Sustainable Ithaca

The officers this year are Carlos Rymer (President; cmr55), Chelsea Clarke (Treasurer; cmc255), Ding Kong (Vice President; dk278), and Whitney Larsen (Outreach Coordinator; wbl5). Our advisor is Dean Koyanagi (drk5), who is also Cornell’s Sustainability Coordinator. More on Sustainable Campus at http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/. Our website can be found at www.rso.cornell.edu/sustainabilityhub. Also, the Cornell Activist Calendar can be accessed at http://my.calendars.net/cu_ac. It is updated for the Fall Semester.

Here are the projects we plan to work on this semester, ordered by high priority:

- Sustainable Investment Initiative: forming a coalition of student organizations to ensure that Cornell invests in sustainable and responsible companies.

- Newsletter: collecting and distributing updates from sustainability efforts on the Cornell campus.

- Energy Independent Caroline: see attached document. Making the Town of Caroline a model of sustainability. Projects include work in wind energy, energy efficiency, outreach, and much more!

- Website: Improving the website and update all recent news, newsletters, minutes, etc.

- Sustainability Boards: Maintaining our outreach boards on a monthly basis.

- North Campus Outreach Team (new, to be discussed next week): speaking to students in North Campus Residence Halls about sustainability, what they can do, and how they can get involved.

- Biodiesel: potentially producing biodiesel using Cornell Dining waste vegetable oil.

- Green Building (LEED-Gold): identifying what needs to happen to make this policy and pushing for it.

- Double-Sided Printing: working with the Society for Natural Resource Conservation to increase this activity on campus.

- Recycling: placing more recycling bins in all buildings and other campus locations.

- Plastic Bag Reduction: reducing the use of plastic bags in the Cornell Store.

- Renewable Energy Awareness: talking to students and the community about the benefits of renewable energies.

- Dorm Competition for Energy Conservation: working with the Campus Life Green Team to make this happen.

Here’s a quick summary of the calendar for the Fall semester. Add anything that’s not here to the Activist Calendar:

- Environmental Justice Series, September 5th @ 7PM in HEC Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall.

- Confronting the Triple Crisis Conference(www.ifg.org), September 14-16

- Green Festival in D.C. (http://www.greenfestivals.org/content/view/625/280/), October 6-7

- Trustee Council Weekend, Skorton Annnounces Sustainability Initiative, October 18-20

- Campus Sustainability Day, October 24th

- Special Guest Speaker, Bill McKibben, October 26

- Step It Up 2 (theme is leadership; www.stepitup07.org), November 3rd

- Powershift 2007 (National Youth Climate Conference; http://www.powershift2007.org/), November 2nd-5th