Free bike repairs on campus during Earth Day.
MIT’s Students for Global Sustainability was very active with on-campus outreach and education during the 2007-2008 academic year. Scattered throughout the year were many events to inform students about sustainable practices and encourage a sustainable MIT community.
GreenLiving@MIT
In order to promote green living, SfGS hosted a 2-part lecture/workshop series to inform students about some issues in sustainability.
EatingGreen focused on ‘why should I care?’ through 2 guest speakers, head chef at a local restaurant using locally sourced food and produce, and manager of Bon Appetit catering company, who discussed how they bring sustainability into their food choices in their food-oriented careers.
LeadingGreen focused on ‘what can I do?’ and was an interactive workshop/networking/discussion event to show people how to lead a sustainable life themselves and possibly take that further to share with other people. Both events drew more attention and attendees than we expected!!
Zero Waste Showcase
This was the 2nd “Zero Waste” party by SfGS, and had the additions of a small poster session of MIT student groups showcasing sustainability efforts, a live jazz band, and the newly installed “no-carbon computing” exercise bike which powers a laptop for people to try out. ‘Green’ raffle prizes donated by local vendors.
The event is exactly how the title describes- no waste!- and thus requests that attendees bring their own cups, all food was fingerfood and cloth napkins were used, food had no wrappers and the caterer took back the trays to reuse, and projected slideshow gave information about sustainability and waste-free communication. Energy used during the event was offset through the purchase of wind power credits.
As a follow-up, we polished up a Zero Waste Event Planning Guide to assist groups in minimizing the waste created from large functional events. We realized that there is no reason that *every* event can’t try to produce zero waste!!
For more information, please visit http://www.appropedia.org/MIT_ZeroWasteEvent_PlanningGuide_Wiki
Chocolate Sustainability Comparison
We hosted a newly starting non-profit group consisting of many MIT alums located at thoughtandmemory.org, which strives to help consumers make informed purchases based on an online database of environmental and social factors related to a company, and then connected to the consumer in the store by cell-phone texting. We learned how it worked, made recommendations, and added to the database with a focus on sustainable chocolate products.
Alliance for Global Sustainability Conference
The annual AGS conference came to MIT this year! Many SfGS members attended this, and we also put on several events for the many students attendees. We showcased posters, played pool together, hung around the town, and culminated with a dinner meeting to present and share ideas about our exciting projects at our respective schools.
Environmental Film Festival
For two weeks in January we showed 8 sustainable films that take a broader view of the environment, dealing with sustainability through films such as Gandhi and the Power of Community. Attendance was been good and people benefited from these free showings of life changing movies.
FreeMeet
SfGS held its first ever “FreeMeet” in February and was extremely positive received. The idea of this event is simple: Bring stuff to get rid of, take stuff for free. The event itself was simple too: we just needed a large room space, big paper to label the various categories of stuff, and a team of SfGS members working on shifts throughout the day-long event. Our target for the event was to promote reuse of goods, reduce waste and sending things to the landfill, and reduce unnecessary consumption of new goods. Likely there were more than 350 people who came by!
The hype even spread to Cambridge Community TV who came day-of and interviewed Kathreen Thome and Eva Cheung. http://www.cctvcambridge.org/FreeMeet. Leftover items at the end were donated and very little “junk” had to be begrudgingly thrown away!
Clean Energy Revolution
SfGS hosted a talk on a new energy economy by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, distinguished authors and environmental advocates reviewed in publications such as the New York Times and Wired Magazine. The attendance was over 80.
Earth Week at MIT
As is traditional for SfGS, we were heavily involved in the Earth Week festivities at MIT.
EcoExpo: MIT’s sustainability exhibition
For the 2nd annual EcoExpo we had ~20 presenters to showcase their environmental sustainability focused work with a new location to attract many passersbys. Same as last year, we printed the posters for the presenters so as to not have the poster-printing expense prevent student projects from participating, especially more grassroots efforts. Added to the event was a sit down dinner for all the presenters after the showcase to give them an opportunity to mingle and meet other sustainability-minded students and thus make possible bridges or collaborations between projects and lend support to one another. Thanks EcoExpo planning committee!
King Corn screening with producer Ian Cheney
During Earth Week a new food-focused subgroup of SfGS held a screening of the film “King Corn,” all about the excessive farming and use of corn and corn products in the US, and were able to get producer Ian Cheney to attend and have a lively talk after the film.
Earth Day bike repair
SfGS carried on the tradition of supporting eco-friendly commuting by offering free bike repair on Earth Day, provided by six bike-savvy SfGS members and affiliates. During the full 3 hours it was open there was a steady state of ~10 people in line for repairs!
FreeMeet II
Given the *huge* success of the first FreeMeet this year and many inquiries into another, SfGS hosted its second FreeMeet on May 9th, garnering even more attention given its timing at the end of the semester.
Looking ahead to next year, SfGS has a strong new executive council that has aims to bring our sustainability work beyond the MIT campus to do some true “community service, in particular through a program interacting with local schools. The council also aims to strengthen our connections with our international partnerships.
For more information on SfGS at MIT, please visit our Student Communities.
Mon, Jun 30, 2008
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