Climate Healers - Solar Ovens

Climate Healers is a Non-Profit working in India to combat the climate crisis. Around 2 billion people burn 1.5 billion tons of wood annually for cooking alone. Those who live close to a forest tend to use the most wood, averaging 1.5 tons per person per year. The demand for wood as cooking fuel is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Climate Healer's approach to this problem rests on the observation that most of these 2 billion people live in regions where solar energy is plentiful. However, they cannot afford to purchase solar cookers for their daily use. Therefore, Climate Healer's provides solar cookers to the communities along with cell phones at no cost to members of the community. The cell phones are configured to measure the usage of the cookers as they get charged, and then rewards are issued in the form of cell phone talk time proportional to the usage.

By using cell phones to track the usage of the cookers, Climate Healers is able to achieve a quick feedback reward mechanism to keep the donors to the organization energized and motivated.

check out a Kill-A-Watt to learn about energy use

Members of the Occidental community can now check out a Kill-A-Watt meter from the library to measure how much energy is being used by appliances and other electronic equipment.



Prof. Snowden-Ifft is leading the Kill-A-Watt program with funding from the ASOC Renewable Energy & Sustainability Fund. Thanks also to the library for hosting the meters.

Instructions for use are available: here

Use the comments to this post to keep track of measurements you take. It will be interesting to see what electronic devices we use on campus are the biggest energy hogs.

Parking Fee

I remember being really surprised when I learned that there was no fee to park on Oxy’s campus. I had talked to other friends and some of them had to pay up to 400 dollars to park on their campus. I thought I was lucky. But now that I have become more environmentally aware, I don’t think the lack of a parking fee is lucky at all. In fact I think it is a detriment to the college. The environmental impact of parking lots are at least twofold on our campus. First parking indicates the use of cars which contribute to green house gas emissions. Second parking lots reduce the amount of green space available and negatively impact the environment through runoff. Not having a parking fee encourages students to bring their cars to campus and deters the use of alternate transportation methods.

Claremont McKenna College recently reported the top ranking sustainable liberal arts colleges. The colleges selected to be analyzed in the report were the top 50 liberal arts colleges in the nation (based on U.S. News and World Report 2009 rankings). All of the top ten ranking colleges have parking fees and most do not allow freshman students to have a vehicle on campus. For instance Amherst, Williams, and Mount Holyoke have a parking permit fee from 60 to 150 dollars a year. I think Oxy should instate a similar parking fee and follow in the footsteps of Mildbury College,

“Beginning in the 2009-2010 academic year Middlebury College will charge students $50 per semester ($100/year, $25 summer) to park cars on campus. Previously, the college allowed students to register cars without a fee. Middlebury will use funds from this new fee to support its carbon neutrality initiative by distributing revenue between carbon reduction efforts and public transportation, in addition to paying for maintenance of parking lots.”

http://www.middlebury.edu/sustainability/news-events/news/2009/node/117802


A parking fee at Oxy could go to a number of environmental interests; the bike sharing program, zip cars, bus passes, free rides to the airport during breaks, even general parking lot maintenance. This could mean a lot of money towards sustainable projects at Oxy. For instance if 400 students park their car on campus and the fee is 50 dollars per year, that would mean 20,000 dollars. Even if oxy doesn’t institute a parking fee, our website ( like many other colleges) should stress that a car is not needed and that ride sharing or other forms of transportation are preferred.

The Copenhagen Wheel

I found this innovation during the beginning of last semester while browsing the internet. This is one of the coolest and smartest things I have come across in a while. Although it was thought up by the brilliant minds at MIT, it is still mind blowing even compared to the other stuff they have innovated.
With bike fever taking over Oxy's campus, I figured this was a cool way to think about the future biking in general. It brings science, utility and design all into the same conversation, while also staying green, healthy and keeping bikes relevant. I clearly am no MIT scholar so I think it is best if the video speaks for itself, but I will try to explain it briefly. Essentially the Copenhagen wheel allows you to store the dissipated energy one wastes while braking the bike, and when you need a boost up a hill or you are just feeling tired, the wheel will release the energy and rotate the wheel faster, thus you go faster with less of your energy being expended. The wheel also comes with a social aspect. You can keep track of your "green miles" (how many miles you have ridden with the copenhagen wheel on) with iphone apps and facebook groups.
Just something cool and relevant for our class and oxy's movement towards green living. Enjoy.

http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/

Streets-Return them to the People

On Thursday, I was one of the many people who attended alumni, Jeanette Sadik-Khan’s lecture in Keck Theatre. I was already very excited when I entered the theatre, but left quite inspired. She is an excellent speaker, and hearing the progress that is being made in New York is completely stunning. The last time I visited New York was five years ago, and remember being so appalled by all of the traffic and pedestrians shoved to the side. I don’t remember seeing any bicycles around either. But after that talk, I am planning on returning this summer, checking out a bike and riding it all around the city, hopefully I’ll also be able to be there for the summer street program.

I am surprised that what is happening in New York—returning the streets to the people – was not mentioned in our transportation or building section in UEP 101. These are true “complete streets” and it’s encouraging knowing that they have been implemented in a city in the US. This is also a great example of how great leadership can really turn the tides. This has always seemed like a questionable claim, because frequently, as great as a leadership team may be, change does not always occur. This example definitely restored—at least for now-- my confidence in local government.

To continue on with this inspiring week, I attended the Street Summit a couple of days later. My dad attended last year’s bike summit and really enjoyed it, so I was happy to see that it had expanded to be a street summit, something that absolutely all community members could directly relate to. The keynote speakers were very good, and I was happy to see that Long Beach was putting in the effort to return to its beach-town roots.

One of the workshops that I attended was on how to connect low-income Spanish speakers with biking. I had never really thought about the fact that there are to classes of bikers –ones that ride out of necessity, and those that do it as an alternative. The approaches that Ciudad de Luz was taking to connect the two, was quite interesting. I found their whole approach really brilliant, connecting the LA Bicycle Coalition with the Day Labor Center near MacArthur Park. The manual that they released also looked fascinating and I hope to get one of them.

All in all, I am truly looking forward to attending more lectures and events like these, and most of all, be an active supporter and creator of all the positive changes taking place.

CHICKENS!

The Feast garden received a new addition today--baby chickens for their newly built coop! Feast club president, Giovanni Saarman told me in an interview that the new addition of chickens is the first step in what he hopes will be a slow but steady progression in impact and scope of the garden. Saarman provided examples of Oxy's peer schools, like Pitzer College, at which student-run gardens play a more integral role in campus life. Saarman expressed his hopes that FEAST would, in future months and years, take on a similar level of importance in the Oxy community.

One of the needs that many student leaders running FEAST have mentioned in interviews is greater administration support of the garden. Leaders have made clear that administrators support the garden in theory but, for a variety of reasons, the club has been unable to work closely with different offices in order to foster more connectivity between the garden and student services.

While the chickens will be egg-laying in 6 months, club leaders have expressed an interest in working with administrators to bring greater integration of the garden in student life. As it currently stands, the food grown in the garden is consumed and utilized (in the case of compost) by the students who grow it, but the garden has much greater potential than this. If health regulations do not allow for the food grown at the garden to be sold by campus dining outlets then, as is done at Pitzer, the garden can and should be used as part of a larger overall demonstrated commitment to sustainability. Pitzer uses their garden, in conjunction with several other green initiatives, to brand itself as a leader in undergraduate institutional sustainability. Perhaps, in conjunction with the other projects that UEP 247 is currently working on (solar panels, bike sharing, re-usable water bottles, zipcars, etc.) Oxy can take a similar step as its peer institution, and lead the way toward a greener future.

Captain Compost

Whilst shoveling large mound of compost and inadvertently stinking up my shoes, I was surprised to learn that a substantial amount of heat is generated within these heaping piles of decayed matter. I was informed that the source of this heat is actually because of bacteria living in the soil.

This fascinated me, so I decided to research it on my own and present it for your edification.

The heat, true enough, is caused by microbial organisms called extremophiles, meaning they are capable of growth and reproduction in extreme areas.

There are 3 phases by which extremophiles live and function in a compost, and it is the temperature of the compost that determines the phase. As follows...

• At 32–59 °F - psychrophiles, which are predominant, beginning the heating process as they multiply
• At 59–104 °F - mesophiles take over. Psychrophiles then die off or relocate to the outer regions of the compost. As the compost heats up, the mesophiles share the same fate as the psychrophiles. Those that either die in or remain close to the hotter parts of the compost then become some of the sustenance for the next microbials that get to work, which are...
• At 104–158 °F - thermophiles get to work at their peak on the composting matter and even consumer many other bacteria in the process.

Whether or not this is interesting to you doesn't matter too much to me. I thought this was pretty neat.