The world is on an unsustainable trajectory. Our problems of sanitation, water, energy and food can be distilled into a gross mismanagement of the Earth’s elements. In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Using energy input from the sun, the Earth’s biota very efficiently recycles spent elements and rebuilds life. However, with 7+ billion people on the planet, our planet is severely out of balance. The problems we face today in energy scarcity, water depletion, poor sanitation, and food insecurity can often be traced to a fundamental mismatch of the paces of anthropogenic resource consumption and resource renewal through natural means. This Talk proposes BioRecycling engineering (BRE) as a sustainable solution for the future.


Dr. Daniel Yeh is an Assoc. Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at USF, with interests in global water and sanitation, renewable bioenergy, urban water infrastructure, green buildings and climate change. He was a recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Innovation Award at USF. His research team received the 2014 Cade Museum Prize for innovation and was one of the winning teams of the Reinvent The Toilet Challenge: India sponsored by the government of India and the Gates Foundation.


This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx