March Meeting Notes

March 12, 2002

Outline:

1) ECO Tours

2) Island Pond

3) Intern Report

4) Windows Conversion

5) Light switch Stickers

1) ECO Tours:

Bill Hochstin outlined his plan to bring groups of middle school students to Dartmouth to take tours of college facilities. Tour stops could include the power plant, a dining hall (with slurpies given out), a dorm, trucks collecting trash and recycling, Northeast Waste, and the compost facility. Bill has been talking with Oliver Bernstein, the chair of ECO, about having students run these tours. The first one is planned for April.

2) Island Pond:

Bill has been talking with this furniture plant about a potential connection with Dartmouth. Dartmouth could help educate them about sustainable forestry practices, and how to make quality furniture from lower quality timber cuts. We may also be able to work with them to get furniture made from trees from the college Grant. It may also be possible for them to set aside part of their plant as storage space for dorm furniture while we renovate dorms over the summer. They could refurbish the furniture while our renovations are going on.

3) Intern Report

Department ECO Rep Lunch: This was held February 15, and went well. 16 reps attended and discussed multiple ways in which they could help their departments become greener, and ways ECO and the RWG can help them. Notes from that lunch will be sent out soon.
Webpage: The environmental homepage and the RWG page are still being worked on.
Greening of the Ivies Conference (Feb 15-17): This event was a huge success. Over 50 students from other Ivies attended, much fun was had, and 3 initiatives were agreed to be acted upon by all schools:
- Arctic Refuge day of action: each school held a day of action to protect the refuge, February 28th.
- Tree Free paper campaign: to use100% post-consumer recycled paper on all campuses
- Environmental Reporting: to push for regular, standardized reporting of environmental indicators at all schools - an initiative that Larry Litten is working towards with Institutional Research directors.

4) Windows Conversion:

Rita Murdoch described how the move to a new Windows system for administrators presents some opportunities for conservation: a startup screen asking users to shut computers down when they leave (as is currently installed on student computers); a script that will automatically turn computers off after they back-up at night; and an energy saving message included in staff training for the new system.

5) Light switch Stickers:

They'll be here in a week! However, the energy saving campaign needs to be designed before they go up, including articles in newspapers, decisions on where to place the stickers, and other activities to encourage conservation.