The Council for Sustainable Use of Resources (SUR) is a university-industry consortium whose mission is to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from all methods of managing solid wastes and advance the best means for sustainable waste management, in the U.S. and globally.
SUR complements the studies carried out by the Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council (WTERT) on thermal treatment technologies. It is supported by research laboratories at Columbia University (Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering) and North Carolina State University (Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering).
Recent News
- Landfill fires: They're serious business, but also fairly common - Article published in Waste & Recycling News (August 31, 2009).
- Summary of the LF-WTE Meeting on Climate Impacts of U.S. Waste Management Industry - January 28, 2009 (contains all comments and revisions submitted to SUR till March 27, 2009).
- THE ECONOMIST Special Report on Waste: What’s wrong with policies on waste, and how to get them right - February 26, 2009.
- Carbon Footprint and Renewable Energy Contribution of Waste-to-Energy across Europe.
- The New York Times: Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up.
- Waste News: WM to help landfill owners create own gas projects.
- Waste News: Veolia, WM to study fugitive air emissions.
- Columbia University Reports Progress Toward NYC Sustainability Goals.
- Resource Recovery Technologies (RRT): 5 Minute Piece on WtE in Minnesota.
- One of the WTERT papers presented at the Global Waste Management Symposium at Copper Mountain, Colorado (September 2008) received the GWMS 2nd place award for an outstanding manuscript. The paper, by Dr. Frank Zeman, was titled "Considering Carbon Capture and Storage for Energy Generation from MSW". Dr. Zeman was member of Columbia's Lenfest Sustainable Energy Center until this summer when he was appointed Director of the Center for Metropolitan Sustainability of the New York Institute of Technology (www.nyit.edu).
- Columbia University Earns Top Grade for Sustainability, Columbia among Only 15 Schools Nationwide to Earn an A-.
- Proposed Expanded Hierarchy of Waste Management, by Prof. Nickolas J. Themelis.
- Reducing GHG Emissions of Waste Management, by Prof. Nickolas J. Themelis.
- New York City's Secret: The Trash Crisis - No American city has more garbage than New York City or more trouble getting rid of it. Ever since 2001, when New York City closed its only landfill - Fresh Kills - the city has been grappling with a growing garbage crisis. We spend a day in the life of two sanitation workers, then follow the garbage on its odyssey through indoor dumps all around New York City, down the highways and byways of the eastern seaboard, and to its final destination - most often - landfills in Pennsylvania.
- Life After Fresh Kills: A Technology-Policy Joint Study on the NYC Waste Management System (December 2001) - This was a joint project between the Earth Engineering Center and the Earth Policy Center of the School of International and Public Affairs. The objective was to identify alternatives for increasing material and energy recovery from MSW. The project was funded by the Strategic Initiatives Program of Columbia University and the final report was submitted to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC in December of 2001.