Environmental Initiative Committee
From BenningtonWiki
Contents |
[edit] Welcome!
Come Join Us!
We are the Environmental Initiatives Committee!
We are constantly working to make our Campus and Community more environmentally- friendly and naturally efficient!
We meet at 9:00 on Wednesdays in Downstairs Commons- All are encouraged and welcome to join us!
We are always working on new projects and excited to hear new voices!
Keep a look out for updates on this page and around campus!
And Get Involved!
Ideas? Suggestions? Questions? Contact Us! eic@bennington.edu
[edit] EVENTS
[edit] Recycling Meeting with CASELLA
April 3rd, 11AM-NOON in the Upstairs Cafe
A representative from CASELLA (the company that handles campus garbage and recycling)
is going to come and meet with the housekeepers and talk about proper recycling procedures
[edit] EARTH WEEK CELEBRATION
Earth Day is April 22nd!
Earth Week is shaping up into quite a series of activities and events!
Beginning on Friday, April 18th and going until Wednesday, April 30th there will be many earth friendly and community strengthening things happening in and around campus. The Environmental Initiatives Committee, COLT, and Student Council are hoping to make this year's celebration of our mother planet a memorable one.
We are in the planning stages of Earth Week and urge anyone interested in assisting us put this thing together to come to our meetings in downstairs commons on Wednesdays at 9:00pm.
If you or someone you know is interested in helping us out with any of these events, please let write back or come to a meeting and let us know! Also, if you have an idea of something else that could fly during this period in mid-late April, speak up!!! This is what we are tentatively planning thus far:
[edit] Friday, April 18
[edit] Night-Time Acoustic Music Gathering
After the Slavic Soul Party there will be a (BYO CANDLE) candlelit(NO ELECTRICITY) acoustic music gathering in either the Secret Garden or the Jennings Backyard, featuring several of Bennington's musical talents. Juice and snacks will be provided. Artists TBA.
[edit] Saturday, April 19th
[edit] Activities fair on Common's Lawn featuring workshops, vendors, games, and displays centered around environmentalism and fun
This evening will feature live music from Bennington and elsewhere (including Philadephia's Unstopher Rawls), a potluck, and fire at a special location...
[edit] Sunday, April 20th
[edit] A trip to the Powershift Vermont Conference at Middlebury College
Power Shift Vermont 2008 will focus on providing Vermont college and high school students with the knowledge and tools they need to take action and find climate solutions. Through informative panels, interactive workshops, intense discussions, speeches by distinguished leaders, and our Action Day in Montpelier, we will take important steps towards a securing clean energy future and continuing sustainability efforts in the Green Mountain State.
Keynote speakers will kick off the event on the evening of Saturday, April 19th before the band Cake performs on the Middlebury campus that evening. Sunday, April 20th will be a day of exciting panels, workshops, and discussions on topics ranging from Green Jobs to renewable energy in Vermont to how to build a campus climate organization on your campus. Monday (April 21st) morning we will head to Montpelier to let our legislators know: We are your constituents! We demand climate solutions! (From the website http://www.powershiftvermont.org/psvt.html).
[edit] Tuesday, April 22nd (actual Earth Day)
[edit] Lunchtime campus tree planting
We are looking into getting the dining hall to serve organic/local meals on this day.
[edit] At 8:30pm in Kinoteka, itinerant documentarian Bill Daniel will show pictures of post-utopian California and post-Katrina NOLA alongside his Sunset Scavenger project, followed by a discussion and q&a.
"Sunset Scavenger is an on-going project exploring images and themes of social and environmental collapse in the last decades of the petroleum era. The video program is a 2-projector documentary-essay on low-down survival strategies in a world of ecologic and economic collapse. Sunset Scavenger tells the real-world stories of ascendant down'n'outers and their earnest lessons of self-reliance in the face of civil decay. See and hear the anchor-outs, rubber tramps, off-the-gridders, desert rats, and punk river rafters that are today's true cultural vanguard. This low-budget, non-linear, semi-documentary epic and morally beneficial apocalyptic allegory features the Abandoned RV starring in a hastily revised New Urbanism, and is supported by the surprise comeback of Advanced Woodworking and Basic Piracy. Here's what happens when there's more cars than houses, more bad weather than gasoline, and more poor people than cops." (from www.billdaniel.net)
[edit] Friday, April 25th
[edit] Shelter building and wilderness survival in the woods.
[edit] Saturday, April 26th
[edit] Morning trash audit.
Students will collect trash from various locations and divy up the "garbage" from the "recyclables" to highlight just how much we could be reducing, reusing and recycling and how much we are truly wasting.
[edit] Hoe-down
The evening will include an outdoors bluegrass/country hoedown in a secret location, with subsequent noisemaking and possible camping.
[edit] Wenesday, April 30th
[edit] 1st Annual Four College Issues Forum at MASS MoCA, featuring Amory Levins.
"Amory Bloch Lovins is Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient (1993), and author and co-author of many books on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Lovins has worked professionally as an environmentalist and been an influential American voice for a "soft energy path" for the United States and other nations. He has advocated energy-use and energy-production concepts based on conservation, efficiency, the use of renewable sources of energy, and on generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. His works include Winning the Oil Endgame, Factor Four with Hunter Lovins and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, and Natural Capitalism with Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken. In the 1990s, his work with the Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar. Lovins has provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 US states, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books and several hundred papers.
Keep in mind that the time and details of some of these events are subject to change. We are always welcoming help, ideas, and efforts to help our campus and community understand the imprtance of environmental consciousness, education, care, and love for the earth and natural environment.
If you think you can contribute to these events, let us know!
[edit] Current Projects IN THE WORKS
[edit] Community Garden
[edit] Seed Starting Workshop SUNDAY MARCH 30th at 1pm in Downstairs Commons!
Come help us plant seeds that will be transferred into our garden once the ground thaws!
Upcoming workshops and opportunities as the weather gets warmer:
- Soil Turning
- Planting
[edit] GOALS
[edit] Links
http://greenmuseum.org/
A great resource for Environmentally Friendly art-related projects and studies
