Category: Uncategorized

From Guest Blogger and Office Web Content Designer Walter Blair

Information Part II

I wrote last summer about my interest in information and some of the ways I was exploring the information problems that organizations such as our own face. I saw two big areas where information is increasingly difficult to handle – managing information flow within an office as well as effectively communicating information to the public.

It’s interesting for me to revisit my thoughts from when I was only a few months into my work with the Office of Sustainability. I was just becoming familiar with the goings on of my coworkers and the College as a whole as well as getting a feel for how I could marry my talents with the Office’s needs. Having now been in the Office through one full semester’s cohort of interns, I’m still very much interested in the information-related projects that I was pursuing last summer. The Mendeley research library, for example (geeky but aaawesome!) seems to me more important than ever to help sustain all of the amazing knowledge and experience gained from our interns as well as sustainability offices at neighboring institutions. While we’re on the subject of my geekdom, it’s worth mentioning that when our new multimedia intern Drew suggested that the Office could benefit from a logical filesystem that he could create for us, I almost wept with joy (Drew, you are the man). But projects aside, what I’d like to share at the moment is how my perspective on information has developed since the summer.

In some sense I feel like I’ve been catching up for the last few months. I was very interested in learning how to present information online in a way that was convenient, intuitive, and maybe even slightly attractive. I’ve been working hard to pick up skills in web design in order to better communicate information to the public. Check! Aside from dabbling in some pretty cool AWS technology, I feel like I have recently caught up to maybe 2004-2005 in terms of a fluency with online resources. A feat of which I am nonetheless very proud!

Now I’m facing the new information problem – communicating with the public is not really about having pretty websites anymore. They certainly don’t hurt, but what I realize now is that communication is about reciprocation. This is a pretty big step for a guy who still has a flip phone.

I understand that social media tools have been around for a few years now, but what taught me the lesson that effective communication requires mutual engagement and interaction wasn’t signing up for Instagram. Teaching in the classroom has helped me understand that students are at their best when they feel like they have a voice and when they realize that they have important lessons to teach fellow students as well as the professor.

My sense of how to share information has changed, and now it’s time to learn the necessary skills for the task at hand. I can’t think of a better context in which to do it – the Office of Sustainability has been a wonderfully supportive and challenging environment. I’m excited about our new online magazine Synergies, because this publication is an awesome opportunity to take our Office’s capacity for communication to the next level. We are reaching out into the broader community and region and will therefore have even more opportunities for our students to learn new skills and perspectives in the process. I can’t wait to share what happens next.

From Guest Blogger and Office Intern: Stefan Koester

A Day In the Landfill

Monday,  morning: The first thing on your mind is caffeine but you’re running late so you swing by a Starbucks. “A venti please and a bagel with cream cheese.” You drink and eat your breakfast on the go and throw the cup, lid, plastic knife and cream cheese packet in the nearest trash bin. Siting in your office you have a cold soft drink and a bottled water. You toss the daily newspaper in the trash after you’ve read it.

Monday lunch time: You and a few office mates do lunch at a new Asian place, but you have to take yours to-go. At your desk you enjoy your spicy noodles and a health drink. When you’re done you look for the office trash bin in order to  toss the Styrofoam packaging, plastic utensils, and plastic cup. After unpacking some boxes you have to throw out all the bubble wrap, cardboard and packaging peanuts.

Monday evening: You come home late, exhausted from the day’s heavy workload. You don’t feel like cooking so it’s a quick, microwavable dinner from the grocery.  store. After you take it out of the plastic bag, unwrap the Mac & Cheese, take off the cellophane wrapper and toss the cardboard box, you heat it up in the microwave and enjoy it with some ice tea in a plastic cup and straw.

We may not realize it, but we leave piles of trash in our wake, literally, piles of trash. The average American produces 4.4 pounds of trash every day and that amount increases every year. In fact, the US produced 250 million tons of municipal solid waste last year.[1] The Office of Sustainability wanted to find out what all that trash looks like, so we decided to visit the Charleston County Landfill & Compost facility, a 312 acre facility located on Bees Ferry Road in West Ashley. It is open to the general public for disposal and tours.

blog1     blog2

There, we saw how all of our food waste, yard clippings and trash are handled. Food waste makes up approximately 15% of US municipal solid waste in our landfills. The College, with the help of Dinning Services and Food Waste Disposal, has been able to capture a large portion of our food waste. It’s delivered to the compost facility where it’s pulped and within 90 days becomes dark, nutrient rich soil. All yard waste and clippings must be composted in Charleston County as well. These are laid out in long rows that are turned periodically in order to increase the rate decomposition. This compost is used either as a daily cover over the landfill or is also available for purchase by the public (1 ton for $10!). The composting facility at the landfill is a great addition. It extends the life of the landfill, it keeps useful resources in the supply stream, it connects the community to easily accessible resources, and it saves the county and taxpayers money.

The landfill is the most disheartening aspect of the facility. It is literally a giant pile of trash that will continue to grow for the next 20 to 22 years. It’s not neat, it’s not clean, it’s not organized and it smells bad. All day for five days a week trash trucks from all over the county come and dump around 30 cubic yards of trash. Its then smoothed over with bulldozers and finally a thin layer of soil from the compost facility is spread over. The entire mountain is swarming with birds as they swoop in for a find. Beneath our feet we saw toothbrushes, shoes, food packaging, plastic bags everywhere, water bottles, paper waste, cardboard, and an unopened toy elephant. There, in this giant pile, lay the refuse of our society.

We were lucky to witness a trash audit that was being conducted while we were there. Every few years the county does an audit of a week sample in order to determine the content and percentages. Over 70%, we were told, was either compostable food waste or recyclable. All those man made hills around us could have been 70% shorter. It was a truly eye opening experience. To see the physical evidence of all our waste was nothing short of shocking. To see the unsustainable nature of our waste disposal system was shocking. To see the amount of useful and valuable resources being tossed away was shocking.

During our few hours there, there were certainly some depressing moments. There were also some positive signs. Thanks partly to the College’s food waste disposal efforts, Charleston County is expanding its food waste composting program. Thirteen of the 43 county elementary schools now compost their cafeteria food and another 19 schools will be added this fall. As those students get older they will bring with them the values and habits of composting. The County also seems committed to expanding and encouraging increase recycling participation. Not only does the county receive money for valuable resources such as aluminum, glass, plastic and cardboard, it also prolongs the life of the landfill.

blog4
Some food waste compost

So what can you do to address this mounting problem? The first step, as always, is to think about your daily habits and routines. Think about where that disposable item may end up. Think about where those trash bags go. The second step is to try to reduce the amount of waste you produce. Bring a thermos, pack a fork and knife with you, try not to use Styrofoam or plastic food containers, bring your own food in Tupperware, refill your reusable water bottle around campus. If you want to compost your food waste the Office has resources on how to do that. Finally, recycle appropriate plastics, paper, aluminum, glass and e- waste. After you’ve done all this, your landfill waste will look pretty small.

There really isn’t much sense in endlessly burying our trash for generations and generations to come. We don’t want to leave Wall-E to clean up our endless mess. We have many of the solutions today right at our finger tips, we just have to do it!

Summer interns, GAs at Bees Ferry Landfill & Compost facility
Summer interns, GAs at Bees Ferry Landfill & Compost facility

[1] http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/index.htm

Apiculture at Dixie Plantation

The student-run sustainable garden at Dixie Plantation had a workshop on Saturday (3/30) introducing participants to hobbyist beekeeping and principles of organic gardening. The workshop crew was able to meet with Maike of the Charleston Area Beekeepers Association (CABA) to learn the importance of bees and the basic principles behind apiculture. Participants also helped with ongoing projects in the garden including: planting flowers, planting vegetables, and fortifying against the always hungry rabbits and deer! We ended the day with a relaxing nature hike.

The workshop was made possible in part by the Sustainability grant from the ECOllective fund and volunteer efforts. Thank you to all who participated and keep a lookout for more work days to come!

The garden will be hosting a booth this Sunday (4/7) at the Charleston Honey and Bee Expo, at Cinebarre in Mt. Pleasant.   DSCN0598

 

Reflections from Deb

One of our Sustainability Interns, Deb Ong, recently returned from a conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  You can read all about her experiences below!

 

——————————————————————————

 

This weekend I travelled to Ann Arbor Michigan for a C2C fellows workshop on leadership in sustainability in business and politics. The workshop was part of an on going series of workshops on leadership that aims to develop leadership skills such as pitching and public speaking in young individuals that are interested in sustainability and climate change. More importantly, this workshop series serves as a networking opportunity and resource for young undergraduate and graduates in the sustainability field. Deborah

I write this post on the flight back to Charleston and my heart is heavy; as what began as slow start to the weekend quickly turned into a humbling and inspiring experience.  From the moment I arrived, it became apparent that there was a strong focus on environmental issues, in particular efficiency, divestment and renewable energy. In addition, the majority of the group had activism backgrounds having attended Power Shifts, protests against the XL pipeline, and even attended the Copenhagen Climate summit in 2009. There was a strong belief in counter-cultural movements and an advocacy of civil disobedience, modes of actions that I am quite cynical about, but a little less so now. What I came to realize over the course of the weekend, and it is more of a personal realization, is that while the environmentalist and sustainability approaches may differ, they are very often parallel paths on which a growing group of young, and extremely passionate and compassionate people are traveling on.  Between these two paths, there are intersections, that is, areas of agreement as well as divergence for areas of disagreement, yet, the issues which drive us so strongly such as inequality which stems from exploitation and degradation connects us in a manner that allows us to share and develop ideas, and ultimately inspire and be inspired by each other.

The highlight of the weekend came out of the section where we had to create and share our stories. How did our story lead us to where we are today, shape what we care about, and in turn influence what we want to do in our professional futures? Just take Dorthea E. Thomas, a strong articulate, native of some of the worst neighborhoods in Detroit who has experienced personal losses and is running for city council.  Or Lydiah Maxmillian, a resilient, cheerful soul whose hard work paid off when she was given an anonymous scholarship to attend school in the United States.  She hails from Nairobi, Kenya, but specifically from the largest slum in Africa. She hopes to one day be able to return to her home and inspire other young boys and girls through her example and eventually enter Kenyan politics. Or Ruth Powell, who has worked all her life, bounced from nursing to bike mechanic school, was one of five siblings raised by a hippy mother and whose father abandoned the family. Last year, her world was shaken as her inspiration and strength, her mother was taken by cancer. And yet, all of them carry on, and are driven by their passion for issues of environmental and social justice.

As I fly home to Charleston, I am humbled and inspired by the strength of their human spirit. The ability to overcome the odds and push on with great joy and belief that change can happen, in any case, they will make it happen…

The workshop is all expenses paid, except for transport to and from the workshop.  I would encourage anyone who is interested in or exploring the sustainability field.

Post from Sammi Smoot

June 9, 2012: The mural is complete!

 

Troy Ganz, the winner of the campus-wide Green Teaching Garden Mural Contest.  Troy did a great job didn’t he?  The idea of the mural follows the lifecycle of a phoenix.  Here is a written description of the concept of his entry:

 

The theme of sustainability is captured in this mural by following a sequence of pictures that compare the transition from old-world methods and sources of energy production (old world) to green, renewable forms of energy production (new world) to the life cycle of the phoenix. Traditionally, the phoenix is a symbolic figure used by many cultures to express the eternal principle of nature. After an expanse of time in the adult form, the phoenix builds a nest whereby it settles and combusts into ash. From the ashes an egg is recovered containing the next generation of the only mature phoenix.

For the purposes of this mural, the phoenix, may symbolize the earth, or perhaps a human spirit awakening to the disaster of society’s dependence on non-renewable resources. From left to right the mural reads as follows:

  1. In a nest constructed of litter and trash, a new-born phoenix hatches into a world, to be entirely disrespectful to the natural ecology of earth as polluting power plants, oil, tree, coal mining and dump sites tower above the creature creating a scene of looming disparity under the cover of night and smog.
  2. The landscape is divided by a river as the adult phoenix is seen gliding through the air towards the new-day of eco-conscious, sustainable practices.
  3. The final panel, or right side, retains the symmetry of the picture by placing the nest prepared with fresh twigs in the foreground and rising levels of grasslands filled with renewable sources of energy production such as windmills, solar panels and recycling factories. Fire is consuming the fresh nest and is symbolic of satisfaction with sustainable energy production.

 

I wanted to also post some pictures from around the garden because it’s looking so beautiful!

 

(Left) The butterfly garden with butterflies made from recycled aluminum cans by Hannah Day, Meredith Smylie and Michelle Reed.  (Right) Beautiful blooming Marsh Mallow or otherwise known as the native Carolina hibiscus.

Post from Sammi Smoot

Grice Marine Lab Marine-ival: April 9, 2012

Grice Marine Lab had its second annual Marine-ival which also served as the official unveiling of the Green Teaching Garden.  The Marine Biology Graduate Student Association worked year long to put together this event complete with carinival games and food, kids activities, marine touch tank, pie throwing and even a blow up obstacle course.

In the garden there were signs made by student volunteers describing all the work that we’ve done in the garden this semester.  The winner of the campus-wide mural contest, senior Troy Ganz was working on his mural during the event.  The Clemson Extension let us borrow a bike pump display where you ride a bike connected to the main cistern and a sprinkler.

 

(Left) Mural contest winner, Troy Ganz, painting the cistern mural and (Right) graduate student Michelle D’Aguillo riding the bike pump.

Garden signs completed with the help of Hannah Day, Callie Crawford, Michelle Reed, and Hannah’s boyfriend Troy.  Thanks so much guys!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Left)Kids at the local marine animal touch tank next to the GTG.  We also had two baby alligators on display! (Right) The highlight of our event (or maybe just what the graduate students were most excited for), a moon bounce obstacle course!

Post from Sammi Smoot

Harborview Elementary School Rain Barrel Painting: March 17th, 2012

Mr. Kacpura, the art teacher at Harborview Elementary school helped to arrange for Students from Mrs. Luckie’s SAIL fourth and fifth grade classes to come and paint the rain barrels.  Sponges were precut into various marine animals for the students to use as stensils and then go back and add more details.   Some of the sea creatures ended up with a little bit more paint than they needed to but the kids seemed to have a lot of fun.  I gave them a tour of Grice Marine Lab and a touch tank session in the wet lab.  We had quite a few future marine biologists!

Students from Harbor View Elementary School painting the rain barrels at Grice Marine Lab.

 

Finished rain barrels!

 

Green Teaching Garden Mural Contest Winner: Troy Ganz

The winning mural contest entry was created by a senior marine biology major, Troy Ganz.  Troy will receive the prize money of $250 after the completion of the mural on the main cistern in the GTG.   Keep a look out for pictures of the progress of the mural painting!

Priming and base coat for cistern mural winner March 23, 2012

Callie Crawford and other marine biology graduate students finished painting the main cistern while I was away at a conference this weekend.  Looks great guys, thanks so much!  Now the cistern is ready for the winner to begin painting the mural.

Future work days: April 1st

Unveiling of finished Green Teaching Garden: April 7th at Grice Marine Lab and the Marine Biology Graduate Association 2nd Annual Marine-ival!

Post from Sammi Smoot

Removing the plastic liner from the bog garden: February 25, 2012

We had a short but very productive work day removing the plastic tarp from under the garden.

Marine biology graduate students: Leslie Wicks, Bec Mortensen, Tim O’Donnell, Nicole Kollars, Ashley Shaw, Carly Altizer, Sarah Doty, Meredith Smylie, and Jaqueline Leidig removing the plastic liner from the bog garden.

Rain Barrel Installation with Dave Joyner from Clemson Extension: February 28th 2012

Students from Dr. Brian Fisher’s sustainability class, came to help install the rain barrels.  Dave Joyner from Clemson Extension and Jeffrey Swatkowski, a graduate student in the Master’s of Environmental Studies (MES) program, helped to design the rain collection system made up of a 1500 gallon cistern that and 8 50-gallon rain barrels.   Between both systems, estimated capture is 41,000 gallons of water per year (based on 50% capture).   There’s a whole lot of water that comes off of GML!  There are four rain barrels attached to each porch that are daisy chained together.  For more information on how to build your own rain barrel and install it in your home visit the website: http://www.clemson.edu/public/psatv/env/rain_barrel.html

 

                                                 

Dave Joyner teaching a undergraduate student about making a rain barrel collection system.

Rain Garden Workshop led by Kim Counts from Clemson Carolina Clear: March 16th 2012

People from throughout the College of Charleston campus attended a free garden planning, design, and planting in coastal South Carolina.  Representatives from CofC’s Masters of Environmental Studies, SC Department of Natural Resources, CofC Grounds, Grice Marine Lab, and unaffiliated members of the public attended the event.  The workshop was led by Kim Counts from Clemson Carolina Clear and sponsored by: Grice Marine Lab, CofC Marine Biology Graduate Student Association, CofC Office of Sustainability, Carolina Clear, Clemson Cooperative Extension, and the Ashley Cooper Stormwater Education Consortium.

ABC News4, a local Charleston news station was also there for photographs and interviews that were featured on the Friday night news.  Links to the articles from the College of Charleston’s and ABCNews4 websites are below.

Kim Counts showing rain garden workshop attendees where to place each of the plants.

(Top) Attendees filling in the rain garden with a layer of mushroom compost and cedar mulch.  The garden site already has a lot of sand but you want to make sure the rain garden is composed of 60% sand to help with percolation.

(Bottom) MES student Jennifer Saunders watering our finished rain garden! J

CofC News: http://news.cofc.edu/2012/03/13/free-rain-garden-workshop-offered/

ABC News 4 story: http://www.abcnews4.com/story/17180028/cofc-green-teaching-lab-to-open-next-month

Post from Ally Bing

Dr. Arthur Felts – Professor of Political Science
Dr. Norman Levine – Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences

Firstly, I didn’t realize all the potential natural disasters Charleston is privy to. Thanks to Dr. Levine for pointing them all out. Earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding? Yes. But one does not always consider potential threat of liquefaction, intrusion, storm surge, landslides, and forest fires.

So the point of this talk, I think, was to stress how important it is to talk about the consequences of a potential disaster upon communities, and how communities can improve their resiliency, protect against the future, and possibly use the event for positive change. What is resiliency? When I think of resiliency, I think of coastal seaweed, being pitched and tossed in heavy waves. It has both strength and flexibility. I think Dr. Felts’ idea of resiliency was a little different- I think the point he was trying to get across was that it’s not enough for an entity to simply have characteristics that will serve it in the time of the disaster—a community is resilient if it prepares in advance and discusses afterward (I think that’s what he meant!). Someone said that having a high amount of social capital—that is, community collaboration, responsibility, and networks—is the best way towards becoming resilient. That makes sense to me, both visually (I imagine the more social capital you have, the less gaps you have in your web- each meaningful connection is like a strong knot) and socially (the more care people have for each other and their homes, the better care they will take care of it).

In order to increase resiliency, Dr. Felts said that we must pick out what institutions and behaviors that will be unsustainable in the future. I’m still a little confused by the way he used the word “unsustainable,” since I thought that surely if an institution was going to be unsustainable in the future, that means it’s unsustainable now. That was just a matter of semantics, really, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what sustainability means to me and just wanted to be clear. Part of the definition has to do with a need to ensure future generations their due rights and resources; the idea that something is sustainable now but won’t be sustainable in the future violates that portion, because if was truly sustainable now, It would be the exact same thing that would be providing rights and resources to my descendants.

The idea that a severe weather event could bring about positive change, such as a hurricane tearing down an inefficient infrastructure that had been too expensive to mess with, struck me as very wise. We always think about “disasters” in a decidedly negative way (pretty sure there’s no positive connotation for “disaster”) and I personally associate them with fear and sadness. I’ve never thought of a tsunami as a resource, or a partner. I still feel uncomfortable doing so. But perhaps it would strengthen resiliency if we at least changed our perspective from resistant to understanding that these are an inevitable part of nature that should be expected, not pushed out of our mind until we’re forced to think about it.