Environmental Sustainability Committee (ESC)
Friday October 6, 2004 12:00-1:00 pm
DOW 875 Conference Room

Meeting Minutes

Attendees: Mike, Theresa, Kristine, Naomi, Mella, Chris, Noel, Alexis

1. Subcommittee Goals

• Recycling: (met 09/29/04 12-1pm) (1) distribute bins in residence halls, (2) order Gaylord boxes efficiently; (3) maintain additional returnables can in the MUB; (4) create a sign-up for MUB returnables

• Parking & Alternative Transportation: Green Bike Program Meeting on October 13, 2004 Alumni House Basement Conference Room 4:30pm

• Energy Efficiency: (met 10/1/04) (1) Update, revise, and complete Greenprint Section, (2) integrate energy efficiency into coursework, (3) an educational campaign

• Green Buildings/Landscaping: (met 09/29/04 3-4pm) (1) complete Greenprint

Note: It was decided that the above two subcommittees will be combined & a title decided upon at a future meeting.

• Green Purchasing: (met 09/29/04 1-2pm) (1) Greenprint, (2) Policy Statement, (3) Influence departments to invest in double-sided printing capabilities

• Education & Public Relations: (met 10/1/04 1-2pm) (1) Brainstorm ideas (eric wants to do website work), (2) create EDS slides for each subcommittee topic, (3) maintain MUB kiosk, (4) Brown Bag luncheon for Green Purchasing – promote reuse with recycling

2. Next Subcommittee Responsibilities

• Green Print

• Email sent on 10/04/04 to respective chairs: Green Print sections and supporting research

• Chairs, please disseminate appropriate tasks to subcommittee members

• Subcommittee contributions due back at the ESC meeting on November 3, 2004

• Policy statement(s) for each subcommittee topic (policy folks can help/attend subcom meetings: Barry, Noel, Alexis, Naomi, Kristine, and Shal) – don’t need anything in writing yet; just giving a heads up!

3. Updates

• Dr. Goldfinger – Ecological Footprint (Fall Speaker) – still corresponding…

• Jim Brandenburg – Wolf Photography (Spring Speaker) – we got him for Earth Week!

• Board of Control Breakfast – Sustainability Presence (any comments/issues for Alexis to bring to the table?) – described campus sustainability indicators course project to ESC

• Website

• Shal met with Jessie Apel-Misfud, the website coordinator.

• Subcom member to organize web links by category - subcommittee & other relevant titles – can even place links in multiple categories. (Eric Tsai?)

• Shal & Al split some website improvement tasks – watch for changes soon!

• Renewable Energy Youth Program (as mentioned over email)

• Coordination by ESC of a week-long Summer Youth Program – interested ESC members are: Chris, Naomi, Al, (check Kristine’s email to see who she recommended) – an energy and resources curriculum developed by K.B. and the GEM center is getting beta-tested with 9^th graders right now. 

• MUB Can/Bottle Collection

• ESC or SfES or ESC subcom members to volunteer returning the cans/bottles for ESC funds once per week (alternate weeks so that only have to do it once in a while) – Mella will take care of setting up a sign-up for this Fall semester over email.

4. Upcoming Events:

• Get WISE – October 6, 2003 (Naomi & Al representing ESC & EEn)

• Student for Environmental Sustainability Social – Estivant Pines Hike & Picnic – October 16, 2004  10:30am – 2:30pm

• Michigan Tech’s Make a Difference Day - October 23, 2004 10:30am – 12:30pm

• ESC – Princess Point Clean-up – send folks to Nara Nature Trail if there are extra (Kristine)

• SfES & Aquanauts – Hancock Beach Clean-up

• For either, meet at the Rozsa Parking Lot.  Rides will be provided for Hancock Clean-up. 

Miscellaneous topics brought up during the meeting:

• Ask Barry to give an update about JCI/Dave T./Energy Audit (Theresa)
• Send a card to Dave T. for recent loss of Dad and Brother (Shal & Al)
• It seems as though a lot of ESC concerns are directed to system administrators.  Perhaps each subcommittee or the ESC as a whole should generate lists of questions to pose to the campus system administrators.  There are the following 5 system administration departments: West, Central, East, Forestry, SAS.  All five can be reached through the System Administrators Council (SAC). (Suggested by All)
• On the Greenprint documents, instead of creating an automatically updated revision date in the footer of the document, manually adjust the revision date.  [if no revisions are made and the document is opened, the date will change – falsely claiming a revision with the opening of the document] (suggested by Kristine)
• More on Policy: We need more feedback from the ‘umbrella’ statement sent to G.Mroz earlier this semester for use in his presentation.  The policy group needs to focus the task for the subcommittee members.
• Mtugreen-l is getting out of control with people trying to join that email Mike.  First, let’s check how it is used on the ESC website.  Also, create mtugreen-l purpose and guidelines for use.

Contact Information

If you have general questions or comments, please contact Shalini Suryanarayana (shalini@mtu.edu) and please put "ESC Question/Comment" in the subject line.

Electronic mail
If you have any questions on the recycling program at MTU: recyclinginfo-l@mtu.edu

General Information: shalini@mtu.edu

Webmaster: edoppwebmaster@mtu.edu