Office of Sustainability

The Green Teaching Garden is sponsored by the College of Charleston’s Grice Marine Lab (GML), CofC’s Marine Biology Graduate Student Association (MBGSA), and the CofC Office of Sustainability ECOllective Fund.

http://spinner.cofc.edu/grice/?referrer=webcluster&

https://sites.google.com/site/gricembgsa/Home

http://sustainability.cofc.edu/student-sustainability/index.php

 Herb garden: January 31^st, 2012

Our herbs we planted last spring are still doing really well! We cut back all the herbs we still had growing: lavender, rosemary, terregon, and oregano and put them into bunches to dry around the lab.

Herbs hanging in the Grice Marine Lab dorm kitchen pantry

Rain barrel painting and platform building: February 10^th 2012

We started applying the primer and base coat for our rain barrels.  I chose natural colors-green, yellow, tan, and brown to go with the sustainability theme. Four of the rain barrels were donated from Clemson Extension and the other four were purchased from EarthFare.  Before we could install the rain barrels, we had to create a flat raised surface for them to sit on.  Even though the garden site is fairly sandy and flat, we dug down to remove roots and then added paver sand to help raise and level the pavers.

(Left) Marine biology graduate student Katie Anweiler places a paver leveling the ground. (Right) Marine biology students — paint the rain barrels.

Transplanting Workday: Start of turnover from a bog garden to a rain garden: February 17, 2012

When the garden was created last year, a bog garden was installed in the center of the four raised beds.  Unfortunately, our garden isn’t the best site to have one and would be much more sustainable to create a rain garden instead.

What’s the difference between a rain garden and a bog garden?  A bog garden is created to retain water.  A plastic liner is placed about a foot underneath the garden to keep the water in and plants that do well in high moisture environments are selected.  It is also best to have a water source such as an ice machine like the Fort Johnson Community Garden has in place.  A rain garden on the other hand is a depression in the ground made of mostly sand and allows for rain water to soak into the soil with the goal to improve water quality in near bodies of water.  Plants in this habitat should be able to handle about a day of water coverage before it soaks through the soil and periods of drought. Native plants in the South Carolina coastal area do well in rain gardens.

Today was the first step in changing over from the bog garden to a rain garden.  The surviving plants were removed and placed into pots donated from Hyam’s on James Island.  The College of Charleston’s Biology Club also donated several packages of flowers to be planted in front the garden.

(Left) Marine biology graduate students: Hannah Day, Michelle Reed, Robin Garcia, and Meredith Smylie work on transplanting the plants from the bog garden. (Right) Biology Club president Haley Ottinger planted the flowers in front of the Grice Marine Lab sign.

Dr. Arthur Felts – Professor of Political Science
Dr. Norman Levine – Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences

Firstly, I didn’t realize all the potential natural disasters Charleston is privy to. Thanks to Dr. Levine for pointing them all out. Earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding? Yes. But one does not always consider potential threat of liquefaction, intrusion, storm surge, landslides, and forest fires.

So the point of this talk, I think, was to stress how important it is to talk about the consequences of a potential disaster upon communities, and how communities can improve their resiliency, protect against the future, and possibly use the event for positive change. What is resiliency? When I think of resiliency, I think of coastal seaweed, being pitched and tossed in heavy waves. It has both strength and flexibility. I think Dr. Felts’ idea of resiliency was a little different- I think the point he was trying to get across was that it’s not enough for an entity to simply have characteristics that will serve it in the time of the disaster—a community is resilient if it prepares in advance and discusses afterward (I think that’s what he meant!). Someone said that having a high amount of social capital—that is, community collaboration, responsibility, and networks—is the best way towards becoming resilient. That makes sense to me, both visually (I imagine the more social capital you have, the less gaps you have in your web- each meaningful connection is like a strong knot) and socially (the more care people have for each other and their homes, the better care they will take care of it).

In order to increase resiliency, Dr. Felts said that we must pick out what institutions and behaviors that will be unsustainable in the future. I’m still a little confused by the way he used the word “unsustainable,” since I thought that surely if an institution was going to be unsustainable in the future, that means it’s unsustainable now. That was just a matter of semantics, really, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what sustainability means to me and just wanted to be clear. Part of the definition has to do with a need to ensure future generations their due rights and resources; the idea that something is sustainable now but won’t be sustainable in the future violates that portion, because if was truly sustainable now, It would be the exact same thing that would be providing rights and resources to my descendants.

The idea that a severe weather event could bring about positive change, such as a hurricane tearing down an inefficient infrastructure that had been too expensive to mess with, struck me as very wise. We always think about “disasters” in a decidedly negative way (pretty sure there’s no positive connotation for “disaster”) and I personally associate them with fear and sadness. I’ve never thought of a tsunami as a resource, or a partner. I still feel uncomfortable doing so. But perhaps it would strengthen resiliency if we at least changed our perspective from resistant to understanding that these are an inevitable part of nature that should be expected, not pushed out of our mind until we’re forced to think about it.

In this, our fourth Green Bag Lunch, the Office of Sustainability hosts panelists to discuss issues surrounding resiliency within communities and the concept of vulnerable communities, more generally.

We are all familiar with cities such as New Orleans as a vulnerable community, and we have seen it as a case study in the obstacles to resiliency in its recovery from hurricane Katrina. But Charleston, too, represents one of the most vulnerable cities in the United States, and addressing our vulnerability is critical to fostering a healthier, more resilient community.

On the panel will be:

Dr. Arthur Felts – Professor of Political Science
Dr. Norman Levine – Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences

All students, faculty, staff and members of the Charleston community are welcome! Invite your friends!

Snacks will be provided, but bringing a bagged lunch is encouraged.

Please email any questions to sustainability@cofc.edu

This discussion panel was not calling for us to agree to R-E-C-Y-C-L-E and save the polar bears. It was a conversation that addressed the question of how environmental change can happen in a broken Washington, a question that conveniently was asked by an enormous social movement that started on Wall Street. The Occupy Movement is a movement to wake up American Politicians. It consists of the American citizen’s desire to make their nation and their earth a better place.

So how do we make this happen? The panel members along with other audience members voiced that if environmental progress is going to be made it must start with the individual just as the occupy movement did. Progress starts with us doing things like taking initiatives to carpool, teaching our children the importance of composting, and most importantly embracing globalization so that Americans finally understand the vastness of our carbon footprint. Other panel members believed that government in conjunction with personal change is a more viable solution. For example the government could provide incentives for businesses that “Go Green”. How, though, do we get the government to care when many of its members have their hands in the pockets of the very companies against the environmental push?  The discussion panel answered this question by approaching it from an economic standard point saying that embracing the environmental movement is not only beneficial to the health of the world but also to the health of our economy. For example it can create jobs, eliminate unnecessary government spending, as well as encourage active citizenship. By highlighting the monetary benefits of environmental policy, we can draw Congress’ attention.

Still, in the current political sphere where corporations are people and the environment is not taken into consideration when making policy for the future it is easy to get discouraged. This panel, however, was inspiring and caused me to realize the power that I possess as an individual. The earth is a huge place and to have to take care of it on your own is daunting. It is not so scary, though, when you are surrounded in place like Zuccotti Park by people with the same objective.

• When: Wednesday, January 25th at 12pm
• Where: Stern Ballroom

This third Green Bag Lunch Series, Occupy Earth: Lessons from the Occupy Movement for Individual Environmentalism, will look at the issues surrounding individualism and individual action in environmentalism and the sustainability movement.

Do individual actions make a …difference?  Is a collectivist mindset necessary for structural, global change?  How do we make a substantive impact?  These and other questions that affect all social movements are being tested on the ground right now by the various Occupy groups around the world.  What can we learn from their experiences and how can we apply them to other social movements, like environmentalism and sustainability?

On the panel will be:

• Dr. George Hopkins, Emeritus Professor of History
• Dr. Timothy Callahan, Director of the Masters in Environmental Studies Program
• Dr. P. Brian Fisher, Director of the Office of Sustainability
• Nick Rubin, Occupy Charleston Representative

This informal panel will give a brief presentation to be followed by a discussion and Q&A period. All faculty, staff, students and Charleston community members are welcome!  Invite your friends! Drinks and snacks will be provided, but bringing a bagged lunch is strongly encouraged.

Email any questions to Sustainability@cofc.edu

Link to the event : https://www.facebook.com/events/207650702644882/

This project has been exciting. We have done a lot. We have thought of creative ideas and plans for our roof top garden. However our project will not come to life as of now. This is because of the challenges we have faced in trying to realize a rooftop garden. Or initial challenge was gaining access to the first site on top of Liberty.  We had plans ready but we were never able to make it up a second time. Another big challenge we faced was the time. Designing, building, and organizing a rooftop garden is a lot to do with a short amount of time, especially once we lost our first sight of Liberty.  If we had time to continue, I’m confident that we would be able to design and build a great project. Our third challenge was not getting funded. This of course was a result of the short amount of time we had to design a new garden after we had to change locations.

We have learned a lot from this project. There are challenges, but of course there are ways around and past these challenges. I’m confident that if we were to have more time, we could develop a very useful and successful rooftop garden.

My role in the overall project was contributing ideas for the App since it was a conceptual project. I gave useful and creative ideas to be incorporated like some of the mapping features along with the Yellow Pages concept for sustainable restaurants and businesses. Our group as a whole was very hands on with the project, and everyone contributed great ideas that we thought would be worthwhile for users of the App.  Our project leader, Josh was extremely helpful and really motivated us to come up with a great concept.

The most rewarding thing about this project, for me, is that I got a great experience working with other people who are excited about learning more about sustainability and what it really means for the community and for our future.  I also feel more accomplished after finishing out final proposal. I think we have come up with a really great idea that has good potential for use for not only the College of Charleston but for other universities and institutes to utilize.

~Meg

I really enjoyed being a part of this group in starting the process to create a smart-phone app for Sustainability at the College of Charleston.  My initial contribution to the group was working on the events feature of the app.  We decided in our brainstorming sessions that we should have a sustainable events feature.  I looked up local events such as farmers markets, Green CofC meetings, and Office of Sustainability events.  There are also local events, such as the Green Fair, which could be
integrated into the app. We decided to make the events integrated into the interactive map, so users can see where and when the events happen on the map.  With our interactive map feature users can not only find bike racks and recycling bins, they can see what sustainable projects are happening on campus.

I also came up with the initial setup of the graphic user interface (GUI).  I thought it would be visual pleasing for the main menu to be in the image of a tree.  Each branch would have a different section of the map.  When the user taps on the end of the branch it will take them to the respective part of the app.  At the top of the tree would be the name of the app.  Some ideas for the name were CofC Sustain-a-app, and iSustain CofC.

It is my hope that this app will also keep students involved on campus.  The Office is putting on more and more events each semester and this app can help bring students to these events.  With constant reminders and by using the map feature users will be able to see where and when the events are happening on the map.  I want more people to realize what the vision of the Office is and I want them to get involved.  It is my hope that this app will help produce a campus where people are working towards creating a sustainable campus where people are constantly making new improvements.

~Erich

I find myself at the end of our little recycling experiment this week and in fact we just finished our presentation to the class about the project.  In the process of reviewing our results and preparing that presentation we realized a number of things.  Most importantly we realized that the results we got weren’t very valid.  We found alot of problems with our methods, namely that no one had been monitoring at the same time (morning could range from 7 am to 10 am) and that some of us had been monitoring different bins in the same general location than others.  Honestly I don’t know what to draw from the monitoring aspect of the project.  It’s hard to draw any solid conclusions on such limited data. I think before we can move forward with any revamping of recycling on campus we need to redo this monitoring project with more standardized methods and include a lot more bins.  Then we might be able to get an idea of where recycling is happening, what the needs are, etc.  It’s frustrating to go through a week of monitoring and realize that we don’t have any solid results, but still we learned a lot from the project, especially through the mapping.  It’s a good starting place if nothing else.  Finally, it taught me how difficult the process of becoming more environmentally friendly can be.  It’s not as simple as one would think, as w ehave seen through this project.  Recycling on campus still has a long way to go, but this project was at least a start.

During our first meeting I was assigned to brainstorm marketing strategies.  I came up with the following: to get the parents involved, advertise with flyers, get teachers to carpool, link with smart phone app, present idea to classes so that people can link class schedules, make it easy to sign up and have event sign up for weekend activities.  My next assignment was to come up with a slogan for the actual flyers and for the website. My slogan: Sometimes a little company is better, locomote together.  We then compiled everyone’s ideas and made a survey.  Then we each stood outside the library and asked students and faculty what images/slogans they liked.  They were more attracted to the slogans that implied they would save money.  After the research was done, I was assigned to make the two flyers which we showed in the presentation.  We had one final meeting the night before the presentation where we put everything together and discussed what everyone would talk about.  We have our event in early January to present rideshare!