We all know that driving to school is much easier of a commute than using public transportation. You are able to work around your own schedule rather than working around the public transportation schedule. It’s already bad enough that we are polluting the air by driving. So let’s take into consideration to shut your car off!
Idling your car not only causes damage to the earth by emitting carbon dioxide but it also affects health by increasing the risk of asthma, allergies, heart and lung disease and cancer. You can sit in your car waiting for class to start but the car doesn’t need to be on. You are both wasting gas and polluting.
A Green Panther reporter caught this bus idling outside the Academic Village on Tuesday, April 20th.
According to a recent report from Texas A&M, Americans burn 2.9 billion gallons of gas a year, worth around $78.2 billion. Most of the time people let their cars run just to listen to music, if it’s cold to keep warm and if it’s hot to cool down. They made iPod so that people can listen to music whenever and wherever they want. If it’s hot out, just put the windows down and get some fresh air. If it’s too cold for you to sit in the car, go inside and enjoy a nice cup of hot coffee or tea or hot chocolate or something. Take this advice from a commuter and shut off your car!
Moreover, idling can actually damage your engine. It can affect the cylinders, spark plugs exhaust systems. Fuel is only partially combusted due to the engine not operating at its peak temperature, which leads to buildup of fuel remains on the cylinder walls. It can damage the engine components and increase fuel utilization.
Also, you don’t need to idle in order to warm up your car. A study was done by Ontario Ministry of Transportation that proved that a car driven for 12 minutes in 14o Fahrenheit weather will achieve the same temperature as one that idles for 30 minutes. You just need to let the engine run for some 5 seconds before driving it and avoid rapid acceleration in the first twelve minutes.
According to New York State Law:
• A maximum idling time of five minutes is allowed.
• For the first offense you can get fined anywhere between the range of $375 to $15,000.
• For second offense and subsequent offenses, one can be fined approximately $22,500.
Interesting facts about car idling:
• Idling for an hour burns almost one gallon of gas.
• You can travel about one mile with the amount of fuel wasted when idling for two minutes.
• Idling for ten minutes produces approximately 90 grams of carbon dioxide.
• For every vehicle that is run a minute less each day of the year, some 225,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide would be emitted into the atmosphere.
By: Samantha Grecco
Hall One
On April 14th, 2010, Hall One Council started a bottle recycling program. Hall One consists of approximately 180 Old Westbury college residents. “I hope that students participate by recycling to create a green campus,” said Tamika Daniel, President of Hall One Council.
The project is quite simple, there are two boxes placed in the first floor lobby, where people can discard their plastic bottles. Residents in Hall One have been responding positively to this attempt for a sustainable campus. Over the past two weeks, more than a hundred bottles haven been discarded in the boxes.
According to Tamika Daniel, this project was created because the 210 spring theme of the college is Sustainability. The project will continue until mid-May before students leave campus for summer recess. However, Hall One Council wants to continue to encourage people to recycle on campus. Some of the long and short term goals for their recycling project include:
- Promoting campus sustainability in simple steps
- Recycling bottles to help conserve energy
- Permanently installing a recycling program in the dormitories
As Hall One encourages ways to promote a healthy environment, let us all make efforts for a sustainable environment. Don’t let your carbon footprint be the only track you leave behind!
By: Jodi-Ann Rankine
Attempts to Reduce Campus Food Waste
There have been complaints on the quality of the campus food. Every day, meals are thrown in the garbage uneaten. According to consumers, the meals lack the quality they desire. This waste of food is a serious campus sustainability problem. Another issue is the one-time use items like utensils used in the cafeteria. What is the cafeteria staff doing to address this issue? So far, these changes have been visible:
- Suggestion boxes have been opened in order to improve service via public opinions
- Occasional “specials” on the weekends in order to expand the menu
- Reusable instruments are used for meals every once in a while
But even with these efforts, one has to wonder whether or not they actually work. Residents exclaimed these claims:
- The food is generally good from Friday to Saturday
- Food quality on weekdays, the busiest time, tends to be below average, even undesirable
- Breakfast and brunch meals are of higher quality than other meals
- The Panther’s Den rarely changes its menu, and therefore has a constant quality level, but most its food acceptable.
It seems that there is some effort made by the staff to keep the food from ending up in the trash. However, their efforts to reach out to their consumers seem only mildly successful. Some claim to never even have seen the suggestion box. Others state that the box is extremely noticeable, and that fliers are present in the cafeteria to notify students and other consumers.
But here's a thought: Is it acceptable that the food is only satisfactory on weekends? On a few select days, when the majority of classes are not held, and many, namely commuters, cannot enjoy it? Or should the cafeteria staff aim to improve the quality of their services at all times, not just when there are less people on campus?
By: Anthony Charles D. O'Neal
Water Waste is Risky Business
Our water supply is slowly decreasing and soon we won’t have any left. The reason behind this is that we are constantly wasting water unnecessarily and we don’t realize the damage we are causing by doing so. A lot of our water is polluted, and whatever isn’t, is being wasted without a care in the world.
People think that because of the climate change and the water levels increasing in the oceans and seas, we don’t have a problem with water waste. The truth of the matter is that the clean water supply we have is slowly decreasing. What happens then? A world without water isn’t even imaginable. People can’t survive without water – there will be chaos around the world. According to Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert, authors of the book Climate Change, the important water facts we should all know are:
- Americans now use 127 percent more water than we did in 1950 – but the population hasn’t increased by 127 percent.
- About 95 percent of the water entering our homes goes down the drain.
- Running the tap while brushing your teeth can waste 4 gallons of water.
- Older toilets can use 3 gallons of clean water with every flush, while new toilets use as little as 1 gallon.
- Leaky faucets dripping one drop per second can waste up to 2,700 gallons of water annually.
- A garden hose or sprinkler can use almost as much water in an hour as an average family of four uses in one day.
- Older dishwashers will use up to 13 gallons per wash cycle, whereas a modern, water-efficient model will use as little as 4 gallons.
- Some experts estimate that more than 50 percent of landscape water use goes to waste due to evaporation or runoff caused by over-watering.
- A lot of people in the world exist on 3 gallons of water per day or less – the amount we use in a flush of the toilet.
- Over a quarter of all the clean, drinkable water you use in your home is used to flush the toilets.
There are many things we can do in order to conserve water. We need to take initiative to improve our world, take care of the things we naturally have and stop taking things for granted. It is possible. We don’t need to pollute our water or our environment. It is up to us to take care of what we have, or we risk facing a huge catastrophe.
By: Ginan Kashman
Paper Waste = Nature Waste + Money Waste
Office paper is one of the most used supplies on any college campus. The Old Westbury Printing Center estimates that some 500 pages of paper are wasted in a single day. In a month, this amount becomes significant.
For us students, recycling paper is an easy job and doesn’t require any skill. For the school, it would be easy to install blue recycling containers on campus and sign a contract with New York authorities for its proper disposal. New York provides options for paper recycling and some NGO’s also provide money in return of paper.
Most of the paper will not be recycled but end up in the garbage and ultimately with the state authorities. While it may be hard to imagine, this paper could easily be used to make new paper. Recycling helps preserve the environment as it leads to fewer trees being cut down. Also, if forests remain untouched, wildlife gets to keep its natural habitats and bountiful floras and faunas will not be hurt.
Recycling will not only help nature, but using less paper would improve school finances. Old Westbury could spend less on paper and use the saved money to develop other areas. As the school is concerned about the budget, it should consider small ideas with potentially big results. The campus has about 3,500 students this year. Why not dedicate one day to paper recycling and help lower our budget?
Old Westbury has been a green college campus in the past few years and has this year initiated large-scale missions such as the Green Committee and the sustainability audit. Responsible students have kept tabs on and directed our school’s green quotient. But in the hurly-burly of events, pressing issues can easily be overlooked. We can see that Old Westbury has recognized the need for paper recycling and set up recycling bins in the college library – but much more can be done!
By: Harkaran Oberoi
Don't Be Mean - Go Green
The Sustainability Audit
The official spring theme website explains that the school is stepping back and trying to look at the big picture when it comes to sustainability on campus. The audit is defined as a “research project” that will track the energy use on campus and find ways to improve it. Among the more specific questions that will be addressed are:
- When you flip a light switch on campus, what is the consequence in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions?
- What is a “carbon footprint” and how much of it on campus comes from a typical vending machine?
- How much paper do we use? Where does it come from and where does it go?
- Where does our water come from and how do we use it? Where does it go after we’re done with it?
The audit will also investigate how Old Westbury compares to the other colleges when it comes to sustainability. Professor Maureen Dolan, Math/CIS Department, is the faculty coordinator of the project. Together with the project group, she will produce a report when the audit is complete.
The project is still accepting new participators from the student body. Interested students should contact Professor Dolan for specific information on joining the project.
One of the projects that are part of Old Westbury’s 2010 spring theme is a sustainability audit. According to Wikipedia:
Sustainability auditing and reporting are used to evaluate the sustainability performance of a company, organization, or other entity using various performance indicators.
It is closely related to an energy audit, which is defined by Wikipedia as:
An inspection, survey and analysis of energy flows for energy conservation in a building, process or system to reduce the amount of energy input into the system without negatively affecting the output(s).
In short, it is about conserving energy and making your energy use efficient, to become more sustainable both as regards to the environment and financially.
By: Viktoria Ejenas
One Drop Wasted
Biodegradables
Biodegradation is a scientific term for the biological destruction of materials. Biodegradables are thus, materials that can be naturally broken down and returned to nature. The concept of biodegradables hasn’t been addressed by the College at Old Westbury before, but the sustainability audit run for the Sustainability spring theme is now looking into it.
It is proved that each plastic bottle thrown away without recycling will be on Earth for millions of years. Plastic bottles are not the only form of waste like this, it is estimated that most everyday items thrown away are non-biodegradable. Surprisingly, there are often alternatives to these items that are biodegradable, but these are rarely used, since non-biodegradable materials are often cheaper and widely available.
Among examples found on our campus is food being thrown out, which could be handled a lot better. Food is one of the easiest forms of waste to biodegrade, through compost units. The compost produced could be used to fertilize the green areas of the campus. There is even systems to extract bio gas, which can be used as energy, from compost.
Because there is currently a lack of possibilities such as composts or recycling on campus, it is up to us students to try to solve the problem of non-biodegradable materials. As regards to the food, the best thing we can do is no throw it out but eat it.
In the case of another culprit on campus, plastics like eating utensils or coffee mug covers, there is plenty students can do. The use of re-usable mugs is a fantastic solution to this waste problem, a one-time spending that will ultimately result in protection of the earth. Plastic bags can easily be replaced by a stylish cloth bag, or just not picked up at all. Do you really need a plastic bag to carry your lunch and drink? Just grabbing one in each hand will leave no waste at all!
By: Harkaran Oberoi
Go Green by Going Blue
Dress sustainable with H&M
Sustainability has been an ongoing trend within the fashion industry, but that hasn’t meant that sustainable clothing has been accessible to consumers like us college students. Organic fabrics and techniques like environmentally friendly dyes have been found in collections from famous brands, often as a part of public relation strategies, or in small boutiques with their own miniature production. In both cases, the sustainability part of production has increased prices. However, just recently, organic clothing for both women and men has become available through the reasonably priced retail chain H&M.
On its website, H&M states: “Caring for our planet is not a trend - it is the way forward. We definitely have a long-term perspective, and aim to offer our customers products with sustainable materials and look at how we can run our entire business in a more sustainable way.” One of the chain’s spring collections, called the Garden Collection, is entirely made from organic and recycled materials – which is quite impressive because it looks no different than anything else in the store or any other store either for that matter. See examples from the collection below.
According to its website, H&M introduced organic cotton for the first time in 2004 and since 2008 aims to increase its use of organic cotton by 50 percent each year until 2013. The company has a broad view on sustainability that includes many different aspects. H&M makes an interesting point when stating, “Clothes don’t have to be made from sustainable materials in order to have a sustainability value.” H&M means that by designing fashion essentials that can be worn over years and mixed with trendier items, they support sustainability. The company also discusses how customers can be sustainable when caring for their clothes, aiming to be energy-efficient when choosing how (or if) to wash and tumble dry them. I find this view quite inspiring, that it’s not all about the products we buy but also about how we use them.
By: Viktoria Ejenas
