Sorry about the late post.
As Tas said I also found it interesting how little things can lower our ecologlogical footprint. Someways that I could lower my own footprint is drivimg less, eating more local produce and also eating less meat.
In regars to the way that the ANU is attempting to lower its ecological footprint is by placing recycling stations around the uni enabling people to recycle some of their waste and not just put it all in the bin. The uni also has a hot rot composter. This machine rots down food waste and turns it into compost that can be used on the gardens and in the vegetable garden. When new buildings are being planned they are now planned in conjuction with ANU green, which is organisation that is responsible for the environmental conservation at the uni.
Another simple idea that has been employed is the idea of using old photographic film cartridges as cigarette butt bins. These can be carried around by a person easily as they are only small and prevents butts being left across the uni.
Most of these systems go against the social norms. People are used to just throwing their rubbish, regardless if it is recyclable or food waste, into the one bin and with cigerette butts people would normally just throw them on the ground. However i think with the strong presence of ANUgreen at the uni the social and institutional "norms" are slowly changing and more people are becoming aware of evironemental problems.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Paper management at the ANU
Default double-sided printing is a great idea, particularly for people in a hurry who just aren’t thinking about their paper consumption (and those who aren’t particularly concerned about it anyway), but the issue with recycling paper is that the more you recycle it, the smaller the fibres in the materials become and eventually they can’t be recycled anymore, so even though some people might think they’re being environmental by printing out their class readings on recycled paper, the truth is that it’s not actually reducing their consumption enough. If they were to read it from the computer, or perhaps just print one copy between a few in a group and take turns reading it before discussing it, the positive difference in paper consumption would be huge. ANU Green and the campus librarians educate our students in proper paper consumption to minimise waste – little things like using scrap paper to print non-assessable items, and reducing page size on the photocopier (so you can fit three or four pages onto one A4 page). Another option which I thought was interesting is that I passed by a petstore on the weekend, and in the window they had a sign saying ‘Any shredded paper desperately needed for our animals’ – something I thought was really nifty. So once the paper has been used on both sides, another option for already-recycled paper is to shred it in a paper-shredder and pass it on to be used as pet shavings. The ANU Green website has a number of ways to help with paper usage on their website, including the brands of paper reams which are environmentally friendly, and those to add to your black-list til they pick up their game.
Another personal footprint story
Hi everyone, this is my first post here. I’m Serena, by the way. I thought I’d make my entrance by telling you guys all about my personal carbon footprint.
There are definitely more things that I could be doing to reduce it, but I’m not the worst offender that I know, which is mildly comforting (though still guilt-inducing). For example, I am a bit of a foodie, and I love meat which I know is not only animal-unfriendly, but environmentally-unfriendly. However, I go to the fresh produce markets every week (usually twice) to make sure I’m purchasing local food that hasn’t had to travel halfway across the country to reach me. I always buy organic and free range meat, and have lately been trying to cut back my meat consumption. The effort is actually a good one to make, because not only are you supporting more environmentally friendly food, you’re also getting much better quality!
In terms of water use, my family is really big on reusing water – if I take a bath (which I love), I have to bucket the water out into the washing machine as wash water, and then use the rinse water in the machine as either wash water for the next load or use it to water the garden. We have mostly drought-related plants in our garden, which my father takes good care of, so our water use in the garden isn’t bad at all. We have timers on our shower walls to make sure we don’t spend too long in there, and have water saving toilets and shower nozzles.
We recycle all our paper, but don’t have a scrap paper box at home which would be an excellent idea since we use a lot of paper and often only print on one side (I know, we’re awful L). Another way we could save is to buy recycled paper – I only recently discovered we’ve been buying Reflex paper which is one of those evil environmentally-unfriendly paper brands. We also should be buying recycled toilet paper and kitchen paper. I’m a huge bottled water person – I love it, and I get dehydrated so easily so I always have at least one waterbottle on me. I usually reuse the same bottle for a number of weeks, but I’m a little scatterbrained and have a tendency to lose them a lot. This means that I probably buy a bottle of water once every three weeks, more often if I’m working and get thirsty. I should be being more careful about this because this is an area which is really hurting Australia at the moment – I think there was some gigantic number of littered plastic drink bottles collected on Clean Up Australia Day.
Like Tas, we also used to leave our computers switched on at the walls until about a year ago when we realised it ate electricity even without being on, and now my family is fanatical about leaving nothing on overnight, including computers, televisions, vcrs and dvd players, cd players and so on. We have ducted heating in my house, which would be a big thing to go without since my mother and I feel the cold dreadfully (we grew up in the tropics and Canberra was a real shock!!!) However, over the last few years, we have all been consciously trying to reduce our use of the heating, never letting it go higher than 20 degrees and only letting it on between certain hours of the day during the week and only in the afternoon/evening before bed on weekends. We do have a fireplace which we use A LOT in wintertime (there’s something so comforting about a roaring fire) but I’m not sure on the effects of burning a fire. I’m going to assume it’s also quite bad, so there is somewhere that I can definitely improve simply by adding an additional layer of clothing instead.
That’s all I got for now, more later. J
In answer to question 2
ANUgreen has many strageies that they use to acheive their environmental goals, the ones below are some of the more lateral thinking ones.
- Participation of many external elements within the university including the residential halls and colleges at ANU. For example, cafes and restaurants, as well as halls and colleges, have been provided with a seperate waste bin for organic matter to go into the composting system (refer to earlier post). Intercollege rivalry can also be very fierce with many sporting and other competitions between them. Reducing their output becomes a matter of a competition of who can reduce their use of resources the most. Other colleges also lead the way in things such as solar power usage. One of the residential buildings, Bruce Hall, has installed on its roof a solar electricity producing prototype developed by the university itself. Each hall or college has a green representatives who liase regularly with ANUgreen.
- Increasing public awareness within the university community. There are clearly labelled bins, for garbage and for recycling, all around the campus with sbig backboards detailing what goes into each. There is also a "toilet door campaign" where posters are posted on the back of toilet doors for users to peruse at their leisure. To tell you the truth, they totally work. On of the ones that I found really changed my view was one that said that the amount of paper printed at ANU in a year is equal to the height of 41 Telstra Towers if the pages were stacked one on top of the other. The awareness of that fact lead to me arranging with my tutor to hand my tute questions in electronically.
N.B. Telstra Tower is a major Canberran landmark, it is a telecommunications tower which is clearly visible from ANU, as well as most of Canberra. If you go to the ANUgreen website, http://www.anu.edu.au/anugreen/, and look at the picture on the home page you can see it in the background in the top left corner. - Community events and participation. There is an organic garden in the grounds of ANU which is open to everyone to go work at, it increases participation on a grassroots level and increases awareness and horticultural skills. One of the major events is on this Saturday and that's Earth Hour celebrations, the photo I referred to above was taken at Earth Hour last year. ANUgreen makes it a large event and this year has organised entertainment and food as well. It has marketed the day as a fun family event.
ANUgreen: The basics
Hi guys,
Sorry for not putting this up earlier, but in case you haven't come across it before here is a video detailing what it is that our environmental office does. The video is about 6 minutes long and would do a much better job of explaining than I will (if you look at my posts below, you will know that I'm not the world's greatest explainer).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e15FtidHEAY
Sorry for not putting this up earlier, but in case you haven't come across it before here is a video detailing what it is that our environmental office does. The video is about 6 minutes long and would do a much better job of explaining than I will (if you look at my posts below, you will know that I'm not the world's greatest explainer).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e15FtidHEAY
Monday, March 23, 2009
An introduction to compost
Okay, just a bit of a crash course in the idea behind composting, which is basically a food recycling system. Every year heaps (unfortuantely I don't actually have a figure to provide here) of food waste goes into landfill where it basically just decomposes, releasing heaps (also an unspecified quantity) of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, I believe it might be methane, like what is released from agriculture (believe it or not, cows (of which there is a huge industry here in Australia (if you have watched the movie Australia you'll know what I am talking about)) farting is one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters).
So composting is pretty much the most ancient form of recycling, because our ancestors have been finding uses for organic waste before paper, aluminum cans and plastic bottles were invented.
Most composting systems are very small scale, unlike waste disposal and other forms of recycling, which are organised by local governments or town councils. For example, at home our composting system consists of a big old icecream bucketsitting next to our dustbin in the kitchen in which we put food scraps and sometimes other things such as tissues and every few days Mum will empty the bucket into the garden. We also have buckets in the shower and to collect water we use in the kitchen to wash anything from vegetables to dishes. By the way, the vast majority of people living in Canberra live in low-density housing, generally houses with front and back yards, although many don't have vegetable patches and fruit trees like at our place. I'd assume that in Singapore, most people live in medium- to high-density housing, based on what I've seen of the city flying over it in a plane :D
However, this largely individual form of recycling has been undertaken on a much greater scale on the ANU campus. You might have heard of our sustainability office, ANUgreen, and as part of their recycling campaign, they have now put in a large-scale composting system, because up to one third of our waste going to landfill is organic matter. Its called a HotRot and can recycle up to 2 tonnes of compost a day. There have been systems set up to deal with this. There are wheelie bins which are grey as opposed to green (rubbish) or with a yellow top (recycling) or blue (paper) and these grey bins have been placed in cafes, restaurants and halls and colleges on the ANU campus and trucks pick up the waste every few days.
As you may know, Australian soils are also the most nutrient deficient in the world as well, so our soils need a lot of care and extra nutrients to grow almost any plant which isn't native. So all this food waste basically comes back as rich compost for use on the campus reducing our waste output.
I was giong to post a picture of the HotRot system at ANU but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working. Oh well, if I can work it out I'll put one up.
So composting is pretty much the most ancient form of recycling, because our ancestors have been finding uses for organic waste before paper, aluminum cans and plastic bottles were invented.
Most composting systems are very small scale, unlike waste disposal and other forms of recycling, which are organised by local governments or town councils. For example, at home our composting system consists of a big old icecream bucketsitting next to our dustbin in the kitchen in which we put food scraps and sometimes other things such as tissues and every few days Mum will empty the bucket into the garden. We also have buckets in the shower and to collect water we use in the kitchen to wash anything from vegetables to dishes. By the way, the vast majority of people living in Canberra live in low-density housing, generally houses with front and back yards, although many don't have vegetable patches and fruit trees like at our place. I'd assume that in Singapore, most people live in medium- to high-density housing, based on what I've seen of the city flying over it in a plane :D
However, this largely individual form of recycling has been undertaken on a much greater scale on the ANU campus. You might have heard of our sustainability office, ANUgreen, and as part of their recycling campaign, they have now put in a large-scale composting system, because up to one third of our waste going to landfill is organic matter. Its called a HotRot and can recycle up to 2 tonnes of compost a day. There have been systems set up to deal with this. There are wheelie bins which are grey as opposed to green (rubbish) or with a yellow top (recycling) or blue (paper) and these grey bins have been placed in cafes, restaurants and halls and colleges on the ANU campus and trucks pick up the waste every few days.
As you may know, Australian soils are also the most nutrient deficient in the world as well, so our soils need a lot of care and extra nutrients to grow almost any plant which isn't native. So all this food waste basically comes back as rich compost for use on the campus reducing our waste output.
I was giong to post a picture of the HotRot system at ANU but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working. Oh well, if I can work it out I'll put one up.
What can the campus do about it? Who's responsibility???
4. Devise 2 strategies that ANU or NUS could implement to reduce their footprint, and enhance sustainability. Who is responsible? Individuals changing their behaviour, the university changing the way it conducts business, or both? Why?
The first strategy we propose would require the way the university changes the way it conducts its business. Changes to the campus facilities can only be achieved by the university. This includes putting in place motion sensors in the campus to ensure more efficiency in energy consumption. These sensors would be able to switch off lights, fans and air-cons if it detects no motion for a certain period of time. In the same way, it would be able to sense motion and respond accordingly. Air-condition systems should be altered from a central control to one that allows individual controls in lecture theatres and classrooms. A system should be in place to ensure the air-cons are switched on during the allocated class period instead of letting it run the entire day. Air-cons should also have a default setting of 25 degrees Celsius and it should not be adjusted unless necessary. Such sensors requires a large capital to be put in place, but it helps the university to save energy in the long run and ensures energy is being used efficiently. In addition, the campus should consider allowing students to open the classroom windows in campus if the weather is not too hot and humid.
The second strategy would involve both a change in individual’s behavior and the way the university runs its businesses. We propose having Green Weeks throughout the year. This would have to be supported and put in place by the university, while the students have to believe in the importance of it and participate actively. During Green Week, students are to bring their own Tupperware, and canteen vendors are not allowed to use plastic containers. In addition, there will be an additional carbon tax on all cars using the school’s carpark. This is beyond their current season parking and carpark charges. Carpark fees will also be doubled to encourage students to use the public transport. These are some examples of disincentives to deter students from using resources inefficiently. It facilitates the idea that there is a price to pay for convenience and we should never take such resources for granted. On top of incentives, incentives can be introduced to encourage the students to carry on the habit of being environmentally friendly. One example may be to award students with points whenever they bring their own Tupperware and carriers, and these points can be accumulated to obtain a free meal. The logic behind such a campaign will be so that students will at least get STARTED with leading an environmentally friendly life, to let them know that it is POSSIBLE. Such an idea is taken from another concept implemented by the Singapore government on schools. On Civil Defence day, school canteens stop selling food and only provide sweet potato porridge. This is so that students can understand how it feels like when there is war and there’s a lack of food supply. Similarly, Green Weeks are to get students to understand how being green feels like.
As the saying goes, it takes 2 hands to clap. Therefore, we need both parties’ (school and students) support in order to make our approaches operationalised and effectively implemented. Without an adequate support of the students to empower these approaches, measures can be deemed useless to our green goals as well as redundant and ineffective. Moreover, legislation and implementation might only look like a rigid, hierarchical top-down approach which can be regarded as a lip service paid to the tree huggers and also the pragmatic global competition for achieving green campuses and in aid to be environmentally relevant.
On the other spectrum, the targeted result will also be inconclusive when there is an evident absence of the school authority to push ways for green measures. Armed with financial backing and by harness its relationships with relevant green enterprises and local government, the school can be a significant potent entity to execute green projects and also able to monitor their sustainable progress over a long period of time. Not to forget, tertiary institutions are the breeding grounds for future leaders and therefore this emphasizes the pressing urgency for them to engage, appreciate and inculcate green measures and estimating potential damages as soon as possible. This also presents the need for present students to have a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary idea of how environment has a huge stake in our present as well as future and generate genuine concern for the nature most importantly.
Looking at the scale of influence, the university changing the way it runs its business have impact and influence on all its students, who will eventually spread the environmentally friendly lifestyle as they mix with other people. Whereas looking at the scale of an individual, it is pretty difficult to influence a large number of people to follow a green lifestyle. For example, a society called SAVE (mentioned above) in NUS, have extremely environmentally friendly members. They adhere by strict rules, such as by limiting the use of plastic bags and containers; they do not package or bring their food out of the canteen, so that reusable utensils can be used. However, even though some of our friends are from that society, as an individual, they have less impact on influencing our mindset and actions. However, if the school bans the use of plastic disposable packaging, an immediate effect will be visible.
In conclusion, with only intermixing synergies and enthusiasm that can be generated from the school’s authority and students can we able to pursuit reduction in carbon footprint and improve sustainability. Besides, it is also pivotal that both parties can engage in open dialogue and be transparent in order to forge a genuine attempt to help the environment.
What do you guys think about this question? =)
The first strategy we propose would require the way the university changes the way it conducts its business. Changes to the campus facilities can only be achieved by the university. This includes putting in place motion sensors in the campus to ensure more efficiency in energy consumption. These sensors would be able to switch off lights, fans and air-cons if it detects no motion for a certain period of time. In the same way, it would be able to sense motion and respond accordingly. Air-condition systems should be altered from a central control to one that allows individual controls in lecture theatres and classrooms. A system should be in place to ensure the air-cons are switched on during the allocated class period instead of letting it run the entire day. Air-cons should also have a default setting of 25 degrees Celsius and it should not be adjusted unless necessary. Such sensors requires a large capital to be put in place, but it helps the university to save energy in the long run and ensures energy is being used efficiently. In addition, the campus should consider allowing students to open the classroom windows in campus if the weather is not too hot and humid.
The second strategy would involve both a change in individual’s behavior and the way the university runs its businesses. We propose having Green Weeks throughout the year. This would have to be supported and put in place by the university, while the students have to believe in the importance of it and participate actively. During Green Week, students are to bring their own Tupperware, and canteen vendors are not allowed to use plastic containers. In addition, there will be an additional carbon tax on all cars using the school’s carpark. This is beyond their current season parking and carpark charges. Carpark fees will also be doubled to encourage students to use the public transport. These are some examples of disincentives to deter students from using resources inefficiently. It facilitates the idea that there is a price to pay for convenience and we should never take such resources for granted. On top of incentives, incentives can be introduced to encourage the students to carry on the habit of being environmentally friendly. One example may be to award students with points whenever they bring their own Tupperware and carriers, and these points can be accumulated to obtain a free meal. The logic behind such a campaign will be so that students will at least get STARTED with leading an environmentally friendly life, to let them know that it is POSSIBLE. Such an idea is taken from another concept implemented by the Singapore government on schools. On Civil Defence day, school canteens stop selling food and only provide sweet potato porridge. This is so that students can understand how it feels like when there is war and there’s a lack of food supply. Similarly, Green Weeks are to get students to understand how being green feels like.
As the saying goes, it takes 2 hands to clap. Therefore, we need both parties’ (school and students) support in order to make our approaches operationalised and effectively implemented. Without an adequate support of the students to empower these approaches, measures can be deemed useless to our green goals as well as redundant and ineffective. Moreover, legislation and implementation might only look like a rigid, hierarchical top-down approach which can be regarded as a lip service paid to the tree huggers and also the pragmatic global competition for achieving green campuses and in aid to be environmentally relevant.
On the other spectrum, the targeted result will also be inconclusive when there is an evident absence of the school authority to push ways for green measures. Armed with financial backing and by harness its relationships with relevant green enterprises and local government, the school can be a significant potent entity to execute green projects and also able to monitor their sustainable progress over a long period of time. Not to forget, tertiary institutions are the breeding grounds for future leaders and therefore this emphasizes the pressing urgency for them to engage, appreciate and inculcate green measures and estimating potential damages as soon as possible. This also presents the need for present students to have a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary idea of how environment has a huge stake in our present as well as future and generate genuine concern for the nature most importantly.
Looking at the scale of influence, the university changing the way it runs its business have impact and influence on all its students, who will eventually spread the environmentally friendly lifestyle as they mix with other people. Whereas looking at the scale of an individual, it is pretty difficult to influence a large number of people to follow a green lifestyle. For example, a society called SAVE (mentioned above) in NUS, have extremely environmentally friendly members. They adhere by strict rules, such as by limiting the use of plastic bags and containers; they do not package or bring their food out of the canteen, so that reusable utensils can be used. However, even though some of our friends are from that society, as an individual, they have less impact on influencing our mindset and actions. However, if the school bans the use of plastic disposable packaging, an immediate effect will be visible.
In conclusion, with only intermixing synergies and enthusiasm that can be generated from the school’s authority and students can we able to pursuit reduction in carbon footprint and improve sustainability. Besides, it is also pivotal that both parties can engage in open dialogue and be transparent in order to forge a genuine attempt to help the environment.
What do you guys think about this question? =)
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