Reducing Waste

It was a head-to-head competition until the bitter end, but ultimately, Cabot/Pfoho Kitchen outperformed Quincy to become the 2008-2009 Green Skillet Champs! With a 24.3% reduction in natural gas use, a 5.3% reduction in electricity use and nearly 75% Sustainability Pledge participation, the winning kitchen was a tough competitor.

I don't know; ask Carl Ehrlich to find out:

The hard truth is this: fine arts take a special toll on the environment. We use paper, inks, clays, metals, solvents, and rags – and in large quantities. The product of art, while gorgeous, intimate and unique, conceals a process of making and remaking. What ends up on our walls and in our imaginations shrouds a practice of producing waste.

In keeping with October's Green Tip on water conservation, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) is offering a discounted reusable water bottle. HUDS asks: "Did you know that it takes roughly 2/3rds as much water to make a bottle as it does to fill it?"

Vermiculture has come to Harvard. The FAS Green Program helped set up two worm composting bins at FAS this year – one in our offices and one at a daycare.

Why?

Worm composting is fun, easy, and great for locations like offices where a backyard bin or large-scale pick up is not feasible or too expensive.

Allured by the sight of an array of office supplies and kitchenware, students, faculty, staff, and community members flocked to this academic year’s first “FAS Freecycle” on the Science Center lawn last Tuesday. To their astonishment, everything seen was free to take.

Where in Harvard Square can you see mobile phones from Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint in one place? When they’re recycled, of course. They have come together in the basement of  the Science Center, where the FAS Green Program has installed a new cell phone recycling bin.

Not long ago, Dara Olmsted ’00 was a teaching fellow in a Harvard course about dinosaurs, a cast of creatures that disappeared 65 million years ago.

The Center for Health & the Global Environment (CHGE) at Harvard Medical School has been active in greening its office practices through the Harvard Office for Sustainability’s Green Office Certification Program.

During the week preceding Earth Day 2009, a group of Students for Environmental Awareness in Medicine (SEAM) club members and the Longwood Sustainability Coordinator undertook a week-long daily trash audit of the TMEC building at Harvard Medical School. Students were trained by the Longwood Sustainability Coordinator and HMS Custodial staff and were provided with appropriate protective gear.