green light

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.

Corey and Chris did a wonderful job presenting the team’s recycling initiative to the Medaille faculty.  They presented a very concise overview of the data that led them to develop their project.  Faculty members were astounded at the amount of paper we use on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.  The numbers the student team discovered during their research had great impact.  The team calculated that we use 20,000 sheets per day which translates to 7,280,000 sheets per year.  WOW!!

I also attended the Environmental summit conference this weekend.  I agree with Chris on all the positives of the conference.  I was very impressed with the setup of the whole thing.  Of the three workshops offered, I attended the one on Energy Conservation in the Household.  This was a very informative and well organized workshop.  The presenters discussed ways to help save money and energy on an individual homeowners level.  They talked about compact fluorescent lightbulbs, insulation,and home building among many other important topics.  After a short break, they continued on to educate the attendees on alternative energy sources such at solar energy and geothermal energy.  I thought these presentations were great because most people don’t take the time to actually crunch the numbers on these new energy sources, so the presenters did it for us and really got the point across that alternative energy is an affordable option.  Overall I thought the Environmental Summit was a great experience and I’m very glad I went.

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8670279050

This past weekend I attended the fourth annual environmental summit, “My Environment, My Choice,” held at Daemen College.  I will honestly admit that I was fully impressed at the organization that they had.  Every detail was worked out all the way down to the food, which was not only delicious, but also served on actual dishes.  Everything was open with little (if any) waste in regards to serving.  They also offered a variety of workshops.  I, having a particular interest in gardening, attended the workshops on “Community Gardening”, and “Gardening at Home.”  The best thing about this summit was that it was open to the public, and FREE!  While I was there I took the opportunity to collect an arsenal of business cards, and spoke with some of the sponsors about our project here at Medaille.  By speaking to the UBGreen program, and the Daemen recycling club, Ilearned that the price we are currently charging is driving schools away.  We are going to address this problem at tommorow’s meeting.  We are trying to find ways to reduce the price by taking a different approach to our materials.  Overall this summit was exceptional!!  Congrats to Daemen College!!     

This past friday afternoon we spent a few hours calling the various contacts from the colleges and universities that we had invited. Unfortunately most of the calls were sent to voicemail because it was a friday afternoon and everyone was already gone for the weekend. Of the contacts that I had talked to, it seemed that many of them never even got the invitation in the first place, so I began to advocate by explaining who I am and just what the mission of project green light is. I also gave a brief overview of the symposium and its purpose. This seemed to spark some interest in a few of the people I talked to, and some even requested that I re-send the information to them. One common problem that I had noticed was the price of the event, not many schools were willing to pay to attend the symposium. Because we had so many phone calls to make, we had decided it best to wait until monday afternoon to complete the rest of the calls.

Since our Symposium is a student-generated, student-driven, and student-facilitated event, I wanted to take the time to talk a little about our amazing student team members.  The Green Light Project is a volunteer effort that these students eagerly joined.   They have committed countless hours over the summer and on weekends developing the symposium profile.  Concurrent with this, they have been generating and implementing an action plan that will not only reduce paper use on the Medaille Campus but will also serve as the model for the symposium.  While attending classes, holding jobs, participating in clubs, and living their personal lives, this group has found the time to contact campus personnel, research paper use, attend weekly meetings, and make follow up phone calls to invited college campuses.   

These students believe in the need to recycle, reduce, and reuse.  They know that recycling needs to be more than a belief, that it needs to become part of the culture in order to be sustainable.  Their goal in facilitating the symposium is to make their peers at area campuses aware that the effort needs to begin with the students.  Student leadership is the key to creating and sustaining a culture of recycling.  Corey, Chris, Margaret, Ashley, Lauren, Brenna, Liz, Sarah, and Rachel have become the change agents of the Medaille Campus.  I am very excited that they will be sharing their successes with everyone at our Leadership Symposium.

Today we had a meeting and are still trying to plan the symposium.  We were happy to have David Granville present to help us make this project a success.  David is from Buffalo State’s International Center for Studies in Creativity.  We also learned that Senator Antoine Thompson, and John Halenar College Council State Coordinator NYSAR3 are planning to attend the symposium.  Also we have a facebook group that contains minutes from our meetings posted to keep everybody updated.  Feel free to check out all these sites.