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Please visit the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art where the Bluesphere exhibit is occurring till December 10th. One of the artists work is by Chris Jordan see information below. From the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art website: http://www.halsey.cofc.edu/exhibitions/2010/05_chrisJordan.php

Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait – Digital Images by Chris Jordan

oct 22 – dec 10

This exhibition is part of bluesphere: Earth Art Expo

artist website »

 

          Chris Jordan creates photographic digital images of jarring statistics related to American consumption. Each large scale image gives visual life to incomprehensible statistics like 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage; and 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes. Jordan graduated from the University of Texas School of Law and while interested in art, made his living as a corporate attorney in Seattle. The exhibition, which runs from Oct. 22 to Dec. 10, is sponsored by SC Green and is dedicated to the memory of Charleston community member Edwin Gardner a lifelong proponent and practitioner of living an artful, healthy, and sustainable life on our planet. Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait—Digital Images by Chris Jordan has been organized and distributed by the Museum of Art/Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

Email from Helpdesk to Campus on June 17, 2010

Following up John Cordray’s email suggesting turning off computers as appropriate, IT offers these guidelines for both saving energy and automatically receiving important application and virus protection updates:

On Windows XP computers…

1. Right click anywhere on your wallpaper and choose “properties” from the pop-up menu that appears.
2. Click “Screen Saver” tab at the top of the next box that appears.
3. Then click the “Power” button at the bottom of the next window.
4. Recommended setting for these options are;

• Turn off monitor: After 20 mins
• Turn off hard disks: After 1 hour
• System Standby time: Never
• System hibernates: Never

5.   After you have adjusted these settings to your preference click “Ok” and then “Ok” again.

For Macintosh Computers…

1. Click on the Apple in the top left hand side of the screen.
2. Click on “System Preferences” in the menu that appears.
3. Next Click on “Energy Saver” (looks like a light bulb).
4. Drag the slider bars to the left to lower the sleep times. Recommended settings are;

• Put the computer to sleep when inactive for: 30 mins
• Put the displays(s) to sleep when the computer is inactive for: 20 mins

5.   Check “Put hard disks to sleep when possible”.

You can of course adjust the setting to suit your particular needs depending on how “Green” you want to be. If you would like to adjust these setting and need assistance feel free to contact the Helpdesk@cofc.edu and they will be happy to help.

Charleston County residents can now recycle all plastic containers at curbside and at recycling drop-off centers.

Previously the county only accepted plastics with #1 and #2 designations, according to a news release from Jennie Davis Flinn, the Charleston County Public Information Officer. The expanded plastic recycling efforts mean that all plastic except plastic wrap, plastic bags and Styrofoam can be recycled curbside.

That means all hard and soft plastic containers with any number inside the recycling logo will be accepted. Plastics can be placed in co-mingled bins alongside a separate bin or bags of paper, paperboard and cardboard recyclables.

Charleston County Council member Colleen Condon announced the change this week, along with a one-time $25 solid waste fee credit to all Charleston County residents that was approved by Charleston County Council during the passage of the Fiscal Year 2011 budget.

“Expanding Charleston County’s Recycling Program to recycle all plastics #1 through #7 allows us to provide better service to our citizens and move closer to our 40 percent recycling goal with this important step,” Condon said.

In April, the county began accepting corrugated cardboard for curbside pickup.

Curbside recycling in Charleston County is collected bi-weekly in urban areas starting at 7 a.m.

Rural residents can use recycling drop sites and convenience centers. Drop sites are open 24 hours, seven days a week and are not staffed. Convenience centers are staffed by Environmental Management Department employees.

Call 843-720-7111 or visit recycle.charlestoncounty.org to find out your recycling collection day, the nearest drop site location, and Convenience Center addresses and hours of operation.

Phone and Printer Cartridge Recycling:

• If you have a box for these items that you got from Burton and it is full, let him know so he can collect them and send them off (the box that you have is for display and collecting, the used cartridges and cell phones get shipped in other boxes)
• Computing support has their own ink cartridge collection going (Bell building)
• Obviously, it would be ideal if there was some coordination of these efforts. Burton will at least list all of the various places to take cartridges and unwanted cell phones — if you become aware of a new group collecting cartridges, let Burton know so he can list it.
• Ideally, we want to phase out personal printers that take the ink cartridges – if you have any influence on these decisions, please encourage your department to switch to a centralized laser printer, rather than continue to use personal, desk side printers. These printers use more energy and resources and encourage people to print more than they need. Concerned about printing sensitive documents to a communal printer? – you can set up the printers so that they only print when you enter a code at the printer, thus allowing you to monitor your print jobs.

Battery Recycling:  due to the fact that it actually costs money to recycle batteries, the CofC is unwilling institute a campus-wide program. At present, the only real way to do it is to follow the Math department and do it on a dept. by dept. basis. If interested, there are a number of outfits that provide you with a postage paid bucket for collecting batteries. The math dept uses www.batteryrecycling.com (click on “recycle kit” to order a bucket for your dept). If your department decides to do this, let me know so we can keep track.

Reduce Paper: Two Websites that will get rid of extra images on web browsers:

www.printfriendly.com and www.printwhatyoulike.com

• If you are teaching and you don’t already, consider putting your syllabus and most course material online.
• Re-used paper notebooks? Raid your paper recycling bin and pull out nice, unwrinkled sheets with print on only one side and either re-use them to make copies or print-outs or bind them into notebooks. Distribute the notebooks to your office mates or students.
• Take the Portico Survey and encourage them to print 1-5/department to share and then send out a link to the online version.

Recycling: if you are experiencing inconsistent pick-ups or any problems with recycling, please log it on the ecorep news blog – click ecorep concerns. This will help document problems and strengthen our case when it comes to encouraging the physical plant to re-consider and improve the recycling program. Also click on the Problem Contacts link on the blog, to figure out who to call when you do have a problem.

Got bottle caps? As many of you know, the plastic caps on bottles are not recyclable (at least not in Charleston). For you super recyclers, you can bring bottle caps to the Verbena Aveda Salon on the corner of St. Philip and Cannon St. They will send them to a place that turns them into shampoo bottles.

Recyclemania: we are in the midst of Recyclemania, a recycling competition between schools all across the country — http://www.recyclemania.org/. We will be collecting, recording, and logging in our amounts of recycled material as well as amounts of waste. Please, announce to your colleagues, co-workers, students, etc. If you want to find out more about it, go to the website. The long and short of it is, the more we recycle the better we do in the competition. I encourage you to put on some kind of event associated with this or if you have ideas for getting the word out, let Burton or Keith Hanson khanson27@gmail.com know.

• Make an announcement about recyclemania in yr classes/have a student talk about it for 5 mins in class
• Write a note about it on the chalk board/white board/slip it in a slide of your ppt
• Take a second/sneak in an agenda item for any meetings you have in the next 7 weeks
• ??? [put your ideas here]

Graduation and Water Bottles

Please send Jonathon Ray rayjd@cofc.edu any and all ideas for avoiding water bottles being distributed to the graduates at graduation (currently, water bottles are placed at every seat for the grads).

Got Goals?

Lets try to set one or two goals for the next semester/next year. Burton will send out a list of potential goals and solicit others and then we will set up a survey or some way for us to vote on the top 1-2 goals for us.

Weekly reminder/weekly factoid

Burton will send out a weekly reminder/interesting/shocking factoid to encourage people to “do the right thing.” Please consider taking over for a week or two or just sending relevant factoids or tips for this.

Thanks Melissa for taking notes on Thursday!

I received this today and I thought I would pass the information along.

Did you know more than 41.5 billion pieces of mail advertisements were produced and distributed in the U.S in 2005, and it took more than 100 million trees to create all this bulk mail?  That’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months, according to www.ecocycle.org.

It is critical that we do our part by stopping junk mail at work. Reducing junk mail eliminates the problem at hand. It also has an additional benefit of reducing our waste disposal expenses, which helps lower our operating costs. Also, of course, helps preserve the world’s natural resources.

Want to participant in “Junk Mail Elimination?” Go to http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm to learn how you can take an active role.  You can also stop catalogs at home via http://www.catalogchoice.org/.

RECYCLEMANIA started this Sunday (Jan 17th). This is a national recycling competition among colleges and universities. According to Burton, our EcoRep organizer at the College of Charleston, over 500 schools have signed on so far.  He also notes “that there are lots of finer points to this competition but in essence, the more we recycle (and the less we throw in the trash) the better we do in the competition — it is weighted by school population.”

I ran across this on instructables.com this morning and I thought it was a project well within the spirit of Recyclemania.  The covers could be replaced with a number of items, including recycled cardboard and would make a nice palette for stenciling recycling messages on the covers.  If we used recycled paper for the inside of the notebook it would be even better. I wonder if we could use recycled spirals? The instructions were inspired by Ivy Lane Designs, “home of the ORIGINAL recycled/upcycled eco journals/notebooks, handmade from discarded boxes headed for the landfill. Helping the environment, one recycled notebook at a time.”

VHS Spiral Bound Notebook – More DIY How To Projects

Here is a link to the recyclemania site: http://www.recyclemania.org/

Chris Vinson, our Systems Librarian at Addlestone, has written a detailed tutorial on how to install and use Aardvark, an add-on for Firefox that lets you remove pieces of web pages before you print them out so you have a cleaner, earth-friendlier print job.

Feel free to pass it along!

Thanks to all for your responses to my previous post on battery recycling.
Here is the plan that is currently being considered:

1. Establish additional Eco Reps throughout the College: dorms, fraternity and sorority houses, and the various offices.

2. Purchase two of the 55 lb containers at 2x$79 including mail-back postage: Please see the last link on the page

http://www.batteryrecycling.com/new+iRecycle+kits

Place these in the physical plant.

3. Have Eco Reps monitor a local battery collection bin. This could be any kind of suitable container.

4. When a local bin is full the Eco Rep contacts the physical plant for pick up, or, if possible, takes the bin to the physical plant to empty into the first 55 lb container.

5. When the first 55 lb container is full send the container to the company and order a replacement.

James Carter

carterj@cofc.edu

Math Department

Hello all,

I am currently working on the problem of battery recycling. There is currently no way to collect batteries on campus for recycling.

The following seems promising:

http://www.batteryrecycling.com/new+iRecycle+kits

If you have any ideas on how the College might implement an efficient and inexpensive method to collect batteries for recycling please contact me.

Thanks!

James Carter
Mathematics Department
(843)953-8012
carterj@cofc.edu

That’s so 1993!

Charleston Water System produces water that is significantly cleaner than standards set by the EPA.  HERE is the 2008 Water Quality Report, so you can see it with your own eyes.

If your office requires a water system other than the tap, HERE‘s one point-of-use system that will save you money and break the cycle of using plastic to get water from its source to you.  This cuts down on plastics leaching into your water (yum!) as well as countless transportation costs.

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