Inside this issue:

Dump & Run 1

UAlbany receives funding to study transportation sys-tem

2

New ridesharing program 2

ERASE the Waste! 3

Sustainability Coun-cil Finishes their Inaugural Year

4

Take Your Child to Work Day 4

EAP Shredding & RecycleMania Win-ners

5

Tips for a Green Summer 5

Local Food Sympo-sium 6

Earth Day 6

Environmental Sus-tainability House 6

The Dump & Run is returning this year, providing students with another opportu-nity to donate their unwanted but still usable items including household goods, furniture, electronics, clothing and un-opened nonperishable food. Please leave out any broken or heavily soiled materi-als. All items will be donated to local charities. The drop off times and loca-tions are as follows: Alumni Quad on May 13th & 14th from 10am and 3pm Uptown (Quads and Apartments) May 14th & 15th from 10am and 3pm We need volunteers! End the semester by doing something good for our commu-nity and volunteer to help run the Dump & Run. We are looking for volunteers to help manage donations in 1-2 hour blocks for the times mentioned above. We also need volunteers to transport items, which would be done from 3-5pm. To volunteer, visit: http://www.albany.edu/gogreen/dumpandrun.shtml Complete the form at the bottom of the page and we’ll add you to the schedule. E-mail gogreen@albany.edu with any questions or suggestions.

Dump & Run

May 2009 Volume 2, Issue 6

Office of Environmental Sustainability

Sustainability Bulletin

UAlbany receives funding to study transportation system

UAlbany shuttles and CDTA buses that run up and down Washington Avenue and Western Avenue that students, faculty and staff can ride for free, yet many people do not take ad-vantage of this option. The study will hopefully identify why more of us do not use those buses, along with other various ways to encourage group rather than single person transporta-tion. The study will last eighteen months, and will conclude in the fall of 2010.

portation and identify the vehicle pat-terns of our community members. By understanding our travel patterns, al-

ternative transporta-tion can be made more easily accessi-ble and efficient, thus increasing the number of UAlbany community mem-bers using these

modes of transportation. As a result, the university can drastically reduce its carbon footprint. There are several

Page 2 Sustainability Bulletin

Users must sign on using their @albany.edu or @uamail.albany.edu e-mail address to register on the web-site, thus restricting access to only members of the UAlbany community.

In the fall, carpooling will get easier for the UAlbany community thanks to Zipride, a ride sharing program. On the website, www.albany.zipride.com, people can post requests for rides or requests for riders. Whether it is a commute to campus, a trip back at home, or even a trip to a store, no commute is too small or big to post on Zipride.

Users get ratings by the people whom they carpool with and Zipride sets up some guidelines for both driver and passenger. The website is up and run-ning now, so check out www.albany.zipride.com for more information.

New ridesharing program

There is a large amount of single per-son commuters coming to our campus daily. In an effort to reduce the amount of miles driven by UAl-bany community members, the NYS Energy Re-search and Devel-opment Authority, along with the NYS Department of Transportation has given us $97,290 in funding to research alternative methods of trans-

We are interested in knowing what offices are doing to reduce their impact on the environment. E-mail us what your office is doing to help at go-green@albany.edu. Linda K. P. Mertz from the School of Social Welfare told us what her office is doing to go green. Their faculty announcements are sent out through e-mail, rather than handing out hard copies. She uses the clean side of used paper to print out scrap copies, rather than wasting clean paper. She also posts articles and handouts on ERes or Blackboard, rather than hand-ing out a hard copy to every student. These are all great ways to reduce your impact, and we applaud your efforts!

ERASE the Waste!

As the school year comes to an end, so does the first year of the Sustain-ability Council and a successful first year it was. Council members took part in various programs such as: Earth Day, Recycling Audits, Take Your Child to Work Day and several individual programs in the residence halls. RA Carin Puza of State Quad created a “Sustainable Jeopardy” game. RA Arefur Chowdhury, also of State Quad, held an information session on how to fight global warm-ing. RA Karina Cuenca of Indian Quad held a “Whose Bin is Better?”

contest, where residents decorated cardboard boxes to serve as recycling bins in a competition to see who could create the best looking one. Two major programs initiated by the Sustainability Council that will come into effect next year are UAlbany Freecycle and the Bike Share. UAl-bany Freecycle allows student to post items they no longer want or need on the group’s website, in the hopes of finding a new life for that item. All items are either traded or given away for free.

Joining the Freecycle group’s site is very easy, all you do is go to: www.groups.google.com/group/ualbany-freecycle, click “join” on the front page, fill out your information and you are all set to start. The Bike Share is also coming in the fall, giv-ing students an opportunity to rent a bike for a day from their Quad Office. We would like to congratulate all thirty-five council members for a very successful first year.

Sustainability Council Finishes Their Inaugural Year

Volume 2, Issue 6 Page 3

Page 4 Sustainability Bulletin

Take Your Child to Work Day was April 16th and the children of our fac-ulty and staff took part in some “Green Activities.” Children were presented with a few simple things that they can do to reduce their impact on the Earth, such as spending more time outside and less with the televi-sion or video games! The children also created art from recycled paper, made magnets with bottle caps, made button bracelets and created boxes out of old greeting cards. This would not have been possible without our stu-dent volunteers. Thank you to Danny Malashock, Karina Cuenca, Tina Daniels, Hilary Closs, Marlene Rodriquez, Jonathon Wiggins, Brittni Laterza and Toni Cameron.

Take Your Child To Work Day

Magnets made from recycled bottle caps, magazines, and other materials.

On Arbor Day, the Employee Assistance Program and the Office of Environmental Sustainability sponsored a shredding event. Over two tons of papers were collected from 57 faculty and staff members from various departments. The athlet-ics department contributed about twenty boxes of paper and the bookstore supplied about eighty! Thank you to all who participated! Our combined efforts brought in nearly five thousand pounds of paper which is the equivalent of 24 trees, or 1.6 metric tons of carbon emissions.

EAP Shredding & RecycleMania Winners

Tips for a Green Summer

Volume 2, Issue 6 Page 5

Here are some tips for a healthy, sustainable and more energy conscious summer.

Indian Quad was our winner of RecycleMania for the third year in a row. Above, Mary Ellen Mallia is handing over the trophy to Residential Director Karla Jaime and Resi-dential Assistant Shane Ryan.

A chocolate fountain in the dining hall was one of the re-wards Indian Quad received for winning this year’s Recy-cleMania contest.

• One of the harmful effects humans face as a result of o-zone depletion is increased UV rays coming through the atmosphere, so make sure you protect yourself and wear sunscreen.

• Don’t forget to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water, and use a refillable bottle. It saves you money, while also reducing waste.

• Plant a small organic vegetable garden and enjoy healthy produce. Just make sure to use environmen-tally friendly fertilizer, such as manure.

• For every one degree that your air conditioner gets turned up, you save 3% on your electric bill.

• Enjoy the fresh air! When possible, open up your windows. Cross-ventilation in a room brings in fresh air, while also cooling down the room.

• Bike or walk, instead of driving. Sometimes our desti-nations are close, and in the summer biking or walking to your destination is a great way to help the environ-ment, and help out your body!

• The average person gains two and a half pounds each year. By walking four flights of steps daily, a person can offset the weight gain.

For the past 12,000 years people have eaten local food. But in today’s mod-ern world, our food comes from fur-ther and further locations. On April 2nd, UAlbany hosted a local food sym-posium that focused on learning how to get more local foods to college stu-dents. Our very own Professor Klep-pel in the Biology department helped organize the event, which is one of two phases in the UAlbany’s Local Foods on Campus project. Our cam-pus produces 20,000 meals a day, which has potentially large benefits for the local economy. Kathleen Har-ris of the North East Livestock Proc-essing Service Company spoke at the event. This company helps local

farmers in the Northeast find highly reputable processors at cheaper costs. She commented that: “the University at Al-bany has brought new meaning to the sustain-ability movement. The combined efforts of the Chartwells purchasing staff, Executive chef and the Univer-sity Green Commerce committee (both stu-dents and faculty) have worked tire-lessly to move University at Albany in the right direction while leading other colleges and universities to do the same for their communities, their

farmers and their environment.” Other speakers were our office’s

Mary Ellen Mallia, Ralph Lembo who is the regional manager at Chartwells, Ryan Poole, Executive Chef at Chartwellls, Anthony Carioto, President of Carioto Produce, Rich-ard Ball, Co-owner of Schoharie Farms, Jim Hyland, President of

Winter Sun Farms and Shannon Hayes, the author of the Grassfed Gourmet and Farmer and the Grill.

Local Food Symposium

Page 6 Sustainability Bulletin

April 22nd was Earth Day and the Of-fice of Environmental Sustainability hosted Sustain 2009, a series of events in order to celebrate the day. The morning began with a roundtable discussion on carbon footprints that featured panelists such as: Rick Tuers from the Department of Environ-mental Conservation, Jodi Smits Anderson of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, Professor George Robinson, Professor Andrei Lapenas, and Mary Ellen Mallia from the University. Alan Belensz of the New York State Department of Envi-ronmental Conservation Office of Cli-mate Change, was the keynote speaker. ATV provided webcasting

services for his speech which focused on climate change and the new energy economy. Kathy Macri of New York State Environmental Facilities Corpo-ration hosted a workshop that dealt with water footprints. The day wrapped up with a panel on green jobs. Participants on the panel in-cluded Penny Hill, Regional Director

at the Workforce Development Insti-tute, Jeff Jones, Director of the Up-state NY Apollo Alliance, Jim Devine of Advance Energy Panels and Bill Jordan of Jordan Energy. Exhibitors included: Interfaith Power & Light, Honest Weight Food Corp, Pine Bush Discovery Center, Old Songs, NYPIRG, UAlbany Students for Sus-tainability, Workforce Development Institute and New York State Envi-ronmental Facilities Corporation. Thank you to all who made this Earth Day a success!

Earth Day

Professor Kleppel

dents for Sustainability campus group are required tasks for individuals re-siding in the house. It is hoped that living in these communities will raise awareness and activism for its resi-dents that they can spread to the rest of the university.

Starting in the fall 2009, there will be a new Living Learning Community dedicated to environmental sustain-ability. With two locations, one in Hamilton Hall, Colonial Quad and the other in Tuscarora Hall, Indian Quad both Freshmen and Upper-class stu-dents can reside in these theme houses. The electricity usage of house members will be metered sepa-rately from the rest of the building in an attempt to conserve and educate about energy usage. Members will also be encouraged to conserve water, maintain healthy diets and lifestyles, and to recycle. Calculating their per-sonal carbon footprint, and attending meetings hosted by the UAlbany Stu-

Coming this Fall Environmental Sustainability House

Volume 2, Issue 6 Page 7

Newsletter Contributors Contributing authors:

Jessica Wysocki ‘10 Matt Ryan ’08, ‘10 Graphics/PDF

Office of Environmental Sustainability

University at Albany 1400 Washington Ave Albany, NY 12222

Phone:

(518) 956-8120

Fax:

(518) 956-8121

E-Mail: mmallia@uamail.albany.edu

Web Site: www.albany.edu/gogreen

More information regarding the Environmental Sustainability House can be found on Residential Life’s website:

http://www.albany.edu/housing/living/learning/index.html

Photos from Clean-up Day