Clemson University
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

FRESH sponsors annual undergraduate Creative Inquiry courses as well as Special Topics Courses in Sustainability. Topics have ranged from food waste mitigation strategies to chemical recycling and LCAs/designing packaging with the end in mind. 

Students are always encouraged to attend the FRESH’s nationally prominent Food, Packaging & Sustainability Summit, which is attended by approximately 250 industry stakeholders. The annual Summit always includes student research posters and opportunities to present research to industry.  

FRESH will be launching a Sustainability Leadership Program in Fall 2024 for undergraduate and graduate students in CAFLS (please see highlights attached), The program will address career trajectories in sustainability in tandem with real world insights to developing sustainability strategies and translating passion to profit.

FRESH recently managed a 5-year RFP process to award $1M of sponsored research funds on sustainable packaging topics, and is currently partnering with organizations such as the South Carolina Department of Commerce and industry partners on a major organics recycling initiative. The organics recycling initiative includes a new sustainable packaging lab in conjunction with full scale organics recycling capabilities with multiple composting technologies. 

Research enabled by this initiative will include development of biobased packaging materials, and evaluation of new materials and packaging designs in a live waste stream environment.   This initiative is driven by the projected growth of compostable packaging by 15-17% per year over the next 5 years (2022 Ameripen & PMMI 10-year Packaging Materials Compass study). Faculty across the university are invited to take advantage of these capabilities. 

Organics research will also evaluate compost composed of large quantities of compostable packaging on soil health and crop production. Soil health faculty researchers are included in this aspect of our work. 

Of note, FRESH does not have our own dedicated faculty so our role is to facilitate and develop collaborative research concepts with faculty in all areas. 

Promotion and tenure policies are college-dependent, however the ClemsonForward strategic planning process had as a goal to include multidisciplinary research and scholarship in P&T decisions.

Cooper Library’s research services includes subject matter librarians assigned by academic department, but cross-disciplinary assistance is available through a collaboration of librarians. As many departments are interdisciplinary in nature, the subject librarians are boundary spanners. There are also ample amounts of research and learning guides for sustainability focused courses at Clemson.