Sustainability Blog

Learn how Utah Open Lands is restoring forest health and conserving ecosystems one acre at a time in this Q&A with Executive Director Wendy Fisher.

Learn how the Utah Farmers Market Network is strengthening local communities, supporting small businesses, improving food access, and promoting sustainable consumption through farmers' markets across Utah.

Explore how Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connections supports integration in Cache Valley and why multiculturalism strengthens communities. Learn how individuals can better understand and support refugees and immigrants locally.

Learn how TreeUtah is planting trees, strengthening communities, and improving ecosystems across Utah in this Q&A with Executive Director Amy May.

Blue Planet Lawn uses electric, solar-powered equipment to cut air and noise pollution in Utah. The company was founded in response to the state’s poor air quality and shows how cleaner lawn care can support healthier communities.

Nestled against the Wasatch Mountains, has become home to a business dedicated to environmental stewardship: Momentum Recycling.

Faircrest Farms, founded by Karl and Rita Ebeling in 2022, is a regenerative urban farm in Weber County that combines sustainable practices with a community mission. Alongside supplying fresh produce to local markets, the farm supports the Grow Ogden prog...

Dr. Stacia Ryder, a sociologist at Utah State University, researches how power and inequality shape environmental justice, especially in rural and underrepresented communities. Her work bridges sustainability, policy, and public engagement to promote equi...

Scott Hotaling, a climate resiliency specialist at Utah State University, studies how climate change impacts high mountain ecosystems, particularly through the loss of snow and ice. He works to engage communities through programs like CAIP to build climat...

Brad Di Iorio, Executive Director of Leaders For Clean Air (LFCA), leads efforts to improve air quality by expanding EV infrastructure, securing grants for over 4,000 EV chargers. Under his leadership, LFCA educates businesses, collaborates with policymak...

The Utah High School Clean Air Marketing Contest inspires students to create visual PSAs promoting clean air awareness, with past participants like Molica Chao and Alivia Parker turning their involvement into advocacy. Through art and education, the conte...

Darren Parry emphasizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge and traditional Shoshone practices in fostering sustainability, resilience, and environmental stewardship. By integrating Indigenous wisdom into mainstream environmental efforts and amplifying...

Meet Kirsten Vinyeta, an environmental sociologist specializing in qualitative research methods. She received her PhD in Environmental Sciences, Studies and Policy at the University of Oregon and her BS in Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisco...

Meet Grace Christensen from Stardust Sustainables, a company that creates reusable shopping bags from jute fiber.

Naomi Market is Logan's consignment shop for preloved outdoor gear and apparel!

Meet Justine Bowes, the Operations Director of Moab Bag Co, a unique company that creates functional items from upcycled materials. They offer items such as dog leashes, bags, card holders, and more, all made from bike tubes! Read more about Justine belo...

Meet Jamaica Trinnaman, the owner and founder of HelloBulk Markets, a bulk goods store that offers a selection of items such as body care and household items all for a reasonable price. In this interview, she gives us insight into the process behind start...

Meet Chef Christopher Galarza of Forward Dining Solutions. He is developing a new initiative – an EcoChef certification for professional cooks and chefs seeking to align their healthy/organic/slow food/farm-to-table values with kitchen electrification and...

Meet Zacharia Levine, a Director of People & Sustainability at The Synergy Company! The Synergy Company has a mission of nurturing the health & well-being of people, place, and planet.

What is it, exactly, that makes us who we are? All of us have amassed countless threads – conversations, extreme weather events, development altering the structure of our hometowns, relationships - that braid together to weave a tapestry of our passion, o...

Meet John Knight, the CEO of Balanced Rock Power! John has a strong passion for the renewable energy industry to ensure that he leaves the planet a better place.

Meet Julie Estes! She is the UCC Logan Permaculture Initiative Assistant!

This month we are featuring Chandler Rosenberg! She is the current Utah Farmers Market Network Director.

This month we are featuring an interview from Avrey Cronyn! He works for Aggie Blue Bikes, a non-profit, community-oriented bike shop located at the USU Logan Campus.

Today we are featuring Chef Barney of Crumb Brothers, located in Logan, UT.

On a cold December morning in 2018, our family departed for Maui, HI. High above the Pacific Ocean, I said to my husband, “if no one picks us up at the airport and the site is failing, I give up.” I was teetering on a loss of hope and enthusiasm for human...

As our communities re-emerge into the sunlight from our lockdowns, put away the latex gloves, explore new greetings of elbow taps, and remove our masks to reveal our faces, what world will we walk into? More importantly, what future will we help create?

The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (CRMPI), one of the oldest continually operating permaculture teaching sites in the U.S., boasts quite the garden. I visited Jerome Ostentowski at CRMPI last fall, where we walked and talked among 200 vari...

With my toddler secured in our bike trailer, we take off each weekday on our morning errands past the greywater-fed basins of our house. Those basins bear cherry, apricot, and nectarine trees, currants, lavender, and a range of pollinator attractors and n...

How can we play a more active role in reversing the degenerative patterns of inequality in gender and race within our society? What are our internal and external dialogues, and how can we shift those in a way that cultivates regeneration? In the weeks af...

As permaculture permeates its way into academia, its scientific merit is rightfully questioned and the claims within are strengthened or discredited as a result.

Walking around Amherst, MA, on the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) Campus, I am energized by the commitment unfolding in regenerative design.

Students at the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) can engage with a range of coursework and professional opportunities in permaculture thanks to people like Lisa DePiano. Lisa teaches UMASS’ permaculture programming, which is housed in the Stockbridge S...

Does 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) weigh on you, as it weighs on me? A temperature increase above this threshold (that is, 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels) may sound minor, but it calls into question our earth’s livability....

Take a moment to reflect on your childhood. Think about the people and environment that led you to who you are – to seeking solutions for internal and external healing. My childhood was free and happy despite a mother’s early death, a father’s lost heartb...

As increasing numbers of people across the globe are realizing there must be something more, something solutions-based they can do to positively shift their relationship with others and the natural environment, permaculture is growing in reach – not just ...

For those of you working in – or passionate about – the subject, you have inevitably been asked “what does permaculture mean?” When defining the term, eyes might gloss over as you struggle to portray the importance embedded within.

“Egosystem restoryation.” For Brock Dolman, Co-Founder and Program Director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC), that is the hopeful outcome in our exposure to permaculture. Learning about watersheds, gardens, landscape design, composting toile...

The terminator seed, formally known as Genetic Use Restriction technology, would render seed saving impossible due to a sterile second generation. News of this development in genetic modification germinated Erik Ohlsen’s path into environmental activism a...

Suitably, we met on in a busy street-side café in downtown San Rafael. Kat Steele was Director of the Urban Permaculture Guild from its inception until 2008, when she left to become the Sustainable Development Manager of the Esalen Institute until 2015. A...

When I worked as an environmental educator in rural Georgia for less than $10 an hour, freshly graduated from 22 straight years of education, something happened that forever changed me. We were hosting a group of 8th graders from Atlanta, many boasting ga...

The Permaculture Academy, although established in its current form only five years ago, has existed in one permutation or another since 1989. It began as the Great Northwest Permaculture Institute, one of the first permaculture nonprofits established in t...

What drives you? Whether your passion manifests in increasing local food access, preserving farmland from development, providing straw bale housing for low-income families, or reducing the waste stream, it started somewhere. Perhaps you had a serious heal...

Imagine an integrated system where edible annuals and perennials are interwoven with solar energy production. Now, imagine that this food and renewable energy producing system could improve the soil microbiome and harvest all water needs from rainwater of...

The high winds blow sand across AZ-264 as we travel through the Hopi reservation and land at Kykotsmovi Village, site of the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture Institute. Lilian Hill and Jacobo Marcus-Carranza founded the institute in 2004, and since then have bee...

With an interest in punk music and a knack for questioning the systems we operate within from a young age, Brad Lancaster suites his role of enacting large-scale environmental change and helping shift our way of seeing the world. I visited with Brad for a...

Why is something so obvious so difficult to see?  What else are we missing? How does this impact our effectiveness? How do we learn to see patterns not things?” – Joel Glanzberg, Pattern Mind, 2019.

To initiate something new is an endeavor admirable in any human’s life, especially with the intention of integrating natural system principles into human systems. We need to be thinking along these lines to heal our relationship with nature. My national p...

With my toddler secured in our bike trailer, we take off each weekday on our morning errands past the greywater-fed basins of our house. Those basins bear cherry, apricot, and nectarine trees, currants, lavender, and a range of pollinator attractors and n...

This month, we are featuring Terra Pace Young. Terra is an Environmental Studies major at Utah State University who is also pursuing a minor is Sustainable Systems and Horticulture.

This month we are featuring Wasatch Resource Recovery’s Resource Recovery and Sustainability Manager Morgan Bowerman. Discover how Morgan is helping Utah create renewable energy from food waste, how she implemented sustainable initiatives in Uganda, her a...

This month we are featuring USU Environment and Society Professor Mark Brunson. Discover Mark's thoughts about his study on non-native frogs in Hawaii, the role of social acceptability in natural resource management, his own efforts to live sustainably, a...

This month we are featuring USU’s Sustainability Coordinator Alexi Lamm. Discover Alexi's thoughts about USU’s commitment to sustainability, the perks and struggles of her job, how sustainability impacts her everyday life, and more!

This month we are featuring USU marketing professor and clean technology marketing expert Edwin Stafford. Discover Ed's thoughts about marketing clean energy, his green home, Cache Valley's air quality problem, and more!

This month we are featuring USU Moab student, USDA NIFA and USU Extension Sustainability intern, and permaculture teacher Claire Core. Discover Claire's thoughts about her internship, next steps, what interests her about permaculture, what visitors to a M...

This month we are featuring Permaculture Designer Jeff Adams of Terrasophia LLC. Read on to learn about Jeff’s work in permaculture design, how he views sustainability, resiliency and other terms, as well as what he thinks is special about his current to...

This month we are featuring Permaculture Designer Jeff Adams of Terrasophia LLC. Read on to learn about Jeff’s work in permaculture design, how he views sustainability, resiliency and other terms, as well as what he thinks is special about his current to...

Liesl Cannon shares her journey working with native bees at USU's Pollinating Insect Research Unit and how she uses scientific illustration to spark curiosity about pollinators. Her passion for sustainability, education, and art highlights simple ways eve...

This month we are featuring Andree’ Walker-Bravo. Read on to learn about her position with USU extension, her work with Salt Lake County and her views on how sustainability plays an important role in our lives.

This month we are featuring Katie Wagner read on to learn about her work with the jail horticulture program, organic gardening and more!

This month we are featuring Jennifer Reeve, read on to learn about her work with the student organic farm, extension and more!

This month we are featuring James Wirth, read on to learn about his work with permaculture at USU, involvement with the USU Sustainability office and more!

This month we are featuring Robert Davies read on to learn about his work the Utah Climate Center and more.....

Winged children buzzed around the Moab Arts and Recreation Center (MARC) at the Pollinator Party, a fundraiser for the new “Bee Inspired Garden” at the Moab Charter School. The event included garden-themed art work by all 100+ students, a bee-themed chora...

As the season turns, the landscape changes around us. In Moab, plants and animals prepare for winter’s onset, moving into dormancy or shifting their routines to suit new conditions. A season’s patterns emerge: the brown-gray winter coats of deer; the clea...