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April 2016
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Get Involved with Earth Week from April 18 to 22

Just in time for Earth Week 2016, this special issue of Hook ‘Em Green shares more about the people and programs shaping sustainability at UT Austin.  We hope these stories will inspire you to reconnect with the environment during this important time of year.  There will be plenty of opportunities to get into the spirit of Earth Week with a full range of events on campus.  Check out the calendar included in this issue.
Group Inspires Campus to Reduce and Reuse
 
(left to right) Tristan Baker and Rosa Moreleon,
Trash to Treasure co-coordinators, pause at a recent campus sale.
Over 18,000 pounds of items that could have ended up in the landfill were diverted and reused by students at UT Austin in 2015. Trash to Treasure, a student-run recycling and resale program, is responsible for this important action.
 
“Trash to Treasure provides the campus community a really easy and convenient way to shop for a large variety of goods, all for only one dollar,” explains Alyssa Halle-Schramm, staff advisor. While keeping useable items out the landfill, the program offers inexpensive goods and improves access to them.
 
Trash to Treasure operates through a series of donation drives and resale events. Each semester, students are encouraged to donate unwanted items during special donation drives. The collected items are stored, sorted and resold to the campus community at garage sale style events during the following semesters.
 
“While we call it Trash to Treasure, the stuff we sell is by no means trash,” says Tristan Baker, co-coordinator of the program. “We give these items a new life. I like to think of it as thrifting.” Any items that are not sold by the end of the spring semester are donated to local charities or recyclers.
 
Trash to Treasure also hosts themed sales throughout the year. When new students move in, a home goods sale is featured. “During the home goods sale for students, we sell a lot of regular household items like desk lamps and mirrors,” says Baker. “Last semester we sold every single desk lamp we had. Many students need simple things like that. For only a dollar you can get things that would’ve otherwise cost 20 to 30 times that at the store.”
 
Each summer, there is an office supply swap where faculty and staff can donate unwanted office supplies and exchange them for new, free supplies for their desks and offices. The swap also takes in e-waste and other specialty recycling items such as batteries. In summer 2015, the swap collected and recycled over 3,500 pounds of e-waste.
 
The success of the program requires planning and hard work. When co-coordinator Rosa Moreleon started with Trash to Treasure two years ago, the program had a much smaller scope. “The program has grown tremendously,” she says. “I’m proud how our work is leading us closer to UT’s Zero Waste goal.”
                                                                              
Now a senior, Moreleon is graduating this year. Reflecting on the program, she says, “As a student, when you participate in an organization, you are doing something you enjoy. But little do you realize how much of a difference you are actually making at the time. I never thought I was going to be part of major recycling efforts and contributing to a reuse mindset on campus. Joining the Trash to Treasure program was the best decision I’ve made here at UT Austin.”
Student Leader Receives President's Recognition
 
Nathalie Kip
Nathalie Kip, student manager for Green Labs, was recognized as one of only seven finalists for the 2015-2016 President’s Student Employee of the Year Award.
 
Kip, who is currently pursuing her master of science in community and regional planning through UT’s School of Architecture, oversees a team of four student workers. The student-led program is funded by the UT Green Fee, and was created from three individual Green Fee projects previously proposed by students and faculty, joined with Environmental Health & Safety’s existing Green Lab certification program. The combination of initiatives made the program more robust and easier to manage.
 
Kip was selected as the first student program manager in August, 2014, and the re-imagined program has seen great success throughout its first two years on campus. “The fact that we’re able to make such an obvious and positive impact on the sustainability of campus as a whole is inspirational to me,” says Kip. 
 
The Green Labs program centers around certification, which is annually renewed, but labs may also participate in select recycling initiatives without being certified. The opportunities are not only beneficial for the labs, but also the team members, who use their involvement to learn valuable skills throughout the experiential learning process. What started as a program of only 10 labs has grown to 33, with more in the queue to join.
 
“I believe that the interactions between the labs and students, and the fact that the leadership of the Office of Sustainability is so supportive, is really what has gotten this program so far,” emphasizes Kip.
 
The President’s student staff awards are selected based on five performance measures: reliability, quality of work, professionalism, initiative and uniqueness of contribution. Nathalie Kip’s supervisor, Karen Blaney, had no problem writing positive and enthusiastic words for every measure.
 
“Nathalie is an unprecedented combination of thoughtful, considerate, proactive and exacting,” describes Blaney. “It is bittersweet to know that she will graduate and leave the UT Office of Sustainability this summer. I sincerely hope that this experience has been as beneficial to her as it has been for us. Green Labs is now a national example among programs of its kind, thanks to Nathalie’s work.”
Students Bring Their Green
Thumbs to Campus Gardening

 
Members of Green Corps happily tend to their veggie garden behind Jester dormitory.
Photo courtesy of Green Corps.
Organic food grown on the UT Austin campus is more abundant than might be expected. In fact, some of the produce used in Jester and Kinsolving dining halls is grown in student-run gardens.
 
Green Corps, a student organization, provides the necessary support to maintain the gardens. A team of 10 students works two gardens, one outside of Jester dining hall and the other in the courtyard of Kinsolving. Currently, they are growing basil, peppers and tomatoes.
 
“The core responsibility for these students is to maintain the two gardens we have on campus, harvest them in a way that is deliverable and can be used by the kitchens,” explains Neil Kaufman, sustainability coordinator for the Division of Housing and Food Services (DHFS). “Most important, they’re also expected to reach out to the rest of the student body and educate them, not just on what Green Corps is and what we’re doing, but also the values and attitudes we have and want to share about sustainable, organic and local food.”
 
The student gardens play an important role at DHFS. Green Corps sends out forecasts on what is going to be available from the gardens. From those projections, the kitchen manager will place an order with them. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. And, the fact that the dining hall kitchens can say that some of the produce they are using comes from campus gardens has its own intrinsic value.
 
Hunter Mangrum, the previous DHFS sustainability coordinator, is credited with getting Green Corps going. His idea was to develop a co-curricular program that would benefit students as well as the community. He started with just a few students and over time it’s been built into a much larger program.
 
Jester’s garden was started in 2013 after the success of the Kinsolving garden, which had been built four years earlier to provide fresh produce to UT dining hall chefs.
 
“What we’ve done so far is great, but you can only do so much with our small gardens,” say Kaufman. “My hope for the immediate future is to bring all kinds of composting to the program. Then I want to open up the program to more individuals, expand back into academia, and make this program more of a part of the university so that we can provide access to more folks.
School Gives New Life to Campus-Removed Trees
 
Two of the assorted unique furniture pieces that can be found in the courtyard of UT Austin’s School of Nursing.
Trees are an essential part of the UT Austin campus. With campus expansion and new construction, it’s inevitable that some trees are destined to be removed.
 
What happens to the trees that are brought down? Mulching or land fill is the last resort. An operational goal of the university is to find practical uses for the wood.
 
Thanks to a collaborative effort between UT Austin’s School of Nursing and Project Management and Construction Services (PMCS), several displaced campus oak and pecan trees have found new forms. It’s an outstanding example of repurposing.
 
The courtyard space, which is at the heart of the School of Nursing’s building, has been the center of an ongoing renovation project. It was able to utilize reclaimed wood from trees that could not be transplanted from the grounds of the new Dell Medical School complex. Although transplanting trees is almost always the first method of choice for UT’s arborists, it is not always possible. 
 
“When the medical school was commissioned, there were a lot of trees scheduled to be displaced, piled up and inventoried. We started to think of ways that we could use the wood from those trees to meet our own needs,” says Nina Hammoudeh, project manager with PMCS. “The Nursing School was a logical choice to offer furniture crafted for its courtyard from our repurposed wood.”
 
The results have not only given new lives to those trees, but also the courtyard itself. “Previously when you walked in, this was just an empty space. From everywhere around the building, this empty, unused space was a major focal point,” explains Hammoudeh.
 
The UT carpentry shop was given creative license to design furniture for the space. Their charge was to bring the wood to life for long term use. The result is very unique pieces that have brought genuine warmth back to the courtyard. Before, there wasn’t a way to bring life and energy into the space,” says Hammoudeh. “We couldn’t plant any trees or greenery there due to limitations from sunlight, but I think this is a great compromise.”
 
Due to the successes of the current furniture pieces, the School of Nursing has commissioned several more. Soon, movable seating will join the picnic tables, benches and chairs already in place.
 
The goal of the courtyard is for people to be able to interact easily: sit, stand, walk, talk and move around this space. This furniture allows that to occur. As springtime continues, the hope is for individuals to utilize the space even more and come to appreciate the value of sustainability in action.
First Steps toward Zero Waste
 
The Zero Waste team digs into the trash to perform an audit of the waste stream from the several UT buildings.
With such a large number of people on campus each day, it’s not surprising that UT Austin produces a large amount of waste. Through a series of waste audits, the Campus Environmental Center Zero Waste team is taking an in-depth look into how to improve the campus waste stream. Their goal is to research the current system and figure out ways to make it more functional for faculty, staff and students.
 
The results of the early audits have been rather promising. Despite the amount of items thrown into recycling, compost and trash bins across campus, fewer buildings than expected are producing as much trash as expected.
 
“We’re finding that several campus buildings actually produce little to no trash at all,” says Jennifer Hobson, Zero Waste coordinator. “If we had compost in these buildings, and recycled correctly, there would be almost no trash.”
 
Hobson advocates the need to educate everyone on how to dispose of their waste. With proper education along with the expansion of the campus compost system, more than 75 percent of many buildings’ waste streams could be diverted through compost and recycling alone.
 
Those items that were found to often have been thrown away improperly, such as shredded paper and coffee cups, could easily have been thrown into their proper bins if individuals understood what was and wasn’t compostable and recyclable.
 
“I think all of us at UT need to know as much about recycling and compost as we do about addition and subtraction” says Vaishali Jayaraman, Zero Waste team member. “It’s simple, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature.”
 
With the recycling data they will collect throughout the remainder of the spring semester, the team hopes to be able to designate specific areas on campus to meet different waste disposal needs.
 
Hobson explains that the trash that’s being thrown away on campus is all ‘solvable’ trash. “It’s stuff that’s bought on campus and disposed of on campus. If we work with vendors, cater to the specific waste disposal needs of different campus areas, and expand our compost system, we will be able to achieve our zero waste goal.”
Earth Week Calendar
Click to enlarge or download.

Earth Week Staff Celebration Luncheon This Week
All UT staff are invited to attend this informative and fun program on April 20 from noon to
1 p.m. in the San Jacinto Residence Hall meeting room. Come find out about some of the innovative ways that sustainability is being implemented on campus.


The 2016 Chelsea Santucci Greenovation
Award
Given to UT Green Labs from Kimberly-Clark
.
This award is a well-deserved recognition of the program’s efforts to successfully divert significant amounts of solid waste from landfills over the past year. The Green Labs team diverted 2081 pounds or 1 ton of glove waste from landfills in 2015 utilizing the RightCycle recycling program. That’s quite an accomplishment.


Getting to Green Author Coming to UT Austin:
Thursday, April 28, 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., School of Architecture, GOL 3.120. UGS and the Office of Sustainability present the Earth Month Dialogue with author Fred Rich.  His new book, Getting to Green, will be the focus of the evening’s program and will include a panel discussion and audience Q&A.

Watch the video #keepUTgreen. 
Then share your ideas, get tips and join the conversation during Earth Month. Spread the word about #keepUTgreen.

 
The Office of Sustainability at The University of Texas at Austin collaborates to advance ideas and programs that transform the physical, social and educational environments of campus for the enduring benefit of society and the planet.
 
Editor Laura Boss   Designer Heather Patterson    Communications Coordinator  Merry Bateman
Copyright © 2016 Office of Sustainability, All rights reserved.


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