green light

Hi there,

Now that we have done such a great job with our symposium, we need to begin focusing on our own action plan: Paper reduction. To do this we have been splitting up tasks to each of our group members and week after week we have been meeting to discuss our individual progress. Chris and I have been working on getting double sided printers on campus, and to do this we need to discuss our ideas with different faculty members of the Medaille College community. We had a meeting yesterday with Nate, during which we discussed our desires for double-sided printers on campus. He was very interested with the idea, although directed us to the monatery aspects of this issue. The printers arent cheap to purchase and maintain, so we need to determine how and why Medaille needs these printers, especially in a more business-oriented approach. Currently, Chris and I are going to be planning a meeting with the company that supplies our computer printers and copying machines to discuss the cost issues. From there hopefully we can put together a successful cost-benefit analysis of the situation to pursuade the Medaille Cabinet to approve our request

Yesterday Corey and I met with the director of Campus Operations to discuss ways that we can reduce paper use by at least 25% at Medaille College.  Before we went in we had already discussed our plan and wanted to get reassurance of its success.  We want to make double sided printing more common on the campus; this would ultimately reduce the amount of paper use by 50% in an ideal situation!!!  During our meeting we discussed different options as to how we can get the word out on campus that it is possible to print documents double sided.  Some of these suggestions were a table in the cafeteria with an informational display, instructions near the printing stations on how to do it, use of MedailleONE (program for checking schedules), sending out a mass email to everybody, presenting to the cabinet (we already presented to the faculty), and even sending out messages in recruitment packages for perspective students.  We also discussed monetary issues of our goal, and how we can make it a cost saving investment for the institution.  We also received some more contacts that should be able to help us obtain more information.  Overall it was a very productive meeting!!

Medaille College’s Green Light Team would like to thank everyone that participated in the First Annual Leadership and Recycling Symposium.

Canisius College

Elyse Krezmien

Caitlin Antonio

Benjamin Fabian

Christian Dingethal

Caleigh Weatherup

Hilbert College

Jessica Tinker

Denisa Krezic

Chris Balon

Krysten Sauer

Matt Putnam

Trocaire College

Gretchen Schroeder

Medaille College

Emily Newcomb-Smith

Andrew Yestrebi

Tanya Turchiarelli

Lauren Neubauer*

Ashley Kosicky*

Liz Probst*

Chris Devlin*

Brenna Barbour*

Sarah Sears*

Rachel Karasiewicz*

Corey Biesinger*

Brenda Fredette*

Stephanie Westerman*

*Green Light Team member

Buffalo State College

Dave Granville

 Shelaine Rigby

Erie County Recycling

Andrew Goldstein

NYSAR3

John Halenar

Use this post to report out how your campus project is progressing.

John Halenar , State Coordinator of the newly formed College Council of NYS Association for Reduction, Reuse, and Recycling, gave a very informative presentation at our Leadership Symposium.  The College Council is the newest of NYSAR3’s special programs.  The Council joins NYSAR3’s current programs, the Organics Council for composters, the Buy Recycled Alliance of NY, and the Go Green Initiative.  For more information on the program or to become a member of the College Council please visit www.nysar3.org .

We are all excited that the symposium is this weekend.  We are working hard this week to finish up all the details.  Can’t wait to see everyone there!

So awhile ago I wrote a snippet to show the progress i’ve done thus far (on 09/17/08…

“For Project Greenlight I am more in the process of finding out information; I haven’t got actual numbers or estimates yet. However I have e-mailed a few people in publications to find out about how much is wasted in brochures, pamphlets, handouts, etc. I had to send a second e-mail to them (Tom Burns, Jon Gill, Gwyn Beyer, and Richard Davis). I finally got a response from Tom Burns asking what amount of waste, am I looking for specifically. I replied back explaining our waste motto of get it down 25% and in paper form. I also talked with the staff in the Student Involvement Center (Lakeisha Flood, and Kerry Spicer) about the printer paper usage. Kerry told me she would monitor the paper waste for a week then get back to me. Not only that, while I was getting lunch one day I was using my Medaille mug to get the $0.20 discount. The cashier told me “you’re one of the first people I have seen to actually use the mug.” So that’s alarming to find that the progress we have made getting those mugs established hasn’t got too much awareness after all. I also sent out about fifteen letters to Hilbert College and five to ITT to notify faculty and staff over those of our upcoming symposium. In order to ensure people receive these letters next Friday a few of us will be making phone calls from the Student Involvement Center to our mail recipients; to remind them once again of our symposium. “

I just got back from the SCC (a leadership conference held by area small school) held here at Medaille. I actually talked to two people, one I had called Jim sturm Res. Director at Hilbert and the dean of students at Daeman. Jim Sturm had told me he’s still in the progress of organzing a team, but he seemed hopeful in be another group to join us for our event. The Dean at Daeman told me she had not a clue what I was talking about so she gave me her card and i gave her this website. So we’re are getting there slowing. Baby steps ^_^. And it is in just a few short weeks. Hope to see you there!

Friday Corey and I, (Ashley for support), presented a powerpoint to the Medaille College faculty during their monthly meeting.  As nervous as we were, I believe that we had great success at getting our point across to them.  It focused on telling them what project green light is all about, and ways that they can help us achieve our goal of decreasing the amount of paper use by at least 25%.  They seemed extremely attentive, and responded with many questions and suggestions.  Overall I am confident that they will try to help us in any way that they can.