Located in Southern Vermont, the rivertown of Brattleboro, VT is located on Vermont's eastern border along the Connecticut River. Considered one of Smithsonian's Best Small Towns in America in 2012, Brattleboro has become a hidden urban art center partly due to its close proximity to New York City, Burlington, Boston, and Hartford; and its historic downtown is lined with galleries, antique shops, theaters, and dance studios. Led by the Rich Earth Institute, Brattleboro is the community fully piloting a urine to fertilizer cycle. The Urban Collaboratory has partnered with the Rich Earth Institute on resource recovery projects related to urine diversion and nutrient recovery for fertilizer.
Located in Southern Vermont, the rivertown of Brattleboro, VT is located on Vermont's eastern border along the Connecticut River.
Considered one of Smithsonian's Best Small Towns in America in 2012, Brattleboro has become a hidden urban art center partly due to its close proximity to New York City, Burlington, Boston, and Hartford; and its historic downtown is lined with galleries, antique shops, theaters, and dance studios. Led by the Rich Earth Institute, Brattleboro is the community fully piloting a urine to fertilizer cycle. The Urban Collaboratory has partnered with the Rich Earth Institute on resource recovery projects related to urine diversion and nutrient recovery for fertilizer.
Co-Founder
Borchardt and Glysson Collegiate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Nancy G. Love is the Borchardt and Glysson Collegiate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. She previously served as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and as Associate Dean in the University of Michigan’s Rackham School of Graduate Studies. She previously taught at Virginia Tech.
Dr. Love’s research interests include water quality and environmental biotechnology. Specifically, she studies the fate of toxins and pharmaceuticals in wastewater, as well as the technologies that can be used to remove these chemical stressors.
Dr. Love holds a PhD in Environmental Systems Engineering from Clemson University (1994) and both a Masters of Science (1986) and a Bachelors of Science (1984) in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
+ Point of Use Water Filters: A Grassroots Train-the-Trainer Program
Director of Graduate Studies in Chemistry
Professor of Chemistry
Diana Aga, Henry M. Woodburn Professor of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo (UB), received her BS in Agricultural Chemistry degree from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños in 1988, and her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry degree from Kansas University (KU) in 1995. She subsequently moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1996 to conduct postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG). Dr. Aga is a professor in Analytical and Environmental Chemistry at UB, with expertise in the development of sensitive analytical methods for the detection of chemical contaminants in the environment. Her research program centers on investigating the environmental chemistry, biological and ecological effects, and mitigation strategies of legacy and emerging contaminants in the environment, such as antimicrobials, persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and engineered nanomaterials. Dr. Aga’s recent work showing bioaccumulation of antidepressants in brains of fish from the Great Lakes has been highlighted in the national and international newspapers because of their impact on the biodiversity of fish population in one of the world’s most important fresh water body. Dr. Aga has also demonstrated the widespread occurrence of antibiotics in the environment due to wastewater discharges and land-application of animal manure, resulting in promotion and spread of antibiotic resistance in non-clinical environments. She serves as editor of the Journal of Hazardous Materials, an Elsevier international journal, which publishes research papers on environmental control, risk assessment, impact and management.
Founder, Rich Earth Institute
Abraham Noe-Hays is a co-founder of the Rich Earth Institute, and currently directs its research into nutrient reclamation from source-separated human urine. The Institute operates the nation’s first community-scale urine recycling program in Brattleboro, Vermont, collecting urine from approximately one hundred participants and supplying sanitized fertilizer products to nearby farms. Current research projects are supported by the USDA and NSF, and include an INFEWS partnership with the University of Michigan that is developing novel methods for producing urine-derived fertilizers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic.
Associate Professor
Director, Michigan Sustainability Cases
Coordinator, Environmental Justice Certificate
Professor Hardin’s areas of interest and scientific study focus on the increasingly intertwined practices of health, environmental management, and corporate/community interactions in Africa and the U.S.A. She has directed case based research on environmental justice movements within the U.S., connecting them to the international Environmental Justice Atlas. She has also advised a team assessing groundwater and surface water resources across the African continent, and advising the Global Environment and Technology Foundation about how to make a better business case for water related investment by businesses in Africa. She teaches and mentors students interested in international environmental practice and policy, wildlife management, and the cultural politics of global health practice, especially as concerns water quality monitoring and protection. That work is presently focused with the REFRESCH initiative in the country of Gabon, one of the richest in water and wildlife on the entire African continent. She is building case based curricular tools for international Sustainability Science as Director of the Michigan Sustainability Cases, hosted on the open access Gala Platform. Rebecca also supports co-curricular opportunities for student work in environmental media such as the weekly environmental podcast and “blogcast” It’s Hot in Here, airing at noon on Fridays on WCBN FM Ann Arbor. Her book with Kamari Clarke, Transforming Ethnographic Knowledge explores the discipline of anthropology as a set of skills and tools for social change in sectors as different as business, biological conservation, conflict resolution, and biomedical care.
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Krista Rule Wigginton received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech and her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Idaho and conducted postdoctoral research at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2013, she joined the faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan as an assistant professor of environmental engineering. Dr. Wigginton’s research team focuses on pollutant fate in water treatment processes, and on improving pathogen and micropollutant detection. She’s the recipient of the U.S. NSF International Postdoctoral Fellowship and the NSF CAREER award.