological system on a landscape scale is. We have a systematic and collaborative approach to increasing resilience in the FEW system for Idaho and, more broadly, the American West, and this project is a demonstration on how this can be scaled up to create strong and sustainable economies in both rural and urban communities."