Pasta Night (April 2009)
West Wing Eco-Reps dished out free pasta at the dorm's weekly hangout. The pasta was made with organic ingredients and saved water by using less than half the suggested amount of water.
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Local Lunch (February 2009)
Local Lunch buffet sponsored by Eco-Reps. All the food and ingredients will came from the local Pittsburgh area. This cuts down on pollution caused by transportation, and it also helps the local community.
Throughout the day, various environmental groups tabled about environment-related issues. |
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Lights Off Dorm Activity (February 2009)
West Wing residents came down during the 10-Spot and made doorhangers to remind eachother to turn the lights off and save energy.
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Organic Food Tasting (March 2007)
New House residents came down and tasted the difference between organic and non-organic milk, apples, and ice cream.
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Eco-reps Newsletter (Feb 2007)
New House Eco-reps started Eco-reps newsletter. The first issue had some articles on global warming related issues.
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An Inconvenient Truth (Jan 2007)
To learn about global warming, Eco-reps invited residents to watch Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth.
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Light Bulb Exchange (Nov 2006)
New House residents brought incandescent light bulbs from their desk lamps to be exchanged with a fluorescent one.
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Recycling Magnet (Oct 2006)
Eco-reps got together and made refrigerator magnets to be distributed to residents. It showed what should be and can't be recycled.
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Climate Change (Apr 2006)
Corey Tucker presented her views at the Northeastern Climate Conference, on April 18 2006. Check out her presentation, linked to the right.
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Ethics, Values, and The Environment (Mar 2006)
Nelson Cheung presented his views on Ethics, Values, and The Environment at a recent conference at Harvard University. Check out his presentation, linked to the right.
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Blue Vinyl (Mar 2006)
We watched the 2002 Sundance Film Festival Cinematography Award Winner, Blue Vinyl, which explains that vinyl is a hazardous building supply because of its production and decomposition or lack there of.
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Painless Environmentalism (Mar 2006)
We spent sometime working through simple changes that could be made in people's lives, without great inconvenience, to make their actions more eco-friendly, and then advertised accordingly.
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Soy Cream Taste Test (Feb 2006)
New House residents brought their mugs and spoons down tot the kitchen to taste test strawberry and cookies and cream soy dream, soy delicious and 365 brand soy and ice creams. Surprising everyone but three out of the 25 taste testers would purchase soy cream having it tried it for the first time.
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Iron Chef (Feb 2006)
Steve from Global Studies and Lauren from McGill had to use organic bananas, as they were the special ingredient and cook a appetizer, main course and dessert with organic food purchased from Whole Foods.
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Consume Fish Responsibly (Feb 2006)
We collected a list of fish that are mercury free, abundant, and caught using environmentally friendly methods, so that you will know what to order next time you are at a seafood restaurant. Check out the report linked to the right.
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Screen Printing Shirts (Feb 2006)
Jesse made screens of our logo and then we all brought in an old shirt or we bought organic cotton ones and printed our own unique colored shirts.
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Making Cereal (Feb 2006)
We made homemade cereal from a raw food recipe at our training session. Its as easy as chopped almonds, raisins, lemon juice, cinnamon, honey and oats.
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House Insulation at Tech House (Jan 2006)
I insulated the windows of our house with toilet paper and tape to reduce the heat loss.
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Temperature Control in Margaret Morrison Apt's (Jan 2006)
I recorded the thermostats temperature reading of the rooms in our house and found that most people have their heat turned up too high. Everyone was very responsive in agreeing to keep our thermostats at a lower temperature.
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Pennsylvania Clean Energy Summit (Jan 2006)
We learned about the Kyoto Protocol and Domino Affect and that the earths sustainability is in the hands of politicians. Chisom Amichi presented her points on various efforts around the nation; her presentation is linked to the right.
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Day After Tomorrow Showing and Discussion (Jan 2006)
The movie The Day After Tomorrow was used to springboard a discussion on Climate Change. We answered residents questions like What causes climate change? And how does climate change affect us locally and globally. We all agreed it was difficult to brainstorm solutions to this complex issue but the event was a success.
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Green Leaves (Jan 2006)
GreenLeaves can be rewarded for recycling, conserving energy, conserving water or going to EcoEvents. Red leaves can also be put on doors if someone uses excessive resources. The person with the greenest door will receive a special prize from Eco-Reps.
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Mr. Clean's Got Nothing (Dec 2005)
One way to consume less is to use household projects as cleaning agents instead of commercial products. This was the basis of the Mr. Clean event at the Global Studies House. Residents got the chance to test out the cleaning capability of baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, etc on counter tops and silverware. To many residents, this idea was foreign, but getting to opportunity to try it out was fun nonetheless.
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Measuring Your Eco-Footprint (Dec 2005)
For the month of Consumption, Global Studies residents measured their ecological footprint through the myfootprint.org website. An eco-footprint is defined as the amount of square acreage one person takes up in a landfill. What was great about this quick quiz was that residents got to compare how sustainable they lived back in their hometown with how they are living at Carnegie Mellon. Many didn't realize how much more sustainable they are living now!
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Eco-Purchasing Guide (Dec 2005)
The Eco-Purchasing guide is helpful for any incoming student who wants to be environmentally conscious. It provides the student with information on where to buy eco-friendly appliances, food, household products, clothing, and paper, among other things.
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ReUse A Sneaker Shoe Drive (Dec 2005)
Every residence collected sneakers to send to Nike. They were using the old rubber soles to create brand new athletic tracks for schools around the world.
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Message In A Bottle (Dec 2005)
To conserve paper and reuse plastic, the apartments made alternative mailing containers out of old water bottles. They wrote letters to their friends and stamped them and put them in the mail.
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Tap Water v. Bottled Water (Nov 2005)
Abiola wrote about the pros and cons of both Pittsburgh tap water and bottled water. We agree that tap water is perfectly fine, but bottled water is still being sold everywhere on campus, despite all of our water fountains.
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Toilet Testing (Nov 2005)
We tested the toilets in Margaret Morrison Apartments by putting a drop of food coloring in the toilet and waited 8 seconds to see if the dye ended up in the toilet bowl. We found a few leaks and so filled out maintenance requests to have them fixed!
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Drinking Water Treatment Plant (Nov 2005)
We toured the drinking water facilities and learned about the added fluoride that Pittsburgh puts in their water supply and how it is considered a cheap way to whiten your teeth.
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Trip to ALCOSAN (Nov 2005)
We took a trip to the local wastewater treatment plant, ALCOSAN. It was a great experience and we learned a lot about what goes into the water that we spill back into the rivers, and what comes out of it originally.
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Toilet Tanks in Doherty Apt's (Nov 2005)
In older toilets, more than 1.6 gallons of water are used per flush and so to lessen that amount of water you can install toilet tanks. They are plastic bags filled with water that sit in your toilet tank and so your tank can use less water to fill up after each flush, however the pressure is the same as it would be without the toilet tank bag. A great solution, sacrificing nothing!
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Water Use Display (Nov 2005)
The rate that water comes out of the New House showers is 2.5 gallons per minute, but since that number is hard to understand we made an empty plastic bottle display and showcased it on the first floor. We did the same to illustrate that New House toilets use 1.6 gallons per flush.
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Do It In The Dark (Oct 2005)
Encouraged residents to turn computers off during the night in Mudge and Webster. We also told them how to set their preferences to put their monitor to sleep after being idle for 20 minutes.
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Kill-a-Watt (Oct 2005)
We went around to residents rooms and tested their microwaves and mini-refrigerators and laptops and desktops to see how many kilowatts they were drawing and compared them with each other.
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Light Bulb Exchange (Oct 2005)
We had close to 75 residents from New House, Forbes House, Global Studies and Doherty Apartments exchange their incandescent desk lamp light bulbs, even if they were working, for a compact fluorescent bulb that uses two-thirds less energy and last 10 times longer!
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Composting Magnets (Sept 2005)
Doherty Apts and Tech House made magnets explaining the dos and dont of composting so that they could be quickly educated on composting. When the weather gets warmer, and the composter is working at its best, we will hand out more.
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Compost Bin (Sept 2005)
Tech House installed an Earth Machine composting bin in their backyard to collect organic wastes in hopes of getting soil in the Summer.
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Personal Recycling Bins (Sept 2005)
Some residents in Webster and West Wing were not supplied with personal recycling bins at the beginning of the year and so their respective Eco-Reps made sure to deliver bins to their rooms.
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Recyling at Global Studies (Sept 2005)
The first Eco-Rep project at Global Studies was getting a central recycling bin for the house. Each resident had their own personal recycle bin, but there was no place to empty it out. By bringing a large recycling bin for glass, plastic and metal, to the main floor, recycling has become easy and now commonplace at the Global Studies House.
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Plastic Bag Recycling (Sept 2005)
Every time we go to the grocery store we bring home dozens of plastic bags in addition to our food. Many people simply throw these bags out, thus creating massive amounts of unnecessary trash. This year Doherty Apartments organized a grocery bag recycling program in which residents could drop off their plastic grocery bags at their Eco-Rep's door. The Eco-Rep then returned them to the store, allowing them to be recycled instead of just being thrown out, where it would clog our landfills!
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