Sustainability News and Events

Anthony Barrata and Jessica Fenn led an incredibly active DePauw Environmental club this semester, and fulfilled one of the semesters largest goals which was to engage morewith the Greencastle community.

Energy Wars- 10 people were actively involved from DEC; last
year it was 4 dorms and this year it was 10 and 4 Greek houses. Final
results are still being calculated and some dorms are doing a lot
better than last year and a lot more dorms are doing worse. Using
spring semester as a control, dorms will be monitored to see if
people learned from the fall semester. Next year, hopefully all Greek
houses will participate in Energy Wars.

Community and Education/Talk Green At The Blue Door-
Sustainable eating, water issues, and worm composting. We have
involved the Greencastle community as well as DePauw University
students. 3 talks.

Central Elementary involvement- presented on composting before
their environmental club. They also met with teachers
and students at Greencastle High School

H20 Conference was a week long activity put on by students at DePauw concerned about local and global water issues. It featured the documentaries
F.L.O.W., Thirst, and ending with water taste testing. Also, DePauw
University banned bottled water in an effort to promote tap water
usage. D.E.C. ran the water taste testing table, and Hannah Ramage
worked  on presenting the problems of bottled water.

IN-ergize 2009 was a conference attended by members of DEC.

Start Green was funded by DEC and brochures were purchased as
well as a Campus Landfill demonstration.

Katia Satterfield helped clean up Walnut River with Greencastle
High School on October 25th.

The President’s Climate Commitment was a result of last
semester’s work, headed by the Sustainability Interns.

AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability and
Higher Education) was a conference in Raleigh that Sustainability
Interns Taylor Cantril, Missy Orr, and Tiffany Briery attended with Jen Everett, Rob Harper, Carol Steele, and DEC members Maggie Baber and Jessica Fenn.

Team Green was an informational tabling activity for
sustainability and environmental activities, headed by Missy! Orr.

Trashy Art Show was sponsored by DEC for girl scouts to
demonstrate reusing materials for artistic pieces.

DEC participated in the Old Gold Parade by using bicycles and
skateboards demonstrating eco-friendly transportation (see picture above)

Self education of the group by attending public speakers was
purposeful and engaging on environmental issues.

Group members of DEC also led discussions at Peace Camp in an
effort to voice environmental issues.

The Community group initiated action that eventually led to the Worm Composting Workshop led by Professor Ellen Muehlberger.

On Tuesday, December 9th, Putnam County and Greencastle residents gathered to learn how to build and maintain a worm composter.  The DePauw Environmental Club helped sponsor a workshop about worm composting from 7:00-8:30pm at the Putnam County Library.

Ellen Muehlberger enthusiastically talked about the benefits of worm composting, how to maintain a healthy worm bin, and how to harvest the worm castings.  She also demonstrate how to assemble your own worm bin.

The workshop was free and open to the public. For those who wished to pre-order worms to take home, the cost was $20. If you have anymore questions about worm composting, contact Ellen Muehlberger at ellen.muehlberger@gmail.com.

Worm composting is a way to turn kitchen scraps and newspaper into a rich, nutrient-packed, fertilizer for use in vegetable and flower gardens.  Worm castings are easy to harvest and smell lightly of fresh earth. Because the worms live in a small bin with loose bedding, they are contained; worm composting is a great way to compost if you do not have a lot of land, or live in an apartment. 

For more information:

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/HENV/HENV-104-W.pdf

DePauw University’s Sustainability Initiative provides a roadmap including reports on how the university wishes to accomplish goals relating to enhanced sustainability in all of its manifestations following President Casey’s signing of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). The report addresses forthcoming institutional action, including the formation of sustainability work groups leading to accomplishment of ACUPCC goals. Additionally, liberal arts values related to sustainable behavior and studies promoting community engagement in the years to come are detailed.

President Casey’s letter regarding the Initiative:

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

As you know, in September I signed the Presidents Climate Commitment (PCC), pledging both responsibility for the way DePauw engages in its core activities and interacts with the world.  By signing the commitment we also entered into commitment to do all that we can to work with our community in a shared effort to minimize our contribution to global warming. As a member institution of the PCC, we must exercise leadership in our community, and throughout society, by modeling ways to minimize global warming emissions.  We must also graduate students who are not only aware of our responsibilities to the environment but who can serve as leaders as we work to solve this century’s economic, social and ecological challenges.

Today, DePauw has met the first benchmark required of those institutions that signed the Presidents Climate Commitment: we have developed our “Sustainability Initiative.”  This first statement defines the institutional structure that will ensure our sustainability efforts and sets forth, publicly, potential first sustainability activities.  The Sustainability Initiative also establishes working groups in the following areas:

Intellectual Life
Buildings and Grounds
Waste Minimization
Transportation and Air Travel
Community Relations
Communications and Reporting
Energy and Climate
Dining Services
Purchasing
Investments Diversity and Human Resources

Work group topics will range from environmental studies to energy conservation, from local food initiatives to reduced fossil fuel consumption, and from carbon footprint analysis to diversion of waste from landfills.

The complete Sustainability Initiative can be accessed here.  It provides more information about
the PCC and its requirements and about DePauw’s philosophical approach to this endeavor.

As a component of this first PCC requirement, DePauw must choose two tangible actions (from a list developed by the PCC organization) that we will put into effect immediately while working on other aspects of the program.  We have chosen to adopt the following two actions:

• Implement an energy-efficient appliance purchasing policy requiring purchase of ENERGY STAR certified products in all areas for which such ratings exist.
• Establish a policy that all new campus construction will be built to at least the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Silver standard or equivalent.  (In addition to the PCC requirement, we will also be renovating existing buildings at the LEED Silver level, where feasible.)

I invite your comments and suggestions on the Sustainability Initiative.  At the end of the Sustainability Initiative webpage you will be able to submit your comments and indicate the Working Group(s) with which you would like to participate.

Faculty members, staff members, students, and members of the Greencastle community are invited and encouraged to participate.  I urge you to find time in what I know are already very busy lives to actively contribute.

Most sincerely,

Brian W. Casey
President

 ”On a snowy weekend in Indianapolis, more than a hundred people from across Indiana gathered in a small room at the Holliday Nature Park Center. Members and friends of the Hoosier Environmental Council (HEC) had come together for the organization’s annual meeting and celebration of its 2008 award recipients. Executive Director Jesse Kharbanda’s final award was saved for their “Environmental Organization of the Year,” presented to a group he said “confounded the expectation of what can be accomplished on a college campus,” the DePauw Environmental Policy Project (DEPP)…”

Read the Full Story Here:

http://www.depauw.edu/news/?id=22625

After having their interests sparked by the IN-ergize conference, students at Purdue University which participate in the “Boiler Green Initiative” invited Keelin Kelly, a representative of the DePauw Environmental Policy Project to come give a presentation about how “DEPP” works and how they might implement a similar program and become active at the state legislature this January.

            Keelin was accompanied by Tiffany Briery and Sarah Batto. The presentation focused on how to start researching a policy issue that you’re interested in and how to start contacting your legislators. The group seemed excited to get involved and we expect to be collaborating with them soon!

See all the great sustainability action Purdue is taking at:
http://www.boilergreen.com/Projects/projects.html

Five students, accompanied by Professor Jennifer Everett, Sustainability Administrator Carol Steele, and Facilities Manager Rob Harper attended the AASHE conference for a Sustainable Future on Nov 8th through the 11^th. The group attended sessions ranging in topics from Sustainability curriculums on campuses, to student programming, sustainable development, and how to implement the ACUPCC. Nearly every discipline was represented as professors are finding innovative ways to connect sustainability with their work in the classroom.

 Sessions included:

Energy Markets 101: Everything a Sustainability Officer needs to Know

Art, Humanities and Attitudes

Focusing Again: The National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions

Building University Partnerships

Carbon and Climate Issues

Zero Waste Programs on Campus: How low can we go?

The group came away with the feeling that DePauw is certainly not lagging in the innovation and creativity of the programs we are implementing on campus. Though other school have deeper roots in the sustainability movement, our campus has, in a very short time, developed programs that rival others in their breadth and student, staff, and faculty investment.

The conference also had four amazing keynotes speakers Lester Brown, Van Jones, Peter Senge, and Vandana Shiva.

Lester Brown’s speech was perfect for the opening- he gave a recap of where we are right now with the climate science, reminded us of how quickly things need to turn around and how higher education must be a leader in this movement. His talk was entitled “Mobilizing to Save Civilization: The Challenge to Higher Education” and it focused on the fact that it is indeed civilization that is at stake here and we shouldn’t move forward with any less urgency then that fact calls for.  

 Van Jones was the voice of hope at the conference. He spoke about how we are situated within a perfect political moment. We can either “fall or fly” depending on what we do next. He believes we can succeed in rescuing our economy with green jobs. His talk was entitled “Strengthening the Fabric of our community by Championing Green Economic Development”.

(I got his autograph!)

 Peter Senge, in his talk “Working together for a Future that has a Future” explained how important the role of children is in society, especially now, when we cannot think of the future as an abstract concept, we must look at our children and realize that they are the ones that are going to suffer most from the effects of climate change. He says that a society that stops listening to their children is in trouble, and that one mark of a golden age in when the children are viewed as the most important members of society. He also pointed out that most of us live with a bad philosophy that goes something like this: “If you don’t like it, throw it out” and this applies to more than just “stuff”. It applies to friends and spouses too.

Finally, Vandana Shiva focused on how Universities can lead in creating sustainable and healthy food systems. She points out that a lot of the food we eat is barely food at all and it is making us sick. Aside from hurting the planet, it is hurting us. It is full of chemicals and completely distanced from the natural process. We have a truly backwards philosophy in thinking that we can feed the entire world with corn grown in the Midwest.