Before I became acclimated with sustainability, I thought it was analogous with environmentalism. My definition of the term was based on maintaining Earth’s physical resources and protecting its biological functions. However, since working at the Office, I’ve realized that sustainability is so much more. While addressing environmental issues is essential to living more sustainably, we must also consider the fact that these issues would not exist if our values lied elsewhere. In my eyes, sustainability seeks to reform and protect people, and favors a society driven by feelings and ideas, rather than things. It works towards achieving ideal concepts such as individual meaning and life purpose, self-fulfillment and sufficiency, the development of meaningful relationships and a sense of community.

I feel extremely fortunate to have been exposed to these things through the garden apprenticeship program here at the Office. Gardening embodies two seemingly opposite but both integral parts of sustainability: self-sufficiency (me) and community (we). Being able to provide for yourself by growing your own food is unbelievably empowering. It allows us to be independent of industrial agriculture and get reconnected with what we consume. While gardening can be personally fulfilling, it also provides a sense of belonging and interdependency among people. Instead of isolation, there’s the accumulated knowledge of fellow gardeners to draw on. The entire process is a teaching-learning experience where we grow with and from each other. It’s about teaching people to fish so that we can do so alongside each other, instead of just doing the fishing ourselves. Beyond that, the apprenticeship program has allowed me to form relationships that would have never spawned otherwise, and for that I am so grateful.

Gardening makes you feel grounded and connected to your food, as well as to the people around you. The process can be therapeutic and tranquil, and the results oh-so-satisfying. When you dissect the word agriculture, you find the prefix agri- (meaning field or related to the land) and the word culture (a way of life of a group of people and their behaviors, beliefs, and values). Agriculture literally means getting in touch with the Earth as well humanity, forming a holistic connectivity with everything around you.

The garden apprenticeship program has made me feel as though I am part of something larger than myself – a community. This natural result of gardening is also one of the ultimate goals of sustainability. Barrett Brown of the Integral Institute for Sustainability offers a definition that embodies these notions of self-sufficiency and community: “an alignment of the different levels of our individual and collective consciousness so that we can create, maintain, and healthily evolve.” Our path to a sustainable world will be accomplished by participating in actions that contribute towards self-reliance, a shared purpose, and the greater good. This is why I firmly believe that to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

-Katie Kerbel

How do you move? Do you walk, bike, or use public transit? Join the Office of Sustainability and participate in the College’s first official event celebrating the different modes of transportation that the College community uses to commute to campus. On April 9th, during Sustainability Week, let us know how you move by using #CofCMoves and why you move the way you do! 

We interviewed Dr Kevin Keenan, Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department, Director of Urban Studies, and Director of the Urban and Regional Planning Certificate, about why he moves with CARTA.

Office of Sustainability: Why do you bus, bike, walk, and/or carpool rather than driving?

Dr. Kevin Keenan: I take the bus for several reasons: (1) it is free for CofC staff, faculty, and students; (2) parking is very expensive downtown; (3) it is more relaxing in the morning than driving; and (4) CARTA needs a ridership.

OOS: How long have you been doing so and how far do you commute daily?

KK: I have used the bus regularly for about 3 years, my commute and 4 miles.

OOS: What are the benefits to commuting by Bus/Carpool/Bike versus driving alone?

KK: I save a ton of money on gasoline (about $30 per week), don’t have to worry about parking or angry drivers, and using transit is relatively easy here in Charleston.

OOS: What do you value most about the way you commute?

KK: I value the financial savings.

OOS: What is the biggest challenge you face as a commuter?

KK: CARTA does not run 24 hours, and sometimes there are large chunks of time between each bus.  This means that if I have to stay late at night for work, or if I have to leave here quickly at a time when the bus is not available, I have to resort to my car or a cab (if I’m already downtown and need to get home, for example).

OOS: What are some improvements you’d like to see?

KK: I think that CARTA is a pretty good system given the context of the South and Charleston being a small city.  I’d like to see better, newer buses that are more efficient, though I must say the fleet that they have is completely fine and works well.

OOS: Are there any myths about your method of transportation that you’d like to address?

KK: People think that CARTA is dirty, that it never runs on time, and that it is for poor people.  This is not true (though poor people do indeed ride the bus), and while there are challenges (such as late buses sometimes), the benefits outweigh the costs in my estimation.  Further, being around “poor” people is not a reason to not take the bus.

OOS: Would you recommend this method to others?

KK: I highly recommend the bus.  It is safe, efficient (both in terms of gas and financial savings), and it is good for the environment.

OOS: Do you have any fun commuting stories?

KK: I don’t have a fun commuting story, but I do have an ironic one related to public transit here in Charleston.  On the day that the guy stopped his car on the Ravenel Bridge and threatened to jump unless someone brought him a pizza, I was scheduled to have CARTA deliver a presentation in my graduate Urban Transportation: Problems and Prospects class on the role of public transit in the Lowcountry.  The irony, of course, was that that one event disrupted the entire transportation grid, causing massive delays around the region.  This underscored how many people use cars, how there are too many cars, and that we desperately need alternative modes of movement that a large number of people use.

Why is it so important to start acting on the use of plastic bags? There are many reasons, but to sum it up, they never disappear and they do more harm than good. One might think that since they threw away the plastic bag, it’s gone for good, and never have a second thought about it. But there’s more to a plastic bag life cycle than one might think.

It’s a handy tool to use when it comes to having to carry things around, I’ll give you that. But that’s about all it’s good for. Once it leaves your hands, whether you threw it in the trash or it accidentally blew away into the environment, that’s not the end of the bag’s life cycle. Polluting water is a major problem that plastic bags are creating. A large quantity of plastic bags find their way into water systems, such as a river, which will eventually output them into the ocean. Specifically here in the low country, it’s not a challenge for a bag to end up in the ocean since it’s only a few short miles journey.

Plastic bags can end up in a water system which eventually leads to the ocean. Once there, it now has a chance to harm many organisms. One species in particular are sea turtles, whose main diet consists of jellyfish. A plastic bag floating through the ocean looks oddly similar to a jellyfish from a turtle’s view, and the turtle ingests it, not knowing that it is plastic. Once the plastic is ingested, things turn ugly. The turtle is unable to digest the plastic and it ultimately causes a blockage, otherwise known as impaction, which causes the turtle to become sick. Now with the help of plastic bags piling up in the environment from humans, endangered sea turtles have a greater chance of becoming sick and even dying. The sea turtles are only a handful of the animals that are impacted negatively by the abundance of plastic bags.

California is stepping up and proposing a ban on single use plastic bags. This is a step in the right direction to ensure that plastic bags are not piling up in the environment. While this is an excellent step in putting a halt to this dilemma, more states and cities need to jump on the bandwagon to put an end to the use of plastic bags. One tossed plastic bag turns into ten, which turns into many more, and eventually plastic bags are everywhere, choking the environment. Do the world a favor, forgo the plastic and reach for a reusable bag!

If you’re interested in finding out more on the life cycle of a plastic bag, take a look at here at a wonderful mockumentary explaining it all!

-Jaclyn Trayte,  Marine Biology ’16

I came to college wanting to study the environment. I wanted to learn the science of the world around us thinking this alone would enable me to seek solutions to the environmental problems being faced across the globe today. I began my freshman semester of college as a Physics major with an Environmental Studies minor and like most teenagers, thought I knew everything and had it all figured out. Yet, as I learned very quickly, I did not have it all figured out and I knew very little about sustainability. Sustainability is more than the science of the environment. It’s about environmental philosophy, psychology, sociology, and it even reaches far beyond the knowledge found within classroom walls. Sustainability is rooted in something that cannot be taught: community. For me, the realization of this gave environmentalism and sustainability a whole new face. Sustainability, I realized, is rooted in community because it needs community to thrive. How could a movement encouraging us to return to local systems and be aware of our impact upon the world around us survive without a foundation in community?

As I continued to ponder this, I looked around and realized our society is being drained of true face-to-face community. Walking to class I see people walking staring at their phones or listening to music rather than making conversation with fellow classmates standing at crosswalks. At coffee-shops I find an eerie silence occasionally broken by the sounds of an espresso machine or computer keyboard. I find myself surrounded by ‘neighbors’ that I don’t even know, and nobody speaks, only looks at their phones browsing Facebook for the 10^th time or snap-chatting a friend in another place.

My grandfather is one of the wisest men I know. He values good stories, hard work, and above all, community. It seems nearly everyone knows him and sees him as a close friend. He often helps out a neighbor on his farm and they share the profits such as eggs, ham, and some really great tomatoes. “What happened to community like this, Kate?” he often asks me. Then I realize, instead of actually going out and building community such as this, we like videos about community on Facebook and retweet them on twitter. I am certainly guilty of this too. I’ll watch videos and read books on community building instead of trying to make changes in my life to focus less on Facebook and more on people. It’s time to put thoughts and words into action.

Its time rebuild community, to get to know our neighbors, to talk to each other in coffee shops and on the way to class. Its time to close our Facebook tabs and go on bike rides with our friends (insert shameless plug for CofC Bike Share program here). Its time to do more than ‘liking’ movements on Facebook and start putting in the hard work to positively impact our shared environment together as a community.

-Kate O’dell, Physics Major & Environmental Studies Minor and Bike Share Intern

Our notion to bring vermiculture-style of composting to the college began over a year ago when Makenna and I were partnered to complete an Ecollective assignment for our Intro to Environmental studies course. Our project was based on the premise that because the College of Charleston produces over 1,000 tons of waste each year, and although there had already been a significant composting initiative in the dining halls, we saw that there will be an increasing demand to compost at a higher and more efficient rate.  Vermicompost will hopefully increase the rates at which the C of C composting program operates once the project reaches optimal scope, maximizing the amount of nutrient rich soil being produced as well as speeding up the composting process.

What began as a simple assignment quickly grew into the tangible roots of an idea. After completing the assignment, we wanted to do more with the project and took steps to making it a reality on campus. After the arduous process of approving our idea, we finally got enough funding to start. Based on the fact that one pound of red worms can eat up to half a pound of food waste each day, we saw the need to incorporate vermicompost onto our campus by purchasing a vermicomposting bin which can hold up to 5,000 worms, eating a total of up to five pounds of food waste each day!

We began by using our modest budget to acquire a starter kit of worms, a bin, and soil in order to get things going, as neither of us had any experience with vermicompost before. However, after getting our worms and spending time getting to know their preferences and habits, we’ve come to be quite fond of them (sort of like our worm children, as weird as that may sound). The project is currently progressing gradually. At the moment the worms have amassed such a great volume of converted compost that we recently added another bin on top of our first. The worms subside on a diet of greens and browns, greens being mostly vegetable matter, and browns being fibrous things such as coffee grounds, cardboard, or newspaper.

-Simon Engel

The Office of Sustainability works together with Alpha Delta Pi

Despite having played an instrument since the age of six – first piano, then guitar, until finally discovering my passion in vocal music – I never considered it any more than a hobby. I recognized that perhaps it meant something when, after a tiresome day or stressful week, all I wanted was to get near a piano and a solitary place to sing. Regardless, I never thought it possible to interconnect my passion for music with my more academic studies: political science and environmental studies. Last fall, however, I was fortunate enough to discover something called “ecomusicology”. Simply put, Ecomusicology examines how music both reflects and affects our relationship with nature in political, individual, and spiritual spheres. It expands into areas of non-human animals, and even plants, and their relationships with or reliance upon sound. What enthuses me, though, is the intersection between music and politics, particularly environmental politics and environmental justice.

The first weekend of October, I traveled to Asheville, North Carolina to attend a conference titled “Ecomusics & Ecomusicologies: Dialogues”. Topics discussed ranged from indigenous groups’ use of sound for healing, music in response to mountaintop coal removal in Appalachia (of which there is a LOT, and which I will touch on in a bit), and affects of sound on self-awareness and being – among many others. The creative arts are a necessary tool to bring out our true “humanness,” as one presenter put it. As an environmentalist, I have to wonder why music and the arts are left out of our usual discussion of sustainability. How can we sustain the human population if we disregard the histories that progressed us to where we are today? The arts as a whole are representative of cultures, values, beliefs, and concerns of any given time throughout our human history. Thus, in the quest to answer “What is it we wish to sustain?” I feel we should also be thinking about what we are proud of as a species. Perhaps I am biased, but I would think the arts are something almost all of us can say we are thankful for.

As environmental activist Tim DeChristopher said, “We will be a movement when we sing like a movement”. I love this quote for the fact that it emphasizes the simple power of song in forming a sense of community, one that is going to be essential for our species to thrive in the near and distant future. Music is not just a thing produced, but an action we engage with, sometimes called “musicking”. The act of musicking is social and political in that it establishes a set of relationships between all involved. This perception of music is essential to the understanding of music as protest. When I traveled up to New York City in September for the People’s Climate March, I was fortunate to happen upon a small group of people (amidst the 400,000 there) singing “If I Had A Hammer” as they marched. As a child, “If I Had A Hammer” was a song I listened to during car rides down from Ohio to South Carolina, a song on a Peter, Paul, and Mary album that my father insisted on overplaying. Now I understand that particular song’s significance in countless social movements across America. This enhanced depth of understanding is of not only songs but also social activism in general, and I am thrilled to apply it in my own life, political engagement, and my overall understandings of sustainability and the human species.

-Abby Tennenbaum