I just read a selection from Paul Robert's "The End of Oil." The excerpt explores the economic and political problems with concerning from cheap oil to other sources of oil...the forces that hinder forward-looking energy policies in the U.S... the contrast with the energy policies of EU countries (especially Germany)...and possible scenarios for the future of the world's economy, and what it will take for the more optimistic scenarios to become reality.
Anyway..if anyone is interested...i have a copy.
happy summer.
I think some aspects of the class were successful and some of the group projects proved to give the student body and campus community some useful information. However, many of the class projects were stunted by lack of cooperation by various members of staff and/or departments at Oxy. In response to this...I think that the course should do some projects but also concentrate on educating the students IN the class about the specific problems Oxy is facing. In turn the projects will be more focused and students can share the information with their peers.
Today in a class discussion about Earth Day activities, many of my peers that participated in Oxy's earth day fair felt frustrated with the response of the student body. People expressed that the only people that showed interest in their table or activities were people that were already fairly knowledgeable about the subject. I noticed that at our table on landscaping, VERY few people stopped by leading me to wonder, how many students do really care about campus greening? As we saw in this class, it is very hard to push the administration to do anything beside listen to recommendations. With a small group on campus invested in these issues, it makes our chances of creating change even slimmer. It seems like we, as environmental stewards, need to find some way to package these issues so as to make them appealing to the rest of the student body. I have confidence that people do care deep down, they just need to find a topic or aspect that applies to them personally. I think this will be something important for the environmental stewards to work on next semester.
Reading some of the other posts on this site I am realizing how much meeting once a week to talk about environmental issues has kept me aware of that subject outside of class. We recycle more than ever at our house and thanks to Korpie I'm kicking myself for not taking in aluminum cans all year--we could have made a small fortune off of Milwakee's Best alone. I am also glad that I took this class before I had to take out a loan to fill up my car at the gas station. I feel that with situations like this people may realize that we are ignoring the environment and this may serve as a wake up call. This class has built an appreciation towards conservation and also opened my eyes as to how difficult it is for a group or company to gain support in this field. I am confident that I will be able to use the information I've picked up in this class throughout my life.
Prior to taking Environmental Stewards, I knew little to nothing about how important environmental issues were. In fact, I would say that I was part of the problem: contributing to wasting water and not recyling properly. Before the class, I didn't know that throwing a can into a paper recylce bin basically contaminated the rest of the bin to the point that it would not get recylced. I admit to taking long showers as well. After the class, however, I would say that I am now part of the solution.
We had a discussion in class the other day of whether the class should be exclusive to people who are more interested in the environment or make it open to all students who maybe just need units. I feel that the class should be open to everyone because I was one person who walked in just needing units. I think that a class like this can educate more people in the long run and have more effect than just catering to those who are interested in environmental issues. Please keep the class open to all students.
Over the course of the past couple months a good number of the residents of Chilcott Hall have begun recycling all of their cans, bottles, and other recyclable goods on their own. I feel like an intiative along this line would really motivate a lot of the school to become competitive and smart about what they recycle. If you take the time to bring your bottles and cans back to your room and save them, you can easily make a trip to a collection center and get a lot of your money back. Recently we have funded a lot of our nights out on the town and great weekends by recycling all of our cans and other recyclables that we generate throughout the week, which I will let you know is a great deal. You would be surprised how much you can make. We've gotten a range everywhere from a quick twenty dollars to over fifty. So I'm encouraging everyone to consider doing this, it's a great way to get some extra money and help the environment as a whole and here at OXY.
On Friday, April 21, 2006 the Environmental Stewards class helped out at the Oxy Earth Day Fair in the quad at lunchtime by setting up a booth to talk about the many things that we have been doing this past semester to encourage campus greening. There was a decent turnout to the event and everything seemed to go smoothly. However, one thing stood out in my memory as something that was not as friendly towards all the acts that my classmates and I had been taking to help Occidental to reduce, re-use and recycle.
Continue reading "Earth Day at Oxy"
In class, our professor discussed the means as to which environmental action could take place and remain successful at a college institution. One of the main points of the lecture was although there to be policies in place, the more important aspect is that we have enforcement of those policies and have an ally in an influential position to ensure the enforcement of these policies. From my perspective, certain policies at Oxy need to be reassessed and we need someone in an influential position to promote the safety of our environment, Oxy and beyond.
Continue reading "Oxy Bureaucracy"
So I had the idea to do a "Two Cents" article about students' feelings concerning recycling here at Occidental. Although I planned to publish only three students comments, after interviewing many students, I discovered that many students feel that contamination of the recycling bins is a big issue. Some students feel that the placement of recycling is key, because many students are lazy. For instance, if a trash can is insight of a student, instead of walking to the recycling bin for their recyclables, students throw their recyclables in the trash. Also, if there isn't a trash can nearby a recycling bin, many students throw their trash in the recycling bin. For a section of our project, we went into the dorms to inform the students about proper recycling techniques at Oxy. We pointed out that, "Removing recycling bins from their locations can lead to contamination of the recyclables in the bin," which is also on our recycling flyer (printed on 100% recycled paper). One student commented that contamination discourages him from recycling, and another student said, “I feel people really don’t use it because we need more paper recycling bins.” Maybe the next move can be to improve paper recycling techniques.
I recently came across some interesting information regarding saving money at Occidental. I feel like people take advantage of things when they are at school because they don’t have a direct relationship to the costs associated with it. While working on my group project I came across some alarming facts. The first one states that if everyone attending Oxy turned their computers off at night, the school would save between $44,000-$84,000 each years. That’s is a great deal of money. Also, California Edison states that if an individual cuts their shower time down to five minutes or less they will save $30-$50 annually. With fourteen dorms on campus that house roughly 1300 students this is equal to an annual saving of $40,000 - $65,000 at Oxy. This is amazing. Oxy could save somewhere between $84,000 and $149,000 a year if each student took it upon themselves to do two simple tasks: turning off their computers at night and cutting down their shower time, but I feel this will never happen. Without having some direct attachment with the cost related to performing these tasks I feel that Oxy students will never want to change. Image what we could do at Oxy with $149,000 dollars.
I think that Campus Safety should look into alternative transportation methods for their daily rounds. Currently they drive their cruisers around all day. For a such a moderate climate and a campus as small as Oxy's, I think that a much more enviromental-friendly, cost effective and efficent means of transportation would be easy to find. I know that the Caltech security guards use Segways to get around their campus. A Segway is a two wheel self balancing scooter that is electrically driven. While these would not be ideal for patrolling the upper parts of Oxy's hilly campus, they would be suitable for moving around lower campus. For patrolling upper campus, I think that golf carts would be a good option. Since these vehicles are battery powered, it would be an added plus if the charging stations were solar powered and self-sufficent. I think that if Campus Safety had a mix of different vehicles (gas and battery powered) they would have the resources to handle any situation and could contribute to campus greening.
My post is inspired by the recent blackout of this semester. My idea would be a great way for Occidental to make a strong statement for Earth Day as well as save the college quite a bit of money. I propose that for Earth Day the college turns off all of the lights for one night. A blackout of the entire campus for the night. Of course there would be some legal matters that the college would have to take care of first but I believe this would be a great demostration. Maybe the college could blackout all buildings except for the library to keep a buildiing lit for students who need to study. All students could be provided with glow sticks or flashlights just as we were for the blackout this semester. A blackout would be a great demostration for the college to show its dedication to energy conservation in a unique way. The other day I saw a poster in the bathroom of Chilcott that stated if all students at Occidental were to turn off their computers at night the college could save from $40,000-$80,000 a year. A blackout for a night could save the college a substantial amount of money while making a great statement for Earth Day.
The other day I was in the library and I passed by two large boxes that had previously contained brand new printer paper. Each empty box held 5000 sheets of paper making the total 10000 sheets. I am investigating as to if the paper that the library uses is recyled or not with no hard evidence as of yet. Imagine how much paper the library uses per year. I think that this is a waste of paper and should be put to a stop. Hopefully my group Eric Korpie and Jane Platt will shed some light on the subject.
Recently, I was sitting at one of the neighborhood watering holes when, unwittingly, I was left with questions that I thought would be great to address in this blog, and on campus.
So what was the topic that finally led me to post on this site? Toilets of the world, of course.
Continue reading "If it's yellow, let it mellow?"
I was watching television recently and in the middle of the Super Bowl a commercial for GM cars came on. It did not start out like a normal car commercial. It began by talking about how people should help to protect the environment by using renewable resources like bio-diesel fuel. I thought that this was a great commercial at first because we have been talking about using bio-diesel in many of the classes that I am taking. Then the commercial started talking about how GM is now making cars that use bio-diesel fuel rather than regular gasoline and how if people really wanted to protect the environment then they should all go out and buy one of these new GM cars. It bothered me that the commercial failed to inform people that all cars that are functioning right now are capable of using bio-diesel. All that a car needs is a few adjustments in the engine and to be cleaned out so that the two types of fuel do not mix. It then led me to think about how it was GM that helped to push us towards massive car use in this country by taking over many of the public transportation systems in major cities and eventually shutting them down or making them so awful that it would be more convenient for people to buy cars and use those as the major mode of transportation.
Continue reading "Bio-Diesel and Occidental: Is it Possible?"
I think that it's great that Occidental has planned to use plumbing in the new dorm that conserves more water, and I was thinking that another way that we can try to use water more responsibly would be to conserve more in the amount that is used to water the vegetation around the school. All too often I have soaked my flip-flop wearing feet in water run-off from lawns that are being over watered. Although I am not sure how facilities decides how much to water the plants, I think that it may be a good idea to do some research into how much water different species plants need. I'm pretty sure not all of them need to drown in water to be hydrated sufficiently. I was also thinking that the timing of the sprinklers may have something else to do with this issue. It seems that watering the plants at midnight (as I have often seen happen) is not the ideal time for all plants, because during the day is when plants need the hydration the most, I would assume. Perhaps in the morning would be an appropriate time, at least that's what I heard Martha Stewart say once...OR, perhaps the best idea would be to rid Oxy of all these non-native plants and put in some that are more adapted to Southern California's arid climate! That way we would use a lot less water all together. Yay! In any case, perhaps the watering issue may be something that the Environmental Stewards can address next semester - I call dibs...
The Occidental Landscape is a very interesting one, filled with many different buildings, pathways, and carefully kept landscape. To measure the heat island effect, the Landscape team planned to perform an experiment that measured the heat of different surfaces around campus. For example, we planned to take the temperature of areas that had the three major types of landscape on campus in close proximity to each other like the area near the Tiger Cooler, as well as other major areas on campus for example the large cement area between Johnson and Fowler Academic Halls or near the Oak Trees in the Academic Quad. We hypothesized that the cement and other hardscape around campus would retain more heat for longer than the other surfaces. Grassy areas and hardscape alternatives would offer less heat retaining and more environmentally friendly surfaces that are also aesthetically pleasing.
Continue reading "Landscape Experiment"
As the winter rolls in (kind of), the dorms on campus are now turning on their heaters. In many dorms, including Pauley hall where I lived my freshman year, each room has a heater unit attached to the central unit in the building. Sure it's nice to have heaters in every room, but the only problem is the type of heaters used. In Erdman, large "radiator" units are set in the walls. These units are about 3 feet high and a complete eye sore. On top of all this, when the heaters turn on, the stench is awful, it takes about 30 minutes for the things to get warmed up and they are a huge fire hazard. I'm not entirely sure if every room has the option of switching the unit off, meaning it's on whenever the dorm heater is on. Obviously, not every person is cold when it dips below 60 but believe me, there are plenty of warm-weather students here at Oxy.
Continue reading "Heaters in dorms"
After doing some research for the landscaping team on the issues of water use and native plants on campus, I think that it would be valuable for our school to get students involved in the selection and planting of native plants on campus. If Occidental was to hold an event where students could get together and physically participate in the planting of native species, this would be a great way to raise consciousness around the issue as well as give students the sense of personal agency that is often missing when trying to effect change in a bureaucratic institution. This would provide students a fun and educational way to get involved in environmental issues on campus. This is a project that could easily be taken up by the environmental club, future stewards or incorporated into a CSP or ecology class and used as an educational tool about the flora of the region. If people saw students they knew participating in this project it would create a campus wide dialog surrounding the issues native plants and water use that otherwise never occur to many students. This would also provide an exciting opportunity for students to learn about the ecology of the southern California, helping foster a sense of place and stewardship towards the local region.
Continue reading "native plants on campus"
So, a couple of the posts have been about recyling here on campus, and I think that it is a very important issue that we can definitely do more to solve. Most of the places around campus either have paper OR bottle recycling, but usually not both (or nothing at all). I am interested to know who we can ask to put more recycling bins around campus? Also, does the school receive money for the recycling it collects? What is done with that money? I think this project would be something we can work on next semester and it is also an opportunity for our class to collaborate with the environmental club on campus. In addition to working on student areas of campus where more bins are needed, the administration building could also use more recycling areas. Recycling has come a long way on campus, and I think that we can do even more to improve the system we already have.
I believe that one of the largest hinderences to on campus recycling is the amount of trash we produce and the way in which it is disposed. I find that when I walk through Chilcott (the dorm that I live in) there are ten recycling bins and one trash can (four trash cans if you include the ones in the bathroom, which are always filled up with paper towels making them useless to the students). Does Occidental believe that over 45 students produce only one medium-sized bin's worth of trash? The question I'm seeing here is, "How can you recycle when every bin available is contaminated with trash because of the overwhelming amount a dorm produces?" You might say add a couple more trash bins and make it work.
Continue reading "Trash and Recycling Pile Up on Campus"
Before our class meeting on Thursday I saw one of the custodians in our dorm digging through a trash can and pulling out the recyclables. I think our college does a pretty good job with providing some games and contests that motivate the student body, i.e. the Halloween costume contest, among others. Yet, I believe that one of the major problems on campus is recycling in dorms. What I propose is that the college creates a recycling contest among all dorms on campus. I believe that this contest will help alleviate the problem of students neglecting to recycle in the dorms. Whether it is due to pure laziness or sure neglect, by giving the winning dorm a prize that all of the students can enjoy will motivate them to recycle.
Continue reading "Recycling in dorms"
I remember my freshman year core class and the first thing that comes to mind is the excessive reading that was assigned to us using E-Reserves, an option that allows professors to post the class texts online to be downloaded, usually in the PDF format. I also remember running out of my alotted "printing money" early on due to the amounts of pages that I had to print using this method.
Continue reading "Do E-Reserves lead to excessive paper waste?"
So tonight I attended the General Assembly in Johnson. Also in attendance were our friends Harold Hewitt, David Berkus, Barbara Avery, and Jim Tranquada all there to present on this epic Master Plan. David Berkus, Chairman or the Policy Oversight Committee on the Master Plan and of the Building and Grounds Committee, began the presentation.
Continue reading "THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY"
While browsing on the Internet for things to strike my muse for this entry, I came upon this article in the Stanford Daily from October 2004. In a quick summary, it is a report of the car-sharing experiment at Stanford during the school year. The experiment did not fare as well as expected, presumably because of the campus setting and range of student users. Those without cars received rides from friends, or rented a car from a normal place for longer trips instead of utilizing the program. On the other hand, the article also mentions the success of the car-sharing program at UC Berkeley.
Continue reading "Gettin' Involved"
Recently I had a presentation in which I made handouts for my class. They were excellent handouts. Pleasing to the eye and very informative. I worked on them for at least an hour and a half. After my presentation and passing out my handouts, I looked around the empty classroom and saw that almost all of my handouts were still sitting on desk tops, not to forget about the extras I had made for people who had not bothered showing up to class. Anyways, I collected all of the handouts plus a few other pieces of paper scattered throughout the class. I then looked around the building for a paper recycling bin, but to no avail. I could not find one in the entire building. I looked up and down, high and low. I went from building to building, garbage to garbage, and recycling bin to recycling bin, only to find recycling for cans and water bottles. Now, I am glad our campus is recycling water bottles and aluminum cans, but what about paper? Think of all the trees being wasted because our school does not supply paper recycling bins to classrooms, dining facilties, and most areas of residence halls.
The event was better than I anticipated. It was a good idea to use up the amount of space we did with the car and the posters of the master plan. Also, from the point of view of a transportation team member, we raised awareness of our goal of transportation reduction and the notion that there are practical ways for students to work toward this goal. In retrospect, however, I wish I had a clearer picture of what we are up against, including who the main targets are and the power they hold, so that the event could have been framed more as a campaign with a goal in mind. This would have given students a greater sense of involvement and increase our support. Any thoughts?
I was extremely outraged by the comment that was made after Woody found out about the LEED memo we worked on. To say right after he gets the memo that, "I would rather spend extra money on the greening of the outside of the dorm” is down right insulting for all the work that we put into in it. By saying what he did I feel that it was a waste of our time even working on it! I feel that everyone in the school needs strive for the best possible situation for the school and I believe that obtaining the LEED certification will really push the school to make better decisions about the future of the environment around Oxy for years to come. The LEED certification will give Oxy recognition far beyond anything the school has ever had. It will bring publicity about how Oxy is striving for environmental awareness. But the question I pose is ... do you think it is possible that the school wanted to work toward the LEED Certification, but not go through with it because they don’t want to have to live up to those standards over the next 20 years or so?
Recent Comments