Here comes Earth Day!

Sorry folks, haven't posted a blog in quite some time! Thought I would share some Earth Day information and activities planned for MCC Southern/Dobson location.

First, the MCC celebration information...

We can't fit everything we want to celebrate into just one day, so we are going to have THREE Earth Days this year. We'll have different activities each day, so make sure to stop by the Clock Tower Lawn all three days so you don't miss anything. Heads up...there will be some FREE STUFF available on all three days.

Wednesday, April 20th - We kick off Earth Days with a mini farmer's market. Between 10am-2pm, stop by the Clock Tower Lawn area and visit some local vendors selling everything from crepes to cupcakes, household items to honey, and lots of stuff in between. Please bring cash.

Thursday, April 21st - The Student Life Department is offering STUDENTS a FREE SALAD BAR for lunch! Stop in for a healthy lunch and visit our displays and information tables. The student government also has something neat to giveaway to a few hundred students...

Friday, April 22nd - Time to do your spring cleaning now, because on 4/22, students and employees can bring their unwanted but usable stuff to the Clock Tower lawn area so that others can find a treasure in things that you consider trash. The more people that bring stuff, the more there will be to choose from. It will be just like a yardsale...but FREE! Do not bring anything that can't be easily carried by one person; this means small stuff only, like books, clothing, toys, games, sporting equipment, home decorations, etc. Anything left at the end of the day will be donated to local charity organizations and community partners.

What are we celebrating? Our home planet, of course. It's the only planet we can live on, so we need to bring awareness to ways to protect what we have and make sure it all lasts long enough for future generations to have access as well. The coal and oil we use for electricity now won't last forever. Sick of high gas prices? Find ways to avoid relying on oil, namely foreign oil, and find ways to keep your money in your own pocket. Do you like trees and shade? Well, you need to know ways to conserve paper so we can stop chopping down all those beautiful, lush, and old forests. You can learn all this and more right here at MCC.

Thanks for being green, and we hope to see you for Earth Days!


Here is some history on Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency:

According to Flags of the World, the Ecology Flag was created by cartoonist Ron Cobb, published on November 7, 1969, in the Los Angeles Free Press. The symbol is a combination of the letters "E" and "O" taken from the words "Environment" and "Organism," respectively. The flag is patterned after the United States' flag, with thirteen alternating-green-and-whites stripes.

On April 22, 1970, Earth Day marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans participated. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeway and expressway revolts, the loss of wilderness, and air pollution suddenly realized they shared common values.

Earth Day proved popular in the United States and around the world. The first Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. More importantly, it brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform.

The EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon and began operation on December 3, 1970. Prior to the establishment of the EPA, the federal government was not structured to comprehensively regulate environmental pollutants.

The EPA employs 17,000 people in headquarters program offices, 10 regional offices, and 27 laboratories across the country. More than half of its staff are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other groups include legal, public affairs, financial, and computer specialists.

The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the primary responsibility for setting and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and Native American tribes. EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures.

The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.

Domestic Violence Awareness

October was both Breast Cancer Awareness month and Domestic Violence Awareness month. I'm sure you saw all the 'pink' around for the Breast Cancer Awareness, so I wanted to focus this blog entry on Domestic Violence Awareness and a sustainability related project that MCC Southern/Dobson is doing between now and the end of the semester.

Many people don't know that when a woman finally decides to leave an abusive relationship, that is the hardest part she will face. She may lose her home, her job (from missing work due to hospitalizations or embarrassing bruises), many of her personal items and maybe even her vehicle, her childcare or even her children, and many of her friends and emotional support (neighbors, etc.). She will have to try to find a place to stay and help reestablish herself on her own. She will undoubtedly have self-esteem problems and poor direction or goals.  Many women leave their situation and don't have the time or the means to take enough of the correct clothing. For that reason, the MCC Women's Leadership Group, the MCC Career and Reentry Center, and the MCC Sustainability Team are collaborating on a project to ensure that these women have the clothing they need to get or keep their jobs. This can eliminate just a small amount of the stress that goes along with their situation. This project also involves Cup O' Karma (the wonderful coffee shop across Southern from MCC), and the Support, Education, Empowerment & DirectionS (SEEDs) program to which all of their proceeds are donated. For more information on the coffee shop and support program, click here: SEEDS and here Cup O' Karma

Our clothing drive begins on Monday November 1 and the collection bins will be in the Library. There will be bins to place purses, women's shoes, accessories (jewelry, belts, scarves), toiletries, and a clothing rack for suits, skirts, pants, and blouses. You can also support the effort by stopping in for coffee or snacks at Cup O' Karma Community Cafe for a Cause at 1710 W Southern in Mesa.

Domestic violence isn't just about battered women. The victims can be men, women, children, or even beloved pets. The abusers can be parents, siblings, significant others, or adult children. The Bravery Project is a local organization to support survivors of domestic violence. On their website, you can read many stories of survivors, and unfortunately, some stories are of the surviving family members of victims that did not survive their abuse. Please take a few minutes to click here to read the stories and see the scope of the violence of abuse: The Bravery Project  You may even know someone that is currently experiencing problems. You should be there to listen and support them, and help them when they are ready to leave their situation. But most of all, you need to be aware that this sort of abuse is happening all around you, every day.

Public Service Announcement Please view this powerful PSA and remember the message.

New and fun projects coming up

Hi all you greenies! It's been awhile since a post, so I thought I would take a few moments to tell you about a few fun things we have coming up at MCC Southern/Dobson campus.

First up, we'll have Homecoming on Saturday, October 23. MCC has signed up to participate in a national recycling challenge at our Homecoming game. It's called the EPA Game Day Recycling Challenge.

More than 80 colleges and universities (plus our one lone community college / sole Arizona school!) are participating in a competition to see who can divert the most waste from one football game in October. We haven't done recycling at the stadium before, so we are going to try it out for the first time as part of this challenge and we'll see how we do. If you think about it, a lot of water and juice bottles are tossed out at the stadium all the time: during games, events, and even during the day when community members come to run, walk, and exercise. Leading up the game day, we hope to roll out some information to get folks aware and interested. At the game, we'll reduce the number of trash cans available and pair up the ones that are left with a recycling bin, creating several recycling stations. We'll have some fun games and prizes too. We'll need someone at the main gate letting all entrants know about the recycling competition and encouraging them to recycle. We'll also need some folks to be at the recycling stations and make sure the right waste goes to the right place. If YOU are interested in volunteering before or during the game, contact us at recycle@mcmail.maricopa.edu and we'll be in touch with more information.

DUMPSTER DIVE, NUMBER FIVE

Our 5th Annual Dumpster Dive is soon approaching, this year's date is Friday, November 19. This coincides with America Recycles Day earlier in the week. If you haven't been to our Dumpster Dive before, it's quite fun and a big eye-opener (so we have been told!). We sort through one 24-hour period worth of trash generated at the Southern/Dobson campus to find out what we are sending off to the landfill. Everyone is always surprised at how much trash is generated at MCC in just one day, and about all the things that are not being recycled but could have been. Here's a link to some photos from last years, and the captions include some of the statistics and info gathered. Dumpster Dive 2009 

Here are some of the comments about last year's Dumpster Dive:

• It was a very interesting experience. I never knew how much material that was not recyclable was put into recycling bins. I know a lot more about which materials are recyclable and I respect the process of it. 
• It was very shocking to see how much recyclable material was mixed with regular trash. I learned that it doesn’t take much to recycle and everyone should! It was a satisfying feeling to know I was of help for the project.
• That was actually more fun than I thought. If you worked around a good group of people, the time flies and you definitely have more fun. People really don’t think before they throw stuff away. We need to watch ourselves.
• I had fun. It’s good to get out of the class and go to the next level, even though it was digging through garbage. It was good to see so many people out helping out in the Dumpster Dive. There were some rather unpleasant items found. But all in all it was a somewhat clean process.
• When you throw something away you never really think about it again. For this reason alone, it might be a beneficial requirement for all school children to experience a dumpster dive day. If you have to think about trash still existing, after you're through with it, then you will be more conscientious about how you behave, with regards to consuming and recycling.

There were dozens more comments, but these are the types of things people are saying after they experience the Dumpster Dive. We hope you can come join us this year and see for yourself how important it is to police our waste and take care of our resources. Even if you don't have time to help us out, please at least wander by the lawns by the Clock Tower to see how it's going. Even 5 minutes there will teach you something! We'll have a few info tables as well, like City of Mesa and SRP.

Come volunteer for Dumpster Dive. We have both 'clean' and 'dirty' jobs, but both are very fun. The event runs from 8am-noon, but we could also use help at 7am and from 12-2pm with set-up and clean-up. Contact recycle@mc.maricopa.edu for more information.

We hope you volunteer or show up at one or both events. Recycling is VERY important; it protects the limited resources that this planet has to offer, and it reduces the amount of stuff that we bury in the ground and try to forget about.

Please, share this blog with our new 'share' feature below, and comment here and let us know what you think of our events and about recycling in general!

That's it for this post. Have a wonderful week!

Going green costs me more, right?

Many people say that they don't make 'green' choices because "it costs more". But does it really?

 

One of the concepts of being 'green' or doing things in an eco-friendly manner involves something called life-cycle analysis. This means that you take into account the costs of something over its lifetime, not just the cost to buy it. A good example is compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). When you go to the store, you see the regular ol' bulbs that are a dollar or less each, and next to them you see the CFL bulbs marked above $3 each. The 'old' way of thinking is to buy the cheaper bulb because, well, it costs less. But when you think 'green', you consider the whole life cycle of that bulb you are buying. The chart at this link (Bulb cost analysis) shows you the TRUE cost of a CFL vs. the cost of an old-style bulb. The bulb you thought was cheaper because it was less than a dollar is really costing you FOUR TIMES MORE than if you had bought that $3 bulb. Why on earth would you want to pay four times more for each bulb in your home?

 

 

 

 

Here's more proof that 'green' costs less.

Water conservation SAVES MONEY. If you use the water you pay for more wisely, you will use less.

• Take shorter showers (no baths). Turn water off while you soap up, shave, and wash hair.
• Fix leaks
• Cleaning your patio? Use a broom, not the hose
• Don't water the yard or garden during the hottest part of the day; most of it will evaporate. Wait until evening hours and make sure it's done before the sun comes up
• Catch rainwater and use it for the yard. The Phoenix Permaculture Guild  http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/events offers a class where you will make your own rain barrel and take it home with you.
• Reuse other types of water. For example, after you boil water to make pasta, allow the water to drain into another pot. After it is cool, use it for your plants, pets, or trees. Extra big clumps of ice in the freezer? Don't throw it in the sink to get rid of it, put it by a tree or in the dog's water bowl.
• Turn off the tap when you are soaping up your hands and brushing your teeth.
• Does your shower need to run for a minute to warm up? If so, catch that water in a bucket and use it elsewhere.
• Stop buying bottled water! All you are paying for is the brand, packaging, and shipping so that a company can make money. Buy a reusable bottle. Use a carbon filter on your tap or directly on the reusable bottle.

Energy conservation SAVES money. Use less, spend less.

• Turn your thermostat up a degree or two and take advantage of your ceiling fans instead.
• Don't leave ceiling fans on if no one is in the room. The fans cool your skin, not the room.
• If you don't need the light on for something, don't turn it on. Take advantage of natural light.
• Don't use the heat cycle on your dishwasher to dry the dishes.
• Use a toaster oven instead of the big oven whenever possible.
• Wash clothes in cold water.
• Set your water heater to 120 instead of 140
• Unplug things that aren't needed. After you use the toaster, unplug it. After your phone is charged, unplug it.

BUY SMART. Everyone knows a used car costs less. That same concept applies to a lot of other things too.

• Books. Use the library; it's FREE. They have books, music, and movies.
• Secondhand stores. Clothing, household items, books, and toys and games are some things you can get for quite a bargain at a secondhand store. If the kids are going to outgrow that shirt in a month or two, why not get one at the secondhand store that was probably only used for a month or two by some other kid?! And getting some board games for the family will also help save on spending for costly outings like going to the movies. Just stay home and have some fun interacting with your family over a game instead!
• Furniture. Check Craigslist, Freecycle.com, or secondhand stores. You can get great desks, chairs, tables, and wall hangings, and other decorative items at great prices.
• Groceries. Buy generic when brand isn't an issue, and use coupons. Just 10 minutes of clipping coupons from the Sunday paper can save you a lot of money on your monthly grocery bill. Keep an eye out for sales on items you have coupons for, and for double and triple coupon days. A triple coupon often saves you $1 per each item!
• Stop buying a plain old coffee from a store or vendor every day. Make your own.
• Stop going out to lunch all the time. Take your lunch with you to work.
• Learn how to make your own gifts, and use reusable types of wrapping (gift bags, fabric).
• Research re-use. The blog that we follow (Blah-to-Tada) gives some great examples of how to reuse things from around the house in neat ways.
• Be creative. See a scratched up wooden coffee table at Goodwill? Buy it, take it home, sand the top, and restain it. A little work and a few bucks can save you hundreds over the cost of a brand new table, and you will have the satisfaction of displaying your handiwork.
• Buy sponges and use them instead of paper towels. You'll create less waste and save on buying something you just throw away anyway. You can toss the sponge in the dishwasher when it needs cleaning so you can get more use out of it.
• Grow your own veggies so you don't have to buy them. If you do buy them, buy from a farmer's market instead of grocery store.

These are just dozens of tips out of millions out there. Take 15 minutes each day to research Re-Use ideas on the internet, or spend a weekend morning wandering through your local Goodwill store. You'll be amazed at what you can find and the money you can save by GOING GREEN!!!

Check this out!

Hey all, keep an eye on this blog http://projectcompost.blogspot.com/
This is an MCC student that is working on developing a composting project for the school! She's going to journal her progress on her blog.

Oil, Oil, Everywhere

The United States uses about 700 million gallons of oil every day.
The world uses nearly 3 billion gallons each day.
You may not be aware of all the ways we use oil. We use it:

• to fuel our cars, trucks, and buses, and to heat our houses.
• to lubricate machinery large and small, such as bicycles or printing presses.
• to make the asphalt we use to pave our roads.
• to make plastics, such as the toys we play with and the portable radios or CD players we listen to.
• to make medicines, ink, fertilizers, pesticides, paints, varnishes, and electricity.

(Source: noaa.gov)

Unfortunately, scientists know from experience about how oil spills affect wildlife. Hopefully this blog will give you some insight into that, too.

There are lots of kinds of oil, categorized by the 'light' kinds or the 'heavy' kinds. The lightest, like auto and jet fuels, evaporate quickly after a spill and usually damage the wildlife only in the upper layers of water. The heavier oils stay on the water, in the water, and move with the currents that carry them even further out to sea or to the land, where they contaminate even more species of plants and wildlife.

The harm to the wildlife can be from physical contact on their feathers, fur, and skin. It weights the animals down and makes it hard for them to fly, swim, and walk, thus leaving them without their defenses or normal functional abilities. They can ingest oil, either directly or by eating other things on the food chain that have been coated with or ingested the oil. They can also inhale and absorb the oil, making it hard or impossible to breathe.

The oil can affect algae, plankton, fish, mammals, birds, and plants. This destroys entire food chains. Even birds that are nowhere near the spill can migrate, eat oil-contaminated plants or animals while foraging, and then become harmed themselves. The contaminants can affect shell formation of invertebrates. Even if wildlife survives the initial contamination, contamination can last decades, affecting reproduction and future wildlife.
Source for all above is http://alaska.fws.gov/media/unalaska/Oil%20Spill%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

According to http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/facts/qanda.cfm
The Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska released approximately 11 million gallons (257,000 barrels) of oil. The amount of spilled oil is roughly equivalent to 17 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Approximately 1,300 miles of shoreline was impacted. It took more than four summers of cleanup efforts before the effort was called off. Not all beaches were cleaned and some beaches remain oiled today. At its peak the cleanup effort included 10,000 workers, about 1,000 boats and roughly 100 airplanes and helicopters. Exxon says it spent about $2.1 billion on the cleanup effort. The carcasses of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters were found after the spill, but since most carcasses sink, this is considered to be a small fraction of the actual death toll. The best estimates are: 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs. As of 2001 (12 years after the spill), survey results indicate a total area of approximately 20 acres of shoreline in Prince William Sound are still contaminated with oil. Oil was found at 58 percent of the 91 sites assessed.
After reading all of that, know that the Exxon Valdez spill is not even in the top 50 worst spills worldwide.

  

The current spill in the news (after the explosion and sinking of a BP oil well off the Gulf of Mexico) is not the first spill for BP. In fact, while the Exxon Valdez spill is well known, some don't know that BP was responsible for 213,000 gallons spilled into the delicate North Slope of Alaska, all due to a dime-sized hole in the pipeline caused by corrosion.

Here is a history of oil spills up until 2004. There are dozens more since then. Every spill causes environmental damage.  http://www.marinergroup.com/oil-spill-history.htm

The noaa.gov website sums it up best:
Because oil and oil products in the environment can cause harm, we need to prevent problems when we can. For example, by avoiding dumping oil or oily waste into the sewer or garbage, we avoid polluting the environment we live in. Sometimes, we can find ways to avoid using oil in the first place: for example, we can bicycle, walk, or take the bus rather than taking a car to some places we need to go. When we use less oil, less needs to be transported, and there's a lower risk of future oil spills. We should understand that it is because we rely on oil that we run the risk of oil spills. That means that all of us share both the responsibility for creating the problem of oil spills and the responsibility for finding ways to solve the problem.

This is corny!

Hello again. School is over, but MCC Sustainability will keep on providing you with information all summer long to keep you informed of issues in sustainability.

Today's topic is corn. Corn is a vegetable, so it must be good for you, right? Well, yes and no. Corn is a vegetable, and corn itself is good for you in moderation. But the more you know about corn, the less you might like it.

Think you hardly ever eat corn? Think again. I bet you eat corn every day, probably at every meal and in every snack, and you don't even know it. But, corn is a vegetable so that is OK, right? NO!

Do you eat meat? Do you buy grass-fed beef? If not, then you are eating corn, because most commercial cattle are fed corn now because it is cheaper to grow than grass, which is what cows were born to eat. They are also fed corn because it fattens them up much faster so that more cows are ready for slaughter sooner. If it fattens them up faster, what does that say about the meat they provide? Yep, it's higher in fat, and you will be too. There are numerous other things a beef-eater should know about the beef they are buying. Read about some of them here: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/cows.html

Do you eat bread? Candy? Drink soda? Use ketchup? Sauces? Salad dressing? Crackers? All of these contain high fructose corn syrup. Open your pantry and fridge, pick out some products, and look at the ingredients. Most will have HFCS in them. Here is a list one website compiled of everyday products containing HFCS: http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2005/06/09/foods_and_products_containing_high_fruct  Here is another one that focuses on fast food chains: http://www.foodfacts.info/high-fructose-corn-syrup.shtml So why does this matter? Now that you know it is in so many products that you eat, maybe you will start to realize that you are getting bombarded with sugars in every meal, snack, and drink you have during the day. Maybe you are dieting and trying to cut out soda and candy. Bet you didn't even realize that you are still getting that same poor version of sugar in so many other places. No wonder it's so hard to lose weight and so easy to gain it! The processed parts of the HFCS affect your body's leptin differently than sugar, so it reduces your ability to feel full. Read more here: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/537 Then read labels when you shop, and try to buy things that don't have HFCS in them.

Corn is everywhere, not just in your food. Check this out: http://www.ontariocorn.org/classroom/products.html And now, corn is being used for biofuels and to make degradable 'plastic'-type products like food containers and disposable flatware. Why is this bad? Well, all this use of corn results in a larger and larger need for corn. So instead of alternating crops to maintain a healthy balance of nutrients in the soil, the same crop, corn, is planted over and over in more and more places. With that, bugs that like corn will always have corn available to them. This increases the need for soil additives and pesticides. Anything going into the soil and plants is going into you. Read more about the problems with monocultures here: http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~agroeco3/modern_agriculture.html

If you get the chance, see the movie King Corn. If you can't find the movie, check out this site with lots of information from the movie: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/film.html
You will learn a lot and you will rethink the way you eat.