When you log on to www.uos.harvard.edu/sustainability, you will find comprehensive information on all of the sustainable programs and services UOS offers. These include alternative transportation, recycling, improving energy and building efficiency, green cleaning, and organic landscaping.
Become a better change agent for sustainability
Enrollment is now open for ENVR E-117: Sustainability: the Challenge of Changing our Institutions. This course is open to all through the Harvard Extension School, and can be taken either in Cambridge or anywhere in the world through the online Distance Learning Program. Class begins January 28, 2009. For details, see the course website here.
Join the HARVIE chat with Rob Gogan on 1-20-09!
Chat about recycling, composting, reuse and waste reduction. It's more important now than ever! Save your department money by setting up a SwapFest in your building or department. Help green Metro Boston by switching to compostable serviceware. Find out what to do with those old monitors, lamps and batteries. Log onto HARVIE
Crash in recyclables market values
Read about the crash in recyclables market values in the 12-8-08 New York Times. Rob Gogan of Harvard Recycling is quoted. "Harvard, for instance, sends mixed recyclables - including soda bottles and student newspapers - to a nearby recycling center that used to pay $10 a ton. In November, Harvard received two letters from the recycler, the first saying it would begin charging $10 a ton and the second saying the price had risen to $20. "I haven't checked my mail today, but I hope there isn't another one in there," said Rob Gogan, the recycling and waste manager for the university's facilities division. He said he did not mind paying as long as the price was less than $87 a ton, the cost for trash disposal." Read the full article here.
Harvard was also featured in an NBC Nightly News story on the decline in recyclables markets. The video is no longer available on line, but here is the text.
CAMPUS NATURE WATCH
Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Adam Blanchette, Nora Dahl, Sonia Ketchian!
Photo courtesy of the Harvard Office for Sustainability
Recycling is up, trash is down again! Trash has fallen to the LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 1989. We recycled 55.29% of our refuse in November, an all-time high. Thanks for your thrifty ways! Even with reduced recyclable commodity values, recycling ($30 per ton) still costs less than trash disposal ($87 per ton).
Office supply swaps saved money and cut trash in two locations! The GRADUATE SCHOOL of EDUCATION ran a "FreeCycle" event at Conroy Commons at which over 80 people gave what they had to share and took what they needed. With students still in town, all those Post-it Notes, notebooks, paper trays and binder clips got into the right hands. Ed Schoolers also took advantage of the opportunity to clean out their technology closets and we retrieved 4 hampers of CRT computer monitors and IBM Selectric typewriters! Thanks to Kimberly McMahon, Jason Carlson and Dara Olmsted for setting this up! See photos here.
FAS OFFICE SUPPLY SWAP also saved money and resources at Lowell Hall. Despite a wintry storm, FAS staffers "shopped" for printer cartridges, 3-ring binders, picture frames and 100 other products. One Department Administrator just settling in to a new lab came back three times and cleaned out the supply of paper trays! Thanks to Jane Collins, Bridget Duffy, Sarah Gordon, Angela Healy, Denise Medeiros, Dara Olmsted, Jay Phillips, Claire Reardon, Mary Trainor, Stephanie Zabel and others for making this happen! See photos here.
Please let us know if you want to set up a Supply Swap at your building, department or school. They're fun and we've still got some hampers of office product donations to pass along! We will remove everything after the event and see that it gets reused by the needy
HELP CAMBRIDGE RESIDENTS SAVE MONEY, STAY WARM AND FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE! The Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), in partnership with Green Decade/Cambridge, is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a Martin Luther King Day Project Initiative grant from the Massachusetts Service Alliance. The grant will fund a major event: weatherization barnraisings at the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House and the Cambridgeport School on Sunday, January 18 from 12:30-5:00pm.
The Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House is located at 71 Cherry Street in Area IV, Cambridge's poorest neighborhood and one of its most diverse. The Margaret Fuller House has been recognized for over a century as a catalyst for community activities and support. The facility was built in 1807 and is a designated National Historic Landmark.
The Cambridgeport School is located at 89 Elm Street in Cambridge. Founded as an alternative public school in 1990 with a single kindergarten class, it has grown to house 17 classrooms from kindergarten through grade 8. The school community is committed to building a strong sense of belonging for an increasingly diverse group of families, children and staff.
Weatherization barnraisings offer volunteers a great opportunity to help reduce our community's carbon footprint, to learn weatherization skills you can use on your own home, and to meet neighbors and make new friends. To sign up to help weatherize the Margaret Fuller House and Cambridgeport School, RSVP to Steve Morr-Wineman at swineman@gis.net or call Steve at 617-876-4753.
If you are handy and could serve as a team leader, contact Audrey Schulman at Audrey@AudreySchulman.com.
In the spirit of Dr. King, join us for a day of giving to the community, practicing peace, fighting climate change, and celebrating hope for the inauguration of a new President.
UCalifornia at San Diego estimates costs of running the following gluttonous appliances in your office for one year:
| Desktop computer w/CRT monitor | $135 |
| Lights on 7/24 | $150 |
| Refrigerator | $30 |
| Space Heater | $35 |
| Aquarium | $65 |
| Microwave | $50 |
| Total | $465 |
In contrast, here is the estimated cost of running more frugal office appliances for one year:
| Laptop Computer w/flatscreen monitor | $70 |
| Motion sensor lighting | $75 |
| Total | $145 |
- The Ed School and the Kennedy School both went seasonally green by offering COMPOSTING AT THEIR HOLIDAY PARTIES! The HKS Communication Department made a video viewable here.
- Read the 6th and final issue of "Vita Viridis," gorgeous eco-zine produced by Stephanie Zabel and friends at the Harvard University Herbaria. This issue focusses on greening the holiday season and countering consumerism with more of what matters, but its message of thrift and simplicity is never out of date. Read it here.
- Stop delivery of unwanted local telephone directories at Yellow Pages Goes Green
- Too many copies of the "Harvard Gazette" delivered to your building? Too few? Call Robyn of the Harvard News Office at 617-495-4743.
- Read how Andrea Tringo and her husband have managed to SPEND ONE YEAR WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING NEW as members of "The Compact," whose members share, trade, and buy used. Full article here.
- Members of "The Compact" have committed "To go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of disposable consumer culture and to support local businesses, farms, etc. -- a step that, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact; to reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er); and to simplify our lives (as in Calm-pact)." Read about "The Compact," a Yahoo Group, here.
For information concerning Recycling and Solid Waste Removal, contact Rob Gogan, Supervisor of Recycling and Solid Waste Removal at 617-495-3042, or email rob_gogan at harvard dot edu
