Category: Blog

South Eastern Wildlife Expo and Local Food

Local foods promote a healthy population and a strong community.
Local foods promote a healthy population and a strong community.

As the 32nd annual South Eastern Wildlife Exposition (SEWE) wraps up and the throngs of visitors return home, Marion Square seems quieter than normal. This past weekend an estimated 40,000 visitors experienced annual favorites such as Awendaw’s Birds of Prey flight demos, the Dock-Dogs competition, television personality Jack Hanna, and beautiful art exhibitions. In addition to shows,  many local representatives set up booths advertising everything from ecotourism opportunities, such as the hiking the Palmetto Trail and Charleston Kayaking tours, to outdoor furniture.

Perhaps just as anticipated by the young and old alike was the chance to sample food from local vendors and growers. In the past seven years, the demand for local food has increased dramatically in South Carolina. Membership in the Certified South Carolina program, administered by S.C.’s Department of Agriculture, has “exploded from only sixty in 2007 to more than 1200 farmers, processors, wholesalers, and retailers” said writer Joanie Stiers. But it does not stop there. Two similar programs, know as Fresh on the Menu and Farm to School, encourage restaurants and schools respectively to also promote local foods. Currently more than 300 restaurants have agreed to include as least 25% Certified S.C. Foods on their menus and nearly 100 schools have earned grants to help them purchase more local food for schoolchildren.

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This symbol, found on food packaging, guarantees that it was grown, manufactured, and/or processed in South Carolina.

 

Even if these programs only encouraged local food consumption, the economic and community benefits would outweigh the costs. Nonetheless, in addition to contributing to the local job economy, they promote healthy food choices and fundamentally reconnect us to the food production process through hands-on learning. For the City of Charleston, annual events such as SEWE provide an ideal educational platform to showcase the advantages of “being local.” In addition to SEWE, Charleston offers more frequent events such as the Marion Square Farmer’s Market (beginning April 12th) that also encourage the growing local movement. Our own Office of Sustainability is working constantly and is always on the lookout for project ideas.

If you have an idea you would like to work on, we offer grants up to $2000 and would love to work with you to move your project to fruition.Please visit our webpage at: https://sustainability.cofc.edu/index.php or contact our coordinator, Jen Jones at jejones2@cofc.edu. Hope to hear from you soon!

-Craig Bennett

Speaking for the trees

Cara Lauria
Cara gives her opinion on the SCDOT’s plan to clear cut trees on 1-26 in order to reduce the number of traffic accidents in the area. What do you think?

Last month I attended a public hearing held by the South Carolina Department of Transportation to discuss the clear cutting of 30 miles of forest that dwell in the median of I-26 from Charleston to Columbia. The proposed removal would reduce fatalities, which occur at high rates due to collisions between drivers and the trees that surround the interstate. SCDOT began the hearing by explaining the full proposal of the project, costs, and various options. The most expensive of the options is to leave the trees, slightly correct the slope of the median, and implement guard rails on all sides of the interstate. The avenue DOT wishes to pursue is the least costly, which is full clear cutting and implementation of one guard cable between the median. During the public comment period person after person “spoke for the trees” discussing how these accidents are mere reflections of larger issues, like distracted, tired, stressed drivers, not violent conifers. Issues between flora and fauna vs. people of Charleston seem to be a reoccurring problem, i.e. coyotes on Sullivan’s Island. It appears in this case, though, that the majority of the community surrounding the area doesn’t want the clear cutting to occur.

This repeating theme of nature vs. people is something local government and policy writers must address. All facets of the debate need to be studied, including the ecological benefits of the trees. They not only act as carbon sinks, habitat and stormwater collection, but they are aesthetically valuable to the identity of Charleston and South Carolina in general. Before we choose the ecologically costly option I urge, along with the many residents and community members of the Charleston area, for DOT to explore solutions such as reducing the speed limit, ban texting and driving, and increase police enforcement of already in place laws around the interstate. Part of promoting safety and  sustainability of our transportation sector is studying all aspects of their projects, including the ecological costs as well as fiscal. The more we reduce our natural economy the more we’ll eventually be paying for it in the long term, to compensate for the ecological services we lost. I hope to see the SC DOT seriously consider the voices of the Charleston community and remember to evaluate the long term consequences of what ever they choose.

In the Garden with Lexa Keane

Spicy Flowers and Bean Sprouts

I think I’m in love.  Our relationship is so fresh and new, I can’t help but get excited thinking about Friday afternoons, and all the other random chances I get to spend time with them.

‘Them’ you ask?? Yes, all the little vegetable and fruit sprouts within the political science urban garden that are pushing so eagerly to meet the sun’s rays.  I find myself retreating to the garden any chance I get, making sure they are watered and nourished.  I’m borderline ‘helicopter mom,’ but their youth calls for extra reassurance and devotion!

One of the many great things about the garden is the constant interaction of people and the natural world, as the garden is a centerpiece in which people gather and exchange stories, thoughts, and a sense of community.  The garden demonstrates not only the physical potential of yielding produce for the local community, but the potential within each of us to flourish and help each other grow as individuals and as a community.  If you think I am romanticizing this garden experience, you might very well be correct in your assumption, but I would argue that this newly cultivated plot of land is something worth celebrating.

Yesterday, after a hectic day and a long week, I retreated to the garden to harvest some lettuce, spinach and basil for a tasty salad to share with a good friend of mine.  After plunking my heavy book bag down, I assessed the growing sprouts, and watered them while talking with some faculty members.  The conversations extended past the garden, and into realms of personal interest and funny stories of the week.  The garden is a platform for uplifting experiences, whether gathered around the actual garden, or sharing the vegetable goodness for dinner with a near and dear friend.

 

 

College Lodge’s New Water Refill Station

The Office of Sustainability recently received some exceptionally positive feedback from College Lodge RA, Brenna McNamara, about their new water bottle refill station.  Brenna is a great example of a passionate RA who is constantly looking for ways to improve the lives of her residents and make CofC’s residence halls the best they can be.

We love this kind of feedback!  Thanks for reaching out to us, Brenna! brenna

“As an Orientation Intern, I have spent every summer of my college career in Charleston. Last summer I noticed something new in Maybank Hall, I noticed that the building had gotten awesome new water refill stations. Using them over the summer was great and a super easy way to save money, save the environment and stay hydrated. This year, when I moved into College Lodge, where I am a resident assistant, I noticed our water fountain was broken. After noticing how the lack of a water fountain was playing a role in my residents daily lives, I came up with the idea of contacting the Office of Sustainability. I asked about the possibility of getting a refill station in College Lodge. I think that residence halls are one of the best places to have a refill station because there is constant traffic and what better way to test it out. After a semester of communication and figuring out logistics, we came back from break with a wonderful present. The residents love the refill station and constantly use it, I think College Lodge is the perfect new home for our lovely gift. As of today, we have saved over 1095 water bottles. The fact that you can actually see the change you are making is an easy way to push you in the right direction. Residents are excited about making the number of bottles that we save go up. The other day, my fellow resident assistant and I, filled up our cups and saved our 1000th water bottle. It was a random exciting moment that I never thought would be so fun. We ran around the lobby screaming that we got to 1000 bottles while our residents gave us high fives and laughed. I know it sounds lame, but we truly had a good time doing one simple thing for the environment. Thank you so much for showing us how to make saving the environment fun! Can’t wait to see what else our new refill station brings us!”

Brenna McNamara
Resident Assistant, College Lodge

Office Interns Publish Greek Newsletter

Office interns Tiffany Kingston and Colleen Sullivan have been hard at work this semester trying to integrate sustainability into the culture of the Greek Life here at CofC.  One of their initiatives includes the creation of a monthly newsletter crafted specifically for Greeks.  The news letter highlights sustainability events that are coming up, chapters that have specific achievements in sustainability, features articles about sustainability issues and much more!  We will publish the newsletter here on the blog every! Here are the October and November issues:

GreekNewsletterOct

GreekNewsletterNov

 

Office Staff Members present at National AASHE Conference in Los Angeles –

The Challenges to Sustainable Food at CofC – by Lydia Nickolas

Here at the College of Charleston a push has begun for the integration of more sustainable and local foods in campus dining options in addition to accountability for supply chain and waste stream management. While this movement has been largely student driven, the implementation of the desired changes is wholly dependent upon the cooperation with food service providers and garnering the blessings of upper level management within the College. In her presentation at the AASHE 2012 National Conference, Ashlyn Hochschild outlined many of the potential solutions and obstacles encountered while working with Aramark (the College’s food service provider) in designing more sustainable strategies.

Food and adequate nutrition are some of the most basic and fundamental of human needs. Since the dawn of time, the attainment of sustenance has been a community effort, founded in the joint collaboration of hunting, gathering, and cultivation in close cooperation with the natural environment. Not until recently has there been such a vast disconnect between the source of our food and its consumption. In our modern fast-paced everyday lives, concern about the origin, fate, and nutritional content of our food has been relegated to the backburner.  The College serves anywhere between 3,000-3,500 meals everyday on campus, creating a significant impact based on their purchasing preferences and waste disposal methods. The hope is that shifting the purchasing paradigm to a more locally sourced effort will improve the local economy and overall quality of the food served.

In her presentation, Hochschild points out that while small steps are being taken by Aramark, there is still significant room for improvement. She called specific attention to the “Green Thread” program currently being implemented on campus which includes “green” cleaning supplies, cardboard recycling, reusable mug discounts, recycling fryer oil, serving Fair Trade coffee, the use of a compost pulper, and the reusable tray program. While these are excellent first steps, they pale in comparison to efforts being made across the nation. A specific example that was cited indicates that while the pulper was purchased over a year ago, it had not generated any usable compost until this past Friday, November 1st.  Hochschild ultimately concludes that much of the fault lies in a lack of baseline data, communication, transparency, and implementation of large-scale concepts on a smaller scale.

Despite some of these challenges, Aramark has been largely cooperative and willing to lend an ear to both the Office and student input on their policies and provision of service. In order to ameliorate the broader issues, added transparency and initiative on behalf of the College of Charleston is a must. In order to create a positive and sustainable campus environment, there must be joint cooperation between the students, the administration, and their providers. A sustainable approach to our food consumption and waste management encompasses not only where our food comes from and where it ultimately ends up, but how it shapes our community and our interactions.

Post from Aylett Clesi

As our demand for energy continues to rise, we have had to look to different sources and improve what we have.  To meet this demand we’re requiring larger and more efficient wind turbines.  These things are HUGE… some of them can measure more than two football fields across!  On July 20th we visited Clemson’s Wind Turbine Drivetrain Testing Facility.  Built by a grant from the US Department of Energy, this state-of-the-art facility will be able to mechanically and electrically test new wind turbine systems.  They also have a “Hardware-in-the-Loop Grid Simulator” which allows them to test how a wind turbine will affect any power grid (for example New York City) so that they can minimize that effect! 

The facility is located in North Charleston at Clemson’s Restoration Institute.  In Phase 1 the Institute will consist of The Warren Lasch Conservation Center, Advanced Materials Lab, Clemson International Center for Wind Energy Systems, and Graduate Education Center.  Construction is on schedule.  The smaller test rig is scheduled to begin testing in the fall, and the larger will follow in early 2013.  After a presentation by Dr. Rigas, we donned our construction site apparel and marched off to the test site.

 

The building is huge!!  They’ve just finished reinforcing the foundation, and the roof will be constructed soon.  The Graduate Center will be right in front of it, right on the Cooper River.  The design looks gorgeous, definitely makes me consider engineering… Maybe.  It was really exciting for us to visit this site because we love to physically see things in motion! 

 

Post from Ally Bing – National Pie Week

Hello, everyone! My name is Ally, and I’m an intern at the Office of Sustainability. I’m going to talk to you about pie.

You’re probably familiar with that well-beloved and long-lasting traditional holiday, National Pie Week—those seven days of July the United States has designated to the adoration and appreciation of pie. No? Well, the Office of Sustainability admittedly wasn’t either until quite recently, but we were quick to make up for lost time (and pie) by holding a pie potluck lunch celebration at grad assistant Ashlyn’s suggestion last Tuesday.

Last week we had much to celebrate! Besides pie in general, intern Aylette’s last day of summer session calculus (her very last class of her undergraduate college career, incidentally) had come to a very successful end last week, and I happened to be lucky enough to have my 22nd birthday coincide with the day that all of my co-workers were bringing in pie to eat together at work.

I was in charge of documenting our culinary fantastic-ness, and because our pies look so very delicious, Ashlyn has granted me permission to substitute a potential last paragraph of this post with the following photographs. Ashlyn brought my favorite, a tomato pie made with local ingredients, and a cheesy, delicious quiche. Kaitland made an amazing fruit galette. Stefan made a beautiful blueberry pie complete with a lattice crust. I made a gluten-free chocolate pie with a cookie crust and Aylette also brought the dessert with both her incredible Jell-O raspberry and whipped cream pie and peanut butter and chocolate chip pie. Yum. You know what they say about community-building…it’s easier when you have delicious pie.

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Post from Kaitland Finkle

While there are many things that set Charleston apart from the small town of Boone, NC where I went to school at Appalachian State University, there are also many similarities.  Both communities are place based, meaning the people that live there are passionate about their surroundings.  Charleston has a rich maritime history evident in the unique architecture while Boone has a notorious mountain past.  Although Charleston is bounded by water and Boone by mountains, each community has historically relied on the resources that it had.  This sense of place is continued in the idea of localism.  Both Charleston and Boone have thriving farmers markets, and restaurants sourcing local, seasonally grown food.  Getting a tour of local food in Charleston gave me a greater insight into how important the local food trend is here in the lowcountry.

We began the morning with a tour by Farmer Pete and his farmhand Kate at the Ambrose Family Farm.  This more than 130 acre farm is operated with less than 15 workers!  On top of being a You-Pick farm, produce is sold at two farmers markets and a myriad of restaurants, including Butcher and Bee, where we would be eating later in the afternoon.  I was quite impressed to see just how much local food has been embraced by local chefs in a number of restaurants as well as a large portion of everyday consumers.  The farm relies heavily on sales from its CSA shares.  Community Supported Agriculture is an extremely important concept where customers pay up front, giving the farmer money for start up costs regardless of how successful the crop season is.  Farmer Pete plans on having a smaller less expensive CSA geared toward students beginning this fall.  He also hopes to have a year round CSA to provide work for his farmhands for a full continuous year.  By having a continuous CSA, he hopes to keep farmhands by continuing the cash flow so they can support their families year round without having to search for off farm work.  While walking around the farm we got to taste delicious blackberries, cantaloupe and even a moon and star watermelon!  Farmer Pete then took us to Tomato Shed Café, a small restaurant and market owned and operated by his family.  It was nice to see that the entire farm operation was kept close to home and was done in a way to support the local community.  With fresh baked cookies and breads and homemade jellies and salsa’s lining the walls, this was just the beginning of a wonderful day of delicious local food.

We then proceeded to Grow Food Carolina, a non-profit organization whose mission is to link local farmers with regional markets.  By providing the connection between the producer and consumer, they hope to keep the distance food travels to a minimum.  Through a grant from the USDA, the organization got a large warehouse to use as its headquarters.  It is here that they receive the produce, check it for quality control and then distribute it back to the community.  They are able to help farmers secure products for wholesale distribution by certifying the produce before it is distributed.  By providing the marketing and sales coordination, local produce has been incorporated into area supermarkets such as Whole Foods, Piggly Wiggly and Earthfare.  I found this to be quite an impressive feat.  They also work with an extensive list of restaurants which showcase local foods.  Therefore, I was surprised to see the warehouse drastically empty and underutilized.  Could it be that farmers are hesitant in only receiving 80 cents of every dollar of profits, or is it due to the increase in regulations and standards which are present in using this middle man organization?

Witnessing the travel of our local food through the course of the day was riveting.  The last part of the trip was to a local restaurant called Butcher & Bee.  We had the restaurant to ourselves and an engaging discussion over a delicious meal with the owner, Michael Shemtov, in between the busy lunch and dinner hours.  He consistently spoke on the idea of community and how food can be used to foster a sense of place with people who love food and good conversation.  The way he does business is almost unheard of.  For one thing, he is adamant about a changing menu.  This he says allows the restaurant to use the most local, fresh ingredients.  He argues that it is impossible for a restaurant to source all of its produce locally while having the same menu year round.  He also has what are called pop up dinners by visiting chefs.  Often times these dinners have an ethnic focus including recent Vietnamese and Gullah-Geechie inspired meals.   We got to speak with an Italian chef, Dick Bosstick, who was preparing a dinner using historic Italian/French recipes.  In particular, the simplicity of the 19th century style caponata sauce he was making had a deep history attached.  He discussed the cultural influences on recipes and how these have both developed and stayed consistent over centuries.  It was intriguing to look at food through a cultural lens.

Throughout the day I was continuously surprised by how much thought and effort was going into the food being produced, contrary to the practices of industrialized agriculture.  The theme of community building was prevalent throughout, from engaging people in the growing process to joining together for a communal meal.  The entire day was mesmerizing.  Not only did we get to spend a beautiful day out on the farm and enjoy delicious local food, I learned a ton about local food in Charleston!

City-wide August 1st Move Out

It’s that time of year, again!  Those August 1st leases are coming to an end and many of you are moving out of the places you’ve called home for the past year (or more!).  Our interns, Ally Bing and Kaitland Finkle have created a fun, student oriented guide that will help you to make your move out as sustainable as possible!!!!!!!  Check it out and share it with your friends! CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE MOVE-OUT GUIDE!