Category: Blog

Post from Lauren Fuess

This week has been a quiet week for the recycling project as we’re currently between the mapping aspect and the monitoring aspect. Still I can’t seem to get away from the concept of recycling on campus. This morning I went to take my recycling out of my house (298 Meeting) and couldn’t seem to find the recycling bins. Turns out they’d migrated again to the back of the house. After a bit of frustration I finally found them. But I could have easily just given up and tossed my large bag of cans and bottles in the trash. The experience made me realize that other people might have similar frustrations. Maybe the lack of recycling is not out of apathy, but instead out of a lack of resources. I have not seen the full results of the mapping aspect, but I know some of the buildings I mapped had virtually no recycling bins. It was strange to go from the honors center, which had four bins on the tiny first floor placed within a few steps of each other, to buildings like the Johnson Center which had virtually no bins. Personally, I think the mapping aspect of this project might in fact be the most beneficial. It seems to me that the problem is poor allocation of bins. We need to redistribute the bins to locations where they’re needed, perhaps even add more. Certainly the problem is not consistent, as buildings like the Honors Center and 6 Green Way seem to have an overkill of recycling bins. Still I’m starting to feel like the root of the problem is in distribution of bins.

The only other problem I’ve gathered is the lack of labeling on bins. Quite a few bins I saw when mapping were not labeled, but didn’t appear to be catch-all bins either. This was extremely frustrating when I was trying to map the bin. However I cannot imagine how much more frustrating it would be to some who’s trying to recycle. It reminds me again of the bin
outside my house. While one is labeled paper only, the other merely reads “_______ only”. Am I supposed to be able to fill in the blank? I didn’t know, so I just ended up dumping both my plastic and aluminum recycling in the bin as there appeared to be no other option. Some people however might have just gone and thrown out things for fear of recycling ‘wrong’. Clearly this lack of communication is the other major problem. I’ll be interested to see the results of the actual monitoring in order to determine if there are actually any other problems. The good news is we’re getting good information that will hopefully help us revamp recycling on campus to make it more effective.

Post from Katie Benson

This week, all of us in the bike mapping group chose one of four high traffic areas on campus and began to chalk the tires on the bikes in one of the bike racks in that area. We planned on chalking the tires twice every day, once in the morning and once in the evening, for three days straight in order to get an idea of how many people were parking their bikes there for extended periods of time. Each time we chalked the tires, we recorded how many bikes were there, how many of those bikes were new since the last time we had checked, and made note if we noticed anything else that we felt was important.

It only took a couple minutes to do, but I had a really hard time remembering to do it while I was on campus. For that reason, I ended up with a few empty rows on my data table. I had the bike racks in front of the Bellsouth building and when I checked that morning, more than half of the bikes’ tires on the rack still had the chalk marks from Tuesday morning. So, it is clear that some students are storing their bikes there for, at least, days at a time. I think that these bikes probably belong to the students in the dorms across the street from the Bellsouth building. I lived in Berry last year, and I know a lot of the other girls who lived there kept their bikes, which they rarely rode, in those racks. This was because, unlike at McAlister, there were not any bike racks that were specifically for the Berry residents. The ones in front of Bellsouth were the closest, so we just ended up using those.

Today our group is going to begin working on the next phase of our project, creating a GIS map that shows the locations of all of the bike racks on campus. I am really surprised that something like this does not already exist somewhere. Hopefully students will make use of the map, so they can bike to campus without having to worry about whether or not they’re going to have a place to lock up their bike.

Post from Stacey Detlor

Well that was fun! Twice Thursday, and once on Friday, we had to bust out some ninja like moves as to not get caught with our tire marking!

Let me explain…We met up Thursday afternoon as a group and began the next phase of our project: tire marking. This was just a test of the real thing that will be happening later next week. The four of us were given two different colors of chalk, and a location where we think there is an over abundance of bikes that are not leaving. We buddied up, and off we went! We marked several racks of tires with our “morning” color, and took inventory of how many bikes were on the racks; this was repeated again that evening with our, you guessed it, “evening” color. However, it did rain which made the chalk wash off by the time we came back the next morning to repeat the process. Pretty annoying if you ask me.

Next week we will continue our markings; hopefully the rain stays away, and hopefully nobody tries to kill us for touching their bikes!

Post from Caroline Horres

The Greek sustainability project is off to a good start! We have met with Panhellenic, Intrafraternity Council and the National Panhellinic Council in the past two weeks to introduce the project to the Greek community. We have developed a rubric to be used for the baseline audits and have assigned houses to complete solicitations and establish contacts with the presidents of the Greek houses. We are still learning how to motivate and organize a large audience and how to appeal to the Greek community for maximum involvement. Responses so far have ranged from enthusiastic to apathetic, but we hope that involvement and participation will increase once we formally begin the process of contacting the Houses and planning the audits. The Office interns are super pumped to begin implementation and get our project off the ground!! Sustainability, here we come!

Post from Jennifer Saunders

The first annual Food Day was celebrated by CofC last Monday, October 24th through a local food festival.  The festival, held in the heart of the college at the Cistern, was part of a national campaign to promote sustainable agriculture, healthy eating, and food access. Lowcountry Local First partnered with CofC students to plan an awareness-raising, fun time complete with information tables, music, activities, food trucks, and the screening of the documentary “Ingredients” at sundown.  Other local nonprofits present included Slow Food, Grow Food Carolina, the Lowcountry Food Bank, Fields to Families, the International Center for Sustainability, and the Charleston Trident Dietetic Association.  Campus groups present included CofC for Urban Agriculture, Alliance for Planet Earth, MESSA, and Green CofC.

George Street was closed to allow access for the food trucks Roti Rolls, Roots Icecream, Diggity Doughnuts, and fresh heirloom veggies grown by Meg Moore of Dirthugger Farm.  While the place wasn’t packed, the festival was still well-attended as people came and went, getting commemorative t-shirts spraypainted, and learning how to take care of vegetable seeds they planted to take home with them.  Students, professors, staff members, and outside members of the community alike mingled over fresh food and the sound of ukulele vaudeville music by the V-Tones. Even two ladies from Sonoma county, CA, decided to spend part of their vacation time at the festival, knowing how important it is to support the local food movement even far away from home.

More information about the national Food Day campaign can be found at: http://www.foodday.org

Pictures of the Festival can be found here: http://facebook.com/FoodDayCharleston

To learn more about eating local in Charleston, please visit Lowcountry Local First’s page: http://www.lowcountrylocalfirst.org/

Post from Adrian Barry

Wednesday, October 26th was National Campus Sustainability here at CofC and at colleges and universities across the country.  National Campus Sustainability Day is a day for awareness raising founded by AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.  You can read more on the history of its creation here.

At CofC, the Office of Sustainability partnered with the new student organization Green CofC to host a table on the Cougar Mall, where we had two chalkboards made from locally salvaged wood and acquired from Charleston’s own Sustainable Warehouse.  On these, we asked passing members of the College of Charleston community to write down things that they did to be more sustainable.  The answers we got varied widely and were often humorous.  Some standouts included “Shower less, or with a friend” and “Sit alone in the dark,” though there were also some more pragmatic standards, like “carpool,” “use reusable shopping bags” and “eat less meat.”

One of the chalkboards with student responses

At the end of the day, we took the full chalkboards, counted the responses and turned the results into a word cloud to see where the campus community’s sustainability consciousness is. You can see what we came up with here.

Along with the chalkboards, volunteers from both the Office of Sustainability and Green CofC walked around the Cougar Mall with iPads, encouraging people to digitally sign the new Office of Sustainability pledge.  In just a few short hours, we were able to collect almost 200 signatures with just three iPads.  In the near future, we’ll have the pledge and the ability to sign it available on the Office of Sustainability’s website.

“I, as member of the College of Charleston Community, pledge to live a balanced, sustainable life in which I will strive to create a culture of sustainability in my own life, on my campus, in my community and throughout a global society.”

Right now this is a very basic pledge, one which many people who signed it might not really know how to follow through on.  What is a “culture of sustainability?”  But as the Office of Sustainability continues to develop over the next year, we’ll be working to expand and extrapolate on the meaning of this pledge and make sure that everyone in the College of Charleston community knows what it means to create and to foster a culture of sustainability.

Another way the Office of Sustainability marked Campus Sustainability Day was by holding the College of Charleston’s inaugural “Green Bag” Lunch Series.  This is the kick-off of a monthly series in which CofC faculty, members of the Charleston community and outside speakers will be hosted for an informal lunch lecture and discussion.  This event also marked the first official public event for the Director of the Office of Sustainability, Dr. Fisher, so it had the duel purpose of serving as a “Meet the Director” lunch.

Dr. Fisher used the occasion to outline his vision of sustainability and the future of the College of Charleston’s role in creating a more sustainable community and future. The audience of about 30 ranged widely from faculty, staff and students, with an engaging discussion following Dr. Fisher’s presentation.

The next Green Bag Lunch will be at noon on November the 17th in the Stern Center Ballroom, featuring MIT’s Dr. Deborah Cramer.  You can get more information and RSVP here.

To wrap up Campus Sustainability Day, Green CofC hosted an evening screening of Earth Days, a documentary featured as the closing film at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was later featured as a PBS American Experience special.  You can watch the film streaming for free brought to you as a courtesy by PBS here.

With three separate events behind us, the College of Charleston’s first National Campus Sustainability Day was a great success and sure to lead to an even greater Campus Sustainability Day this time next year.

Thanks to all of those that came out and if you haven’t yet signed the pledge, remember to keep an eye out on the Office of Sustainability website for an iPetition link!

Post by Lydia Nickolas

Today, October 31st of this year, the global population hit a total of 7 billion. In my short lifespan, I’ve passively borne witness to the addition of nearly two billion people to our globe. As the population continues to increase at an exponential rate, more people will lead to a greater amount of pressure on a limited number of resources. This strain can only be ameliorated through a sweeping paradigm shift that leads to a permanent change in our beliefs and behavior as a community.  It is exactly this type of change that I see Dr. Fisher and his student/intern staff facilitating on our campus and in the broader community. The creation of the Office of Sustainability is something long overdue, and because of this fact I believe there will be a large amount of obstacles to overcome in terms of cooperation between the groups required for the implementation of various goals, projects, and changes. Many of these obstacles and much of the hesitancy that may be encountered is something that can be easily dispelled through education and discourse, as Dr. Fisher suggested at the Green Bag Lunch last Wednesday. Due to the rather fluid nature of the definition of sustainability, instituting sustainable actions means different things for different individuals; larger entities and a vast degree of opposition that is voiced in response to a movement towards sustainable practices is based on a failure to see that these practices reduce both cost and impact in the long term. I feel ecstatic about the energy and enthusiasm that is being spread through both the Office of Sustainability of Green CofC and hope to continue to be a part of it.

Post from Eliora Guillory

Today I mapped the recycling bins in the buildings I chose. It took me a while to get motivated, but once I did I realized how simple it was going to be.

I started in Student Health Services and discovered how few there were. The front desk had a recycling bin for paper and also two in the back by their break room. There weren’t any in the student waiting area, which I found surprising. I thought there would be more in general, but I guess most of the waste they produce is medical. I then moved on to the Sotille House, and they only had two recycling bins- one in the kitchen and one on the 2nd floor (it is a 4 story building). Next was Randolph Hall; when you walk in on the first floor, there was a set of the 3 compartment bins. The second floor had none. The third floor had a few, including another set of the 3 compartment bins by the elevator. There were a lot by the copy machine, and also an ink cartridge recycling bin. The building at 7 College Way had 4 bins and 19 St. Philip Street had 3 bins, all located on the 1st floor for a 3 story building.

Mapping the recycling bins made me realize how few each building had. I expected more in the offices because a lot of the waste is paper, which can be recycled. The bins were all relatively empty, maybe because recycling had been picked up, or maybe they aren’t being used due to inconvenient locations. It would be ideal if there were more recycling bins than trash cans.

Post from Stacey Detlor

Okay, so CofC has tons of bike racks! It seems as though students are putting their bikes on the rack that is closest to whatever building they happen to be in at a given time. Why? My bike is usually across campus in a well “supervised” area where it is not getting scratched and tossed around because nobody ever parks there. When we walked around campus to map out the racks, I could not believe how many we found sitting empty or with 1 or 2 bikes on them. Ironically, other racks had every space full. I did not expect the racks near the dorm rooms to be as vacant as they were. For instance, College Lodge has around 13 bike racks, and probably 11 were empty. I guess students figure that if their bike is near lots of other bikes, then it has less of a chance of getting stolen. Maybe that’s true, but if the kids in the dorm start using the racks closest to them, it would free up plenty of space for others who live off campus and have to ride their bikes to campus.