Deepening the connection

Shanna Eller and her team of student researchers spend most days digging through your garbage.

They are on the frontline of sustainability research at Portland State and deal with perhaps the most tangible aspect in the fight to reduce, reuse and recycle: solid waste reduction.

Eller is the interim director of PSU’s Community Environmental Services, a nonprofit research firm housed within the Center for Urban Studies and manned by 30 graduate and undergraduate students.

“We do a fair amount of the on-the-ground-level work,” Eller said. “We get a sense of what’s really happening in the region.”

CES is currently working on more than 15 contracts with Metro, the City of Portland and the Port of Portland, among others. The group studies recycling trends in businesses and residential areas and develops strategies for more sustainable practices.

A typical day for CES workers often involves trolling through a 20-yard pile of garbage, perhaps from the Portland Airport, carefully cataloging what should have been recycled and what deserves to be landfill-bound.

“We do a range of routine, non-routine and pilot projects,” Eller said. “We’re often the contractor on the ground. We provide expertise and value from a cost standpoint, since we’re composed primarily of students.”

CES, completely funded through outside sources, had relatively inauspicious beginnings.

In 1989, long before sustainability and all of its numerous buzzwords became the lens through which many at Portland State choose to view the university, professors Jake Blake and Barry Messer founded the Recycling Education Projects.

The duo was conducting research on multifamily recycling in the metro area and they were teaching a class that had students conduct a survey of local apartments to see how many people were recycling.

The class developed a plan to educate the buildings and provide them with recycling equipment. Blake presented the plan to the City of Portland and came away with an agreement to fund the project.

By 1998, REP had changed its name to Community Environmental Services and had become a Mecca for students interested in sustainable practices. Student workers often graduate and immediately earn high-level jobs.

Working for CES is the equivalent of doing an internship, Eller said. “They’re doing professional-level work.”

Ronda Chapman-Duer, 37, graduated from PSU last year with a history degree and is now the sustainability coordinator for Washington County.

“I was a business technical assistant,” she said. “I went out to businesses throughout the Portland region and gave them some education about office recycling. We would go through and assess their current practices and identify ways for them to increase their rate of recycling and reduce their waste consumption.”

Chapman-Duer said that her two years with CES were invaluable.

“It’s critical,” Chapman-Duer said. “It prepared me because we were kind of autonomous, in a sense. We had to take our own direction and be very assertive.”

Chapman-Duer is just one of several CES students now working in the field of sustainability. The City of Portland and Gresham both have former CES staffers, and many other students have found work in the private sector.

“The School of Urban and Public Affairs was probably the original sustainability outpost at Portland State,” said Leslie Carlson, co-chair of the Sustainability Development Commission, a citizen advisory panel that reports to the Portland City Council and the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

“It’s hard to get the data to show that sustainability really pays off,” she said. “Having academics that can verify that is very important.”

CES does more than simply prepare students for a green job. It also provides the university with valuable data for use in the classroom and academic research.

“It’s not an abstraction,” Eller said. “We have the space within the university to reflect.”

CES may be one of the best examples of the way Portland State is involved throughout the region in terms of sustainability and research, but it is hardly the only one. Provost Roy Koch sits on the Sustainable Development Commission with Carlson.

In addition, professor Mellie Pullman is a member of the Food Policy Council, another arm of the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development. The council deals with all food-related issues, including access and local sourcing.

Professor David Sailor is leading an effort using software modeling to determine whether ecoroofs are actually effective. The research is partly funded by the Ecoworks Foundation, the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development and Gerding Edlen Development Co.

“That’s just a perfect example of the value that PSU brings to the sustainability community,” Carlson said.