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Transcript of Soundbite: Chris Zarba
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Chris Zarba: The expo is about a competition where university students from across the country compete in a competition where they come up with new and innovative ideas by which people can live on this planet by having less of an impact. So they come up with these new ideas and we have a two stage competition. Stage one, we get hundreds of applicants that submit their proposals, they’re reviewed and a panel of expert scientists review them and make selections on which ideas look the newest and most creative and innovative. We give each of those winners, there is about 60 of the first round winners, about $10,000 each to further develop their ideas and they bring it to the Mall this week and set up booths under a tent right in front of the Air and Space Museum and a second round of judges come out and review the panelist, the different proposals and select the top six or seven winners and those winners will receive up to $70,000 to further develop those ideas and bring them to market.
Male reporter: So what are some of the fascinating ideas we might see? I see that you have listed some things such as solar panels made from plant chlorophyll.
Chris Zarba: Right.
Male reporter: What can we expect to see if we take a walk down there?
Chris Zarba: Well again there is 60 different booths with 60 different ideas but you mentioned one of the more unusual ones, solar panels made from chlorophyll. There’s an interesting proposal, and they have an actual working model, where there’s a kite that is used to generate electricity. A number of proposals to generate plastics from waste and from corn and those plastics are biodegradable. Low cost technologies to provide clean and safe drinking water in developing nations. There’s a number of green building designs, both material and processes for building structures that require less energy and are more environmentally friendly. And there was one interesting concept where they developed a sophisticated computer program by which farmers and other land owners can use to analyze their property to determine what the potential of that piece of land for generating wind power.
Female reporter: We’re talking this morning to Chris Zarba Deputy Center Director of the National Center for Environmental Research at the Environmental Protection Agency. Well those are cool, but how long does it take to get one of these incredible ideas off the ground and on the market?
Chris Zarba: Well we’ve only been at this for four years. This is our 4th year and already, in our first couple of years, we’ve had some of the winners actually not only further develop their ideas but actually bring them to market, start companies, hire people and are actually making money. So it’s not just about coming up with good ideas but it’s bring them to market so people can actually be starting companies and using these ideas so they actually help the environment.
Male reporter: Now there’s a lot of terms thrown about; green and ecological. This effort uses the word sustainable. Is there a specific meaning in sustainable that is different from just good for the earth or green in general?
Chris Zarba: Well sustainability means doing it in a way that really minimizes the human impact on the environment so that you can keep doing that for a long period of time and not have an accumulative impact on the environment.
Female reporter: So when you say sustainable and you don’t want an accumulative effect, I’m just going to take for instance plastic bags. I’ve noticed recently that many more grocery stores are turning to a bag that you buy and then you come back into the store with the bag and you refill it with your groceries instead of the plastic bags that are constantly going into the waste and going into the landfill that kind of thing. So is that where we’re headed?
Chris Zarba: Yeah, that’s it but it’s also a different way of thinking. I mean many of us who are a little bit older grew up in a throw away society where you used it once and then tossed it out and the young people today now look at the world a little bit different and they’re coming up with just very different ways of looking at the way we live on this planet and that’s what is really kind of exciting to me about this competition. You go and you look at what these young people have come up with and you think “Wow, I’ve never thought of that and what a great idea and why didn’t someone do that sooner”. For example, there was one of our winners a couple years ago came up with an idea of providing college students who live in a dorm with accurate up to date information on their energy use. So every time they’d run the hot water or turn on a light they would get real time data showing them on these monitors how much electricity they were using. And by knowing how much they were using or how much energy they were using they were actually more inclined to turn the lights off or use less water and over a very short period of time resulted in a 30% reduction in energy use for that dorm by doing nothing more than letting people know what they were using. Well then what happened was the dorm next door realized what they were doing and starting doing it themselves and it got to be this competition between two dorms about who could save the most energy. So it is just very innovative to me that just by proving people with accurate information on what they were doing would lead to that kind of a return on the investment.
Male reporter: Now your administrator, the EPA administrator Steve Johnson, he’ll be speaking or I guess he already spoke this morning.
Chris Zarba: I think he speaks in a few minutes depending on the weather.
Male reporter: That’s right. He speaks in about a half and hour from now so you are definitely getting top level support for this effort from the EPA.
Chris Zarba: Yes it’s very popular. We have two partners. We have the Cloud Institute for Sustainable Design and the World Environment Center. And they are into this competition with us and we have 40 other non profits that have joined in so there‘s just a lot of interest. Again, this is only our 4th year and it seems like every year the level of interest, the level of participation and the sophistication of the competition, the ideas that are coming through are just much more developed than they were in earlier years so it seems to be that we found a really important niche here that needed developing and it’s working very well for us and for our partners.
Female reporter: I know Mr. Zarba, you have 50 student design teams and 40 exhibitors and there will be an awards ceremony that will take place on Tuesday, Earth Day. What time will that take place?
Chris Zarba: I think it is at 6:00 or 6:30 in the National Academy of Science building. And it is all the competitors come. EPA gives out six awards itself but there are other sponsors that have their own awards so it is a very neat event and typically we get some congressional interest too and people, congressmen coming down and we provide them with an opportunity to present the award to the winners in their district. So it’s a lot of fun.
Female reporter: And do they win money or is it just the prize?
Chris Zarba: Well the EPA winners will win up to $75,000 and that money is to be used to further develop the ideas and then bring it to market. And that is the important aspect of this. It’s not just coming up with a good idea but bringing it to where the public and industry can actually use these ideas and spread them all widely.
Female reporter: I like it.
Chris Zarba: I like it too.
Female reporter: Yeah, I like it. It’s a great idea. Ok, so from today through Tuesday these will be on display. These technologies will be on display on the National Mall and even though it is a little rainy.
Male reporter: Oh go on down anyway.
Female reporter: Yeah, you won’t melt.
Chris Zarba: Well we have a big tent so everyone will be nice and dry and there’s plenty of room to walk around in it and if you can’t get down to the Mall we have a website. If you just Google “EPA P3”, P3 stands for People, Prosperity and the Planet, you’ll quickly come up with the website and they’ll be a lot more information about last years winners and the competition for this year and the event and timing and everything.