I worked on drafting survey questions last week to evaluate the Eco Clamshell Pilot Program and have come across some issues with the program that have emerged the longer the program has been operating. One of the main issues I have identified is the problem with rinsing the container before returning it to the Market Place. Dorms have kitchen sinks, but they don't have garbage disposals to remove the left over food, resulting in a build up of old food clogging the drains. Even worse, some students are rinsing their containers in the bathroom sinks, whose drains aren't even large enough to allow the food to go down the drain. This is putting a strain on the cleaning staff who is forced to pick old food out of the drains on a weekly basis.

There is one clear solution to this problem: having students take their container to the cashier to get a token, and then dropping their container on the conveyor belt to be rinsed and washed by dining hall staff. There is one main problem with this solution. The program is still limited to a certain number of people, and under this system we cannot be sure that unenrolled students will not use other members' "returned" containers to get a token for themselves. As soon as the program is open to the whole campus, this new system will be an easy fix to eliminate the need to rinse containers before returning them.

I have started reading through the survey responses and many people have identified the issue of washing the container as the most major deterrent and inconvenience with the program. Many people have come up with possible solutions to help solve these issues. I expect to analyse the surveys in 2 weeks and in the mean time, I am drafting questions for interviewing the dining staff.

Emma Sorrell

Water Bottle Refill Stations

Trying to create more vertical refilling stations around campus has been an interesting and eye opening experience to the many logistical elements that go into a project like this. Our group has been trying to get the funding to not only purchase the units to convert the water fountains but the labor to do so. We have made good progress and are hoping that the units will be installed by December. Since all of the freshmen have been given water bottles we don’t have to worry as much about getting water bottles into the hands of the students. What we need to do is just getting the message out to students that there are going to be these vertical water bottle refill stations and that they should try and use them to lower the environmental impact Occidental has on the world, especially plastic water bottle consumption

On another interesting note, in the public restrooms in Range View the lights turn on by motion sensors. I thought this was really good considering I haven’t seen this implemented in any other public restrooms around campus. Having lights that turn on by motion sensors is a great way to conserve electricity.

I am also wondering why Occidental does not have more solar panels on buildings. I think Occidental will need to highly invest in solar energy even past the solar array. What do you think?

-Alex Forster

Recycling Revolution at Oxy

As Kosa posted below in "Scary Recycling Stuff," Recycling on our campus is indeed in need of serious help, and our groups original aim was to promote student recycling and increase the volume of recycling on campus.

Early in the semester, I met with Bruce Steele and Michael Stephens from facilities to learn about how recycling works here at Oxy. Mr. Steele and Mr. Stephens were very helpful and informative, but what I learned about recycling on campus was actually rather disturbing. Because we have two separate recycling companies for paper and for mixed recyclables, they MUST be separated or much of the recyclables end up in the landfill. After our grip audited the recycling situation on campus, surveying the recycling bins, we've realized that the vague signage makes recycling very unclear to students. Further, after contacting our main recycling company, SoCal Recycling, we learned that they ONLY accept CRV recyclables, which is essentially limited to beverage containers (meaning no takeout containers from the marketplace are ever recycled by Oxy!), and further, they accept nothing with any contamination. Due to the lack of communication between Oxy recyclers and SoCal recycling, the recycling company is slowly turning into our trash pickup company, as most of what they receive from us they are unable to recycle.

Part of our solution that we have enacted is to make a system of signs and labels for our recycling bins, showing students what belongs in the bins and what they have to put elsewhere (aka the garbage). While this will undoubtedly help the volume of recyclables that SoCal recycling receives, it is still a system that sends a large amount of recyclable goods to the landfills (plastic food containers, plastic packaging, bags, etc.) Thus, we are now moving towards the adoption of a new recycling system/company at Occidental, one that accepts all recyclable goods, similar to the city of LA's system.

This task is much bigger than we initially thought with our simple recycling education campaign. However, Occidental is so far behind the times with recycling, that this is no longer an issue that can simply be shrugged off. That being said, this issue is much larger than 5 UEP 246 students can handle on their own. While we are currently awaiting a response from Bruce Steele and Michael Stephens about adopting a new recycling company, we need as much support as possible. Please, continue to recycle any and every glass, aluminum, and plastic bottles/cans, recycle paper only in the paper recycling bins, and spread the word to everyone about the recycling situation that's occurring on our campus!

Mural In the Bike Station

Getting a mural started on campus is way harder than I had ever expected. The most difficult thing about the process is getting in contact with important people and making sure your partners are committed. Recently, my muralist who designed the mural bailed on me and now I have to design the mural all by myself or find a new artist. This set me back so much! I am very nervous that I will barely finish this mural by the end of the semester. All I want to do is make a nice mural for the bike station to promote bike sharing on campus! I believe that if I can make this mural happen it will help the bike community on campus so much!

Biking on campus may not be the easiest form of transportation due to our campus' hillside landscape, but having bike is great for getting around lower campus and all of Eagle Rock. Once bike sharing increases on campus, people will realize how fun and useful it can be! It would be a lot fun to plan a biking trip to the grocery store or even the park. I feel like we need to educate the students about bike sharing and even educated the students about cool locations where they can bike to from campus. Many freshmen do not know anything about the area surrounding oxy, but if we show them it will spark an interest. Maybe this will be another project for the bike sharing club next semester.

Take it easy and make oxy greener.

Chris

Gardens and Green Grades

I'll admit that until this semester I had never spent time in the F.E.A.S.T. garden. hidden near UEPI, it is easy to forget that its even there. Yet for prospective students a college's green rating is becoming more important. So why not make more effort to showcase Oxy's garden and expand it to the proposed site near Rangeview? A larger garden site would contribute to Oxy's green reputation and provide more room for students to become involved in the garden. In addition, last year, I hosted a prospective student who was impressed by the orange trees outside of Haines and disappointed to learn that they do not produce edible fruit. A new proposal to plant fruit trees on campus would not only result in edible fruit but would make oxy more attractive to visiting students. Much of the time, green initiatives are seen as tradeoffs between sustainability and cost or other concerns. Therefore, ways in which Oxy can become more sustainable and more attractive to prospective students should be taken advantage of. While Oxy’s green report card score from the Sustainable Endowments Institute has been improving, there is still much that can be done to make the campus more sustainable.
As for the proposed garden site, this effort is stuck waiting for approval from the administration and unfortunately there are those who seem opposed to the idea. The process of finding information about the potential fruit trees is also slow. But, to some extent I expected these kinds of difficulties. What I didn’t really foresee, despite my own limited experience with the garden, was the lack of student awareness of the current garden. While many students express interest in the garden and other sustainable projects on campus many have never spent time there or even may not know where it is. It seem that people feel that it is hidden away and they don’t know much or anything about the garden. While the proposed additional location would make the garden more visible, an increase in student involvement with the current garden might also be necessary to demonstrate why there should be an additional location. Because progress with new garden site has slowed, this unexpected issue of raising awareness of both the current garden and the proposal to expand it has become the biggest challenge.

Approval Schmoval!

Working on my class project of bringing ceramic mugs and plates to the Green Bean has given me a small (but significant) taste of what it is like to try to initiate policy change in business in the real world. Raquel and I have found the mugs and plates we want to order, got approval from someone in campus dining, and were all ready to order our new products where we received news that now the health inspector has to approve our sinks in order to wash plates and cups. Just as we thought we were ready to go, we’re now waiting. Moreover, every person we have been talking to about this issue of approval directs us to someone else to talk to, who in turn directs us elsewhere, getting nowhere in the process. What is shocking is that we are working with people at a very small institution relative to large companies where green initiatives are trying to get approved, and therefore I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be in those instances. I am finding myself frustrated because we are excited, we want to do this work, and are willing to put in whatever time and effort is necessary, but how this project progresses from now on is essentially out of our control. This, naturally, is disappointing. As a result, I have greater sympathy for people trying to make policy change in large corporations, and greater appreciation for the struggles they have overcome once change is made.

Scary Recycling Stuff

This post finds me in the midst of working on a project with a few others in the UEP Environmental Problem Solving class to revamp Occidentals recycling program. The original aim of our project, was to educate our campus community on ways they can improve their recycling habits, and also to work with the administration to get more recycling receptacles in better locations. Our first task however was to do a personal survey of Occidentals current recycling system. To say the least what we found was frightening. Until a few weeks ago, I was walking around unaware of the fact that most of the time when I think I am recycling on this campus I am actually further contributing to the landfills. Firstly, there are two separate companies that service Occidentals recycling needs. One company deals with paper, and another deals with our plastic, aluminum, and glass. When someone on Oxy's campus for example throws paper in the bottle recycling, that paper goes in the trash. I think this is a huge problem because students at Occidental often confuse recycling on Oxy's campus with the recycling methods they may have at their home (where often times all recycling goods can go in to one bin). Secondly the company that collects our glass and plastic recyclables, can only handle crv's (basically only cans and bottles), and cannot handle our marketplace plastic containers, or for that matter containers with food contamination at all. I know personally that I was guilty of both of the offenses I mentioned previously.

Until we further get the word out make sure you alert your friends that they need to stop mixing recycling items! Hopefully by the end of the semester we will have sufficiently informed our campus on the current system and also reformed it in some way.


-Kosa Goucher-Lambert