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2018 Summer Interns
Our interns, Alexandria Sabido from Keene State College, James Eraci from the University of Dayton, and Yen Jee Ooi from The University of Michigan arrived this summer just in time to help us with our varied projects. Since they started they have been immersed in everything you need to know about urine as a fertilizer. They have been busy working with the freeze/thaw experiments, setting up our demonstration garden at the Research Center, working with Arduino coding, and have accompanied Tatiana for social research interviews.
They have also spent time doing outreach at The Brattleboro Area Farmers’ Market, the Connecticut River Conservancy’s River Celebration, and the Tiny House Vermont Festival setting up toilets and answering questions at the booth. At the Tiny House Festival we collected 87 gallons of urine, which was a great chance for the interns to see how supportive the public can be about keeping urine out of the waste stream. Together we can transform what is typically seen as a waste into a resource.
Our interns have also spent much of their time at our research plot at Hope Roots farm in Westminster. Alex and James spent their first day setting up and marking the field for lettuce plots. In preparation for growing the lettuce the interns collected water and soil samples to ship to our partnering labs at the University of Michigan and University at Buffalo. They prepared the plots with fertilizer and with Yen Jee and Rich Earth staff, planted over 200 lettuce starts. This summer we are growing lettuce and carrots with a variety of urine derived fertilizer products to test for pharmaceuticals and hormones detected in plant tissues, soils and ground water.
We have been extremely grateful to have Yen Jee, James, and Alex this summer. Their 14 weeks with us will culminate with the Urine Diversion Summit in August where they will get to meet scientists and industry leaders from around the world who are working towards ecological sanitation solutions. To learn a little more about our interns check out their bios on our Staff page.
