Environmental Eight Excite Elite Educations

Last week, I told you about March Madness for Environmental Studies, and their very own Sweet Sixteen. Today, the excitement in the competition grows as the Environmental Eight have been announced. The schools include:

• Colby College
• Colorado State University
• Humboldt State University
• Ohio State University
• Purdue University
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• University of California, Davis
• University of Texas at Arlington

These schools were chosen to advance from the Sustainable Sixteen based on essays, photos, and videos sent in by students and faculty in the schools’ respective environmental science departments, and were judged by a panel composed of representatives from 5 leading environmental tech firms. The Final Four is to be announced this Friday – Who do YOU think will move on?

Caught Green Handed: On Vacation

Myrtle Beach!

After a week of midterms, two days of traveling, and a slightly skeevy Super 8, (which all hopefully explain and justify the lack of recent posts,) I’ve finally arrived in Myrtle Beach, SC, and man, it is NICE! As I sit and look out at the beautiful beach and ocean, it hit me. This is what I’m working to save. Everything I’m doing here, with this blog, and with my life, is so that the world can continue to enjoy places as naturally incredible as these.

Another thing hit me, a little later in the day. As I came back to take a shower, I stumbled upon something I had seen many times, and in various permutations.

Reuse Towels, Don't Waste Water!

Think about the last time you went to a hotel – you definitely saw one of the little signs somewhere in your bathroom that reminded you to save water by reusing your towels. There’s even a universal code for how to tell the cleaning staff what you’re doing – dirty towels on the floor, ones you plan to reuse get hung up. But have you ever considered the logic behind all this? The history? The actual environmental impact? Well, I’ll answer the questions you’ve always had, and maybe even a few you never though of:

Let’s do a little Q &A:

Q: What environmental benefits do these policies have?

A: According to Practically Green, a hotel of 250 rooms operating at 80% capacity can expect to save 220,000 gallons of water each year (and $66,000!). Energy, too, is also saved, since most laundry is done in hot water, and therefore requires a lot of energy to heat it to the desired temperature, as well as to power the washing machines and dryers. Chemicals such as chlorine and bleach are often used as detergents, and a decrease in laundry-doing is equivalent to a decrease in the entrance of these chemicals into our environments. Also, many hotels donate a portion of saved funds to worthy environmental causes, which is just an added bonus.

Q: Why do guests follow these procedures?

A: It’s easy. Well, that’s part of it at least. But think about it – it’s the same as if you were at home, except instead of having to take your own towels out of the bathroom or make them neat, housekeeping will do it for you. But that doesn’t fully explain why people do it. One argument is they know that by saving water, the hotel saves money, and therefore charges them less, so by following the procedures, they’re saving themselves money. A Scientific American article points out an interesting observation to take into account. According to the article, people tend to reuse towels more if they think others are also doing the same. Oh, and let’s not forget pure, good-hearted interest in saving the environment as a reason to reuse hotel towels.

Q: Is it a law that there must be these signs in hotel rooms?

A: Nope. Though it might seem like it, since a vast majority of American hotels have the reusing polices and resulting signs, it is purely the hotel’s decision.

Q: If it’s not a law, why do hotels do it?

A: There’s a few reasons for that. First of all, there’s the obvious reason: to help the environment. Now, we all should hope that environmental sustainability is a core belief and goal of every person and organization in the world, but let’s not be too naive. So why do it? Well, there’s the idea of personal gain. The hotels that participate in these policies have something to gain from them. A hotel has plenty of space, but most of it is front of house, guest-accessible space, with little left for waste management – i.e. trash, recycling, and laundry. Therefore, to successfully manage waste, hotels need to actively and masterfully design their programs. So in terms of towels, if guests reuse even a fraction of the towels they use daily, that’s a whole bunch of towels that the hotel does not need to be washing, and therefore less space, time, personnel, and money they need to dedicate to laundry.Oh, and speaking of money, hotels pay utilities just like everyone else, so each towel they don’t wash saves them money on their water and energy bills, and therefore creates more profit for them. (Special thanks to Waste Management World for help with this one).

Hope you found this informative! Have questions you want answered? Let me know!

HP, WWF, Lorax Team Up to Help Environment

The original picture book!

The Lorax. You almost certainly read it as a child, and if you didn’t, stop reading this and go fix that. The children’s book by Dr. Seuss is a tale of environmental peril, starring a helpless young boy who learns from the Once-Ler about how he ignored the advice of the Lorax, a small orange creature who cares for the environment, and thereby ruined everything – he destroyed a forrest, forced the creatures living there to leave, and bankrupted his own business. It’s the ultimate introduction for a child to the dangers of industrialization. With a movie version released just this past Friday, its message is becoming more widely spread than ever.

As a companion to the movie, HP has teamed up the World Wildlife Foundation to create an interactive Facebook to bring the environmental sustainability encouraged by The Lorax into real life. Through a series of interactive games, users can earn “badges” which can earn actual money from HP, to be donated to the WWF. The challenges themselves are sustainability related – they range from trivia questions about environmental facts and figures, to pledges to make certain sustainable changes, like turning off faucets or reusing water bottles, or even making tin-can flowerpots. Of course, there’s also facts specific to HP and WWF’s environmental efforts as well. Completing this challenges also grows your Truffula Tree, assumed to be that very same last seed provided to the boy by the Once-Ler at the end of the book.

The main screen is bordered by a bunch of other relevant links – to HP’s sustainability site, advertising their new motto, “Every inkling makes a difference” and to the WWF and other environmental sites – as well as various additional facts, and lastly some sustainable printing tips. Overall, the site is an great way to get the young or uninterested to learn and interact with sustainable practices. Check it out!!

Related articles

• Environmentalism Inspired by Dr. Seuss (lakeeffectlife.wordpress.com)
• Lessons With the Lorax: You Don’t Need a Thneed (ecochildsplay.com)
• The Lorax leads box office with big debut (canada.com)
• The Lorax Not Just For Trees, Against Plastics (newsbusters.org)
• ‘Lorax’ draws consumer, environmental partnerships (variety.com)

I Told You First: Super Bowl XLVI: Greening Efforts To Reduce Environmental Impact

Remember these past weeks when I’ve been posting about the Super Bowl’s greening efforts? Well the Huffington Post finally got around to it:

Super Bowl XLVI: Greening Efforts To Reduce Environmental Impact.

Do Natural Distasters Really Exist?

Let me begin by saying that by no means do I necessarily agree with the points in the article I’m about to discuss. I feel that it has a multitude of points that bring out interesting complications and issues in our society and in our interaction with the natural world, and therefore I feel it beneficial to share it with you all. This article first came to my attention a few weeks ago in my Spanish Literature class, and I thought to share it.

The original article is written entirely in Spanish, which can be found here; for an English translation, click here.

Eduardo Subirats, the author, argues a very controversial

Coffee: Why the caffeine isn’t the only thing that should keep you up at night

1,092. To most, just a number. Specifically, the number of dollars the average American spends on coffee each year. As I flipped open to the “Briefing” section of this week’s Time magazine, I was instantly struck by this number.

I thought for a second. $1,092 is quite a large amount of money to spend on just one product. And then, as I thought deeper, I started to raise questions and so my research began. Here’s what I found out about that $1,092:

The average price for brewed coffee is $1.38. To make things simpler, let’s assume that all Americans buy brewed coffee, and always at that average price. What that leads us to figure out is that the average American drinks about 770 cups of coffee a year, or about two per day.

With so much coffee being drunk each day, there must be some sort of environmental impact, right? Well, since we’re assuming

Pro Bowl and Super Bowl Go Green!

Ready for tonight’s NFL Pro Bowl 2012? Well what’s nice to know, is that as a little bit of a bonus, this year’s Pro Bowl (and next week’s Super Bowl) is going green! Green Mountain Energy will be providing both of them with clean, green energy. In addition, they will also be providing offset certificates to cover some of the rest of the carbon emissions from the game.

State Of The Union 2012:

For those of you who didn’t see President Obama’s 3rd State Of The Union Address last night, here’s a link to read it. Among the multitude of  policies, promises, and dreams that were discussed last night, it should stand as a testament to how our country is changing for the better that a major chunk of time was devoted to environmental and energy policy. Though the official statistics are not in yet, it is clear that this year’s focus dwarves last year’s speech, during which only 3 sentences – less than 1% of the speech – revolved around the environment.

Obama at 2012 State Of The Union

So what did Obama say, and how will it affect us? According to Obama, “nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy.” And he is most certainly right. Now yes, he did suggest the expansion

The Turf is Always Greener….

1st and Green Logo

So unfortunately for many New Yorkers, myself included, it was decided a while ago that good ole’ Gang Green wouldn’t be playing in this year’s Super Bowl. However, there will be plenty of green at Super Bowl XLVI. The Indianapolis Host Committee has created an initiative called “1st and Green,” which is aimed at encouraging households and other organizations to create sustainable habits through lighthearted competition.

Caught Green Handed: Shake Shack

THE Original Shake Shack

Welcome to what I hope will be a recurring section here at Being Green in a Sea of Orange. Caught Green Handed will highlight companies and individuals that I interact with, who do awesome, sustainable things. First up? Shake Shack.

For those of you not from the NYC region, (or near one of Shake Shack’s other locations,) Shake Shack is one of the best burger joints around. Better yet though, it’s also quite famous for its hotdogs, fries, and, of course, its shakes and “concretes” – frozen custard with different toppings mixed in.

The coolest part about Shake Shack, however, is not really about its food – it’s about everything else there. Right away when you walk in, it’s made clear to you that recycling

is not just available but expected. The water bottles that they serve are locally filled and made in part