Thank you for considering a donation to our Spark campaign! Below are three recent Sustainability Fellows projects, along with photos of the students who created them. When you donate to the Sustainability Fellows, this is where your money is going! 

Peter Woodley 

In Summer 2021, Peter worked with Compost Community to develop a go-to-market strategy for local restaurants to subscribe to Compost Community’s pick-up services. Peter was interested in the Sustainability Fellows program because he hoped to build communication, business strategy, and leadership skills in the commercial sustainability sector.  

Peter worked with Sundiata Ameh El, the owner of Compost Community. Compost Community is a business that helps individuals engage in, contribute to, and learn about the compost cycle. Over the course of the semester, Peter engaged in market research and surveyed local businesses to develop a proposal to expand business compost collection.  

The main campaign points of Peter’s analysis include a food scrap analysis, food scrap pick-up, and prize rewards. Peter targeted office spaces, restaurants, and schools and/or universities in his proposal. He also developed a market research plan, a SWOT analysis, proposed marketing channels, and a target timeline. 

“One of the restaurant owners was totally open to having a sign that shows how much weight in food scraps they collected over the past week or month because it would bring more customers to the door,” said Peter. “Finding those value propositions and improving upon them is definitely the key.”   

Juan Arguelles Ortiz and Gabriella Benacquisto 

In Spring 2022, Juan and Gabby worked with Sustainable Campus to categorize FSU sustainability researchers and courses by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Juan and Gabby worked with Laurelin Haas, Academics and Partnerships Coordinator, to analyze 334 sustainability researchers and 417 sustainability courses and identify which SDGs their work or curriculum aligned with. Many researchers and courses aligned with more than one SDG.  

Reflecting on his experience designing the formula, Juan said, “The coding aspect is something that I picked up when we started this project. It was really cool, and I was excited to figure out how to make this portion of our work sustainable. Eventually, new researchers and classes are going to be added to our list and allocating four months out of the year to categorize them is unsustainable.” 

“I see the SDGs everywhere I go now,” said Gabby. “This project has definitely made it clear that sustainability is really, really important to me. I also fell into the position of graphic designer for the team, which was very interesting. It was encouraging to see that I could pick up a new skill!” 

Trinity Iwicki and Anne-Lunie Rodney  

In Spring 2022, Trinity and Anne worked together to create nineteen TikTok videos for Florida Food Waste Prevention Week, which was held from April 4 to April 8, 2022. Trinity and Anne collaborated with Lauren O’Connor, Government Operations Consultant, and other members of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) team. 

Trinity and Anne were tasked with educating college students between the ages of 18 and 23 about food waste and prevention techniques. They determined that TikTok would be the most efficient platform to better reach this audience. 

The team worked with the Florida Food Waste Prevention Week team to create a new TikTok channel that amassed 4,272 video views, 106 profile views, 138 likes, 4 comments, 32 shares, and 12 followers in one week. 

“I’m really happy with those numbers,” said Trinity, “especially considering that educational videos are not always that type that do the best on social media apps like TikTok. I would consider our platform choice a success based off of that set of data.”