Students learned how to "green their rooms," conserve energy and "prove the skeptics wrong" about global warming at Sustainable Dartmouth's first Sustainable Summit of the term held in Tindle Lounge on Thursday. The summit brought together Dartmouth's environmental advocacy groups to promote sustainability.
The club Sustainable Dartmouth was founded in the fall of 2005 as a forum for students interested in sustainability. Sustainable Dartmouth has evolved from a club into an umbrella organization that brings together the disparate environmental groups on campus. Participating organizations include the Dartmouth Organic Farm, Sustainable Move-Out, ECO, the Sustainable Living Center, Big Green Bus, New Hampshire Powershift and the Dartmouth Council on Climate Change.
ECO, one of the largest environmental groups on campus, is working on a number of projects for this term. Earth Week is the main item on the club's agenda this term.
"It's kind of our big party of the term," Marc Shapiro '10, a co-coordinator of ECO's efforts, said.
ECO will host a sustainability educational fair in Tindle Lounge on Earth Day to teach students about living in a more environmentally-friendly manner. The group plans to explain ways students can "green their rooms," highlight the recycling and composting programs on campus, and give away compact fluorescent light bulbs, an alternative to common, inefficient incandescent bulbs. On the same day, many campus environmental groups will congregate on the green to inform the Dartmouth community about their individual goals.
"The Big Green Bus will be there, and we'll have a band and a huge pile of trash," said Emily Jones '08, the other co-coordinator of ECO.
The trash pile, obtained from several residential buildings on campus, will represent visually the amount of waste students generate everyday.
ECO has also initiated the "tap water challenge," a push to reduce the sale of bottled water on campus.
The new Sustainable Living Center, another green effort at the College, will open this coming Fall in North Hall. Residents of the center will endeavor to retrofit the building to make it more suitable to a sustainable lifestyle. All such projects will be student-initiated and student-developed. The SLC is holding an open house today to present the building, which contains 19 single rooms, to prospective residents.
This coming fall will also mark the third annual Sustainable Move-Out, which seeks to reduce the amount of trash the College generates. The organizers created the program after noticing a 300 percent spike in the amount of trash on campus at the end of spring term as people move out. The drive, focused on graduating seniors, collects nearly all items that can be reused and resells them to incoming students.
New Hampshire Powershift, a branch of a nationwide association, is the newest campus group. The organization encompasses several campuses, including Keene State College, the University of New Hamsphire and Plymouth State University. The student-led group's current focus is influencing the Senate race in favor of former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, who group members believe is more environmentally friendly than her opponent Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H. The group hopes to convince Shaheen to commit to an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, to create 5 million new green jobs by 2015 and to impose a moratorium of all new coal-fired power plants.