The UHM Sustainability Council met from 3-4:15pm on Wednesday, September 19. Here’s a summary of the discussion:
* Free Garden Project. Gaye Chan provided an overview of the Free Garden Project, which is an outgrowth of the Eating in Public project (http://www.nomoola.com). The Free Garden is located between Building 37 and the Art Building. Go check it out; it’s really cool. It is now a collaboration with Chad Walton from the iLab (housed in Building 37). If you would like to learn about gardening and/or want to help out with the Free Garden, then contact Chad (cwalton@hawaii.edu) for details.
* Recycling. Roxanne Adams informed us that UHM now has 70 new recycling bins located across campus as a result of a grant from Keep America Beautiful and Kokua Foundation. Building and Grounds is working with Office of Sustainability to create appropriate signage. There is a significant problem on campus with people “contaminating” the recycling containers with non-recyclables (“trash”). If the recycling bins are not “clean”, then the benefits are mostly lost. Recycling in Hawaii is complicated by the fact that there are no recycling plants so the raw materials must be shipped elsewhere, making it less cost-effective. If you would like to get more involved with recycling efforts, please contact Matt Lynch (mklynch@hawaii.edu).
* E-Waste processing has now changed. It costs UHM $0.50/lb to dispose of e-waste. UHM recycles approximately 90,000 lbs of e-waste per year. ($1,000 per pallet, we are sending out 35 pallets this month alone.) . Any ideas?
* Arbor day is coming on Friday, November 2. It will be amazing as always: weed and talk, benefits of mulching, and free tree giveaways at the Campus Arboretum Office. You won’t want to miss this one. Details available at http://manoa.hawaii.edu/
* The Institute for Sustainability and Resiliency (http://manoa.hawaii.edu/isr/) is a newly formed “virtual” unit at UHM that functions as a kind of sister organization to the system-wide Office of Sustainability. ISR is initially focusing on sustainability-focused curriculum building. For Manoa, there is a cross-listing process to get courses listed as “SUST”, and as of Fall 2018, you can now see all the SUST-cross listed courses at once by going to:
https://www.sis.hawaii.edu/
Congrats to the faculty, staff, and students who have been working for years on sustainability curriculum; it is finally becoming a reality! ISR is heading up a cross-campus curriculum committee to shepherd this SUST designation. There is also a proposal for an undergraduate sustainability certificate currently in the Faculty Senate. We are wondering if there could be a service-learning component. Capstone experience? To learn more about ISR and to get information on getting your course cross-listed, please contact Makena Coffman (makenaka@hawaii.edu)
* Windward CC’s student sustainability group is working on an system-wide student sustainability initiative to augment the once-a-year Sustainability Summit gathering of students. An initial goal is to review the constitutions/bylaws of the various sustainability groups across the system to see if they can be brought into better alignment with the UH Executive Policy on Sustainability and to share best practices. If you are interested in helping with this effort, please contact Harvy King (harvy@hawaii.edu).