Keeping Cool While Staying Green

Spring is here. There’s absolutely no denying it. When it’s 80 Degrees in Syracuse in mid-March, and similarly – abnormally – warm

across the country, environmentalists all seem to take the opportunity to remind the world about global warming. I’m not. Today, I’m going to talk about how to keep cool in this heat in the most sustainable way possible.

1. Dress appropriately. This might seem obvious, but when it’s warm, you should wear lighter clothing. These temperatures are not the appropriate situations to wear many layers. Still have that awesome sweater you wanted to show off? Unfortunately girls (and guys), it will have to wait until next year. Of course, dressing appropriately is a simple way to keep yourself cool, no matter where you go.
2. Open the windows. Again, it’s simple. Opening the windows allows for a flow of air in your home, providing not only relief from the staleness of air that makes the heat feel much worse, but also creating a cross-breeze which will cool your home. Oh, and by the way – it costs no energy, so long as you don’t keep your air conditioning on at the same time.
3. Close the windows. While this might seem like a direct contradiction to the previous point, it’s situational. If you decide to use air conditioning, rather than good-old-fashioned wind, make sure you close your windows, doors, etc. This is in order to seal your house, and therefore to make the air-conditioning system more efficient, and therefore using less energy and costing you less money.
4. Drink water. One of the worst side effects of heat is dehydration – which in turn exaggerates the way you feel the heat. Keep drinking water all day to stay hydrated. Of course, if it’s cold, you’ve got an added cooling bonus. Make sure you’re using reusable bottles, or at least recycling your water bottles.
5. Stay outside. It’s nice out. Go play outside – throw a frisbee, play some soccer – or even read and do homework outside. It’s not going to be much cooler inside, so why not take advantage of the fresh air? Plus, if you spend time outside, there’s no energy costs!

Enjoy the weather everyone!

The Green Sixteen: A New Kind of March Madness

It’s that time of year again. Spring is fast approaching, baseball season is starting, and of course, March Madness has begun! The yearly NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship started last Thursday (3/15), and this Thursday (3/22) starts the third round of play, affectionately known as the Sweet Sixteen. The teams are competing for one of the most prestigious and well-know titles in all of sports, and fans around the country are following every game on national TV, cheering for their favorites and filling out brackets with their predictions of who will win. Even President Obama is in the sprit – each year of his presidency he has revealed his picks in TV segments called “Barack-etology.” However, there’s a whole other group of sixteen colleges and universities competing for a lesser known, but equally, if not more important title: The National College Sustainability Championship, AKA the other March Madness.

The contest works similar to the NCAA tournament, and occurs at the same time in parallel structure. Starting with the Sustainable Sixteen, chosen by Enviance and Environmental Leader, schools will be narrowed down to the Environmental Eight, the Final Four, and eventually, the Winner. How are the winning schools chosen? The contest rates the schools’ environmental programs, focusing on freshman retention rate, student to faculty ratio, graduation rates, hire rates post-graduation, and diversity of courses offered. These criteria are rated on a scale of 1-5 to narrow the Sustainable Sixteen down to the Environmental Eight. From there, students and schools will have the opportunity to submit videos and essays promoting their school, which will be used to determine the Final Four and the ultimate Winner. The winning school will receive $5,000 for their department, and the department chair will win an all-expenses paid trip to the Enviance User Conference in San Diego in mid-April.

So who is judging this contest? A panel of leading environmental experts, including:

Velislava Ivanova, CH2M HILL
Nick Johnson, Trinity Consultants
Don Cuffel, Valero/California
Peter Fox Penner, The Brattle Group
Larry Goldenhersh, Enviance

If these names aren’t so familiar to you, don’t worry. There are some much more familiar names among the Sustainable Sixteen – many of which are members of this year’s Sweet Sixteen as well. Those schools are: Baylor University, Colby College, Colorado State University, Cornell University, Duke University, Humboldt State University, Montana University, THE Ohio State University, Purdue University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Temple University, University of California – Davis, University of Florida, University of Michigan – Dearborn, UNC-Asheville, and University of Texas – Arlington. It’s interesting to note that many of these schools come from the more environmentally aware states – California, New York, and Colorado in particular.

The Environmental Eight will be announced next Monday, the 26th of March, the Final Four on the 30th, with the ultimate Winner being announced on April 2nd, the same day as the NCAA Tournament Finals. Is your school in the running? Root them on!

Oh, and one more thing. GO CUSE!

Shades of Green: Energy Efficiency

A few weeks ago, I attended the Shades of Green conference in Madison County, NY. One of the many topics covered in the breakout session was energy efficiency, covered by Sam Gordon of the Central New York Regional Planning and Development Board. The presentation, “Home Energy Efficiency: Save Energy, Save Money, Save the Planet” was a perfect example about how being sustainable benefits you as well as the environment.

The session began with Mr. Gordon presenting a simple concept: The recommended temperature to save energy at home is 68 degrees. Yes, it’s that simple. Keep your home at an incredibly comfortable 68 degrees, and you save energy, and therefore money! He continues on to discuss other simple, easy, DIY energy conservation techniques. Gordon cites his own personal example: By replacing appliances, like his fridge and dehumidifier, and lightbulbs, with more energy efficient brands, as well as practicing basic conservation, such as turning off lights and unplugging appliances that don’t need to be running very often, he cut his home energy use in half. So what does this mean? He can now make his home greener by installing solar panels for electricity, but now he can cut the amount (and therefore the cost) in half, saving himself a ton of money.

Some statistics followed this example: Residential uses make up one fourth of US energy consumption. Another 28% is used for transportation. Within the home itself, 60% of energy is consumed by heating and cooling systems, another 16% for water heating, and 12% each for your refrigerator and lighting/other appliances. An interesting and surprising fact was that your cable box can actually use almost as much energy as your refrigerator – many people don’t realize this, but it’s plugged in, running all day, consuming energy – even when you’re not watching TV. The European Union actually has laws regarding these boxes, enforcing mandator energy efficiency standards.

So how do we encourage this kind of efficiency and sustainability? To those who have learned about it, things like changing to an EnergyStar dryer in your home is a clear win-win situation. However, many don’t realize the benefits to your wallet, and see changes like these as solely good for the environment. According to Gordon, people need to start by making a commitment to energy efficiency. To do this, however, we need to establish social norms that say it’s ok to talk about energy and sustainability in everyday conversation. Mr. Gordon wants it so that you can talk to your neighbors about their home energy efficiency just like you would exchange tips for lawn care or ask them for a good dentist’s phone number.

To do this, National Grid has started a pilot program in the CNY area. Participants receive a smiley or frowny face on their energy bills, which is assigned by comparing their home energy efficiency to that of the average consumer. The central idea behind this goes something like this: People talk about their lawns, because they receive feedback from others on the state of their lawns.Therefore, if people receive feedback about the state of their energy usage, they will talk about it with their neighbors as well. According to Gordon, this feedback serves as both personal and comparative motivation.

Lastly, Mr. Gordon discussed the new CNY Energy Challenge, another pilot program with two main goals: First, to educate CNY residents about energy usage/conservation, and second, to encourage and facilitate the discussion about energy and sustainability topics between neighbors. The program is made up of 80 people, starting first in the city of Syracuse. The people are organized into groups of households, headed by a facilitator, who work as a group and meet biweekly for 12 weeks. As part of the program, the households learn from a five unit curriculum, which covers topics such as: determining your energy intake, household lighting, powering down electronics, heating and cooling systems, and the Home Energy Audit. The units are designed to teach the mechanics of, reasons behind, and benefits of each topic discussed. The program has another benefit – 10% discounts at local stores to buy energy efficient products, in order to act upon what they are learning.

Once again, Mr. Gordon’s presentation has shown exactly what it is that people need to realize: Sustainability, especially energy efficiency and conservation, serves to benefit the environment, your neighborhood, and your wallet.

 

On another note, if you are a SU student and are interested in joining Eco-Reps, please email SUEcoReps@gmail.com.

Eco-Reps Wants YOU!

Are you a Syracuse University Student? Well, then Eco-Reps Wants YOU!

What’s an Eco-Rep?
- A Leader
- An Educator
- An Ambassador

Eco-Reps is a new organization on campus, with the goals of inspiring and educating the student body about environmental and sustainability issues facing our campus, our country, and the world. We aim to do this in a fun, engaging way, through campus-wide programing that is exciting and unique, in addition to being informative and eye-opening. Some examples of past and planned programs include: Water Taste Tests, Tray Waste Audits, Recycled Fashion Show, Junkyard Wars, and more!

As a newly forming organization on campus, we are looking for interested Freshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors who want to be part of this one of a kind opportunity.

So what makes a good Eco-Rep? An Eco-Rep is a strong leader, organized, outspoken, full of energy, and passionate about sustainability. We’re looking for people of all disciplines, colleges, and majors!

Interested? If you’re ready to go or if you just want to know more, email SUEcoReps@gmail.com!

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!

Spring into the Holidays with Green Ideas!

Both Easter and Passover, two cornerstone and quintessential Spring holidays, are fast approaching. Here’s a few things you can do to make your holidays more environmentally friendly, as well as having some good old family fun!

• Grow Your Own Easter Basket Grass:
  • Check out this post from Smiling Green Mom, an awesome Eco-Blog (Which is now becoming a part of Eco18)
  • As a quick summary, growing your own grass means no unrecyclable plastics littering your home or local landfill. It also gives you a fun family project that will save you money in the end.
• Grow Your Own Seder Plate
  • Passover is a Spring holiday, and is partially a celebration of new life. Why not celebrate the rebirth of plants by growingyour own?
  • The Passover Seder required a variety of herbs and vegetables, many that can be grown right in your kitchen while it’s still too cold outside.
  • Try using a an old tin can as a pot, and fill it with some soil and some parsley seeds. Water it for the next few weeks, and enjoy!

Hope you all get to use some of these tips! Have more tips for the holidays? 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)

Caught Green Handed: Plainview to Get Electric Busses

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so proud to be from Plainview. My hometown, will be the first school district on Long Island to have electric busses. Check out what’s going on:

The Plainview-Old Bethpage School District’s transportation vendor, We Transport, recently introduced a new fully electric school bus at district headquarters as part of their ongoing initiative to reduce their carbon footprint. The bus is part of a new generation of zero-emission electric and hybrid-electric models that are slowly making their way into school districts across the country. Plainview will be the first school district on Long Island to begin the transition to fully electric school buses, incorporating several of these buses into their regular fleet beginning Fall 2012.

“This is a step forward. Getting to and from school is going to be healthier for the students, the drivers and the community” said Nadine Eiring, the district’s director of health, safety and transportation.

While electric vehicles such as these typically sell at over $30,000 more than their gas-powered counterparts, the district will not be bearing these costs. Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District is currently in a five-year contract with We Transport-Towne Bus Corp., who plan on gradually adding the new buses to the District’s fleet over the next few years.

School buses make frequent stops, cover short distances, and spend most of the day off the road – making them perfect to be converted to electric. Although frequent stops are wasteful in a traditional gas-powered bus, electric models can actually use the energy created by applying brakes to recharge their batteries.  Each bus will take six to eight hours to recharge, with the ability to do so virtually anywhere.

These new commercial vehicles are all-electric and produce zero emissions, with operating costs that are significantly lower than comparable diesel vehicles. The average school bus uses more than 1,700 gallons of fuel per year, according to Illinois-based IC Bus, one of the country’s largest school bus manufacturers. The electric buses will carry up to 42 students at a time next school year.

Go Plainview!! If you want, check out the full article here.

ESF President Murphy: “Moving The Needle”

Cornelius B. “Neil” Murphy, has been President of SUNY ESF for just over a decade, but he’s been around Syracuse for much longer than that. With a PhD in Chemistry from SU, and then working his way up the ladder to become President and CEO of Syracuse-based O’Brien & Gere, he’s got plenty of experience in the realm of sustainability and the environment. So when a person with this kind of background gets up in front of a room to talk about sustainability measures, you can be sure that not a sound was made until he finished. To miss even a word of what he spoke would have been considered blasphemy in some circles.

This is exactly what happened last Friday at the Shades of Green Conference in Madison County, NY. President Murphy spoke about “Moving the Needle” – essentially, to make a measurable difference in the sustainability of our world. He believes that is largely the responsibility of higher educationto do so – and such is the goal of

President Murphy Speaks at Shades of Green Conference

ESF. As the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Murphy feels that it is the goal of the university to “educate a new generation of sustainability directors.” Furthermore, he feels that the only way a school can possibly be successful in teaching sustainability is to be sustainable as an institution in the first place. ESF itself needs to research and push boundaries in renewable energy systems, biomimicry, and resource recovery if it ever wants to successfully teach its students to do the same.

To illustrate his points, President Murphy presented the audience with some data to add to their background knowledge. He discussed the world’s energy usage – already at 16.3 trillion watts a year by 2005, and expected to have doubled as early as 2050. Worse, we use over 50,000 gallons of oil each second, and that’s a problem even before we consider greenhouse gases. According to the most recent (the fourth) UN Climate Change Committee, it is now predicted that our climate here in New York is shifting towards that of Miami or Atlanta. Syracuse without snow? A scary thought to most.

His evidence did provide hope, however. According to Ken Zweibel, a leading expert in the field of photovoltaic cell technology, published a paper in 2005 in Scientific American entitled “A Solar Grand Plan” in which he laid out a master plan to end American dependence on foreign oil, with solar power as the major game-changer. One memorable quote that President Murphy chose to present the audience was particularly poignant and enlightening. “The sun produces enough energy in one hour to supply the world’s energy needs for one year.” Imagine if we could take even just a small part of that. Oh wait – we can!

SUNY ESF is trying to do just that. The different initiatives being driven by students, staff, or by combination of the two is on an unimaginable scale. Take an anecdote shared by President Murphy for an example. He had a student whom he learned had been making biodiesel from used vegetable oils with his mother, in their garage, for years before he got into college. The university figured that if the kid could do it at home, the possibilities would endless if he started to do the same thing at the university – except replacing his home-made systems for some high tech (and costly) gadgets that university could offer him to work with. Now, all the formerly diesel vehicles on campus are run on biodiesel made with oil from SU’s dining halls.

It’s not just the people at ESF who are making a difference either – the buildings are environmentally friendly as well. There is a 16 kilowatt photovoltaic cell system on top of Walters Hall, home to the Department of Paper and Bioprocess Engineering, able to produce up to 1.5% of the colleges power per year. Baker Laboratory also has a photovoltaic cell system on its roof, and even some in its blinds, amounting to a total of 23 kilowatts. Murphy has a brilliant justification for these, even outside of their obvious benefits. His philosophy, and that of the college, is that they need to have these systems so that students will ask how they work. Inspiring students to be inquisitive – that’s a huge step towards moving the needle towards sustainability.

However, that only scratches the surface of what ESF has to offer. Like President Murphy said, in order to create tomorrow’s sustainability directors, they need to have everything possible available to them. So in addition to the photovoltaic systems on campus, there are also roof mounted vertical access turbines on top of Illick Hall, which take advantage of the wind tunnel created by the Carrier Dome and a wood chip boiler system that currently saves ESF a whole bunch of money by reducing heating costs each year.

In addition to producing renewable, clean energy, many features of the school’s campus are designed to harness the power of rainwater as well. There is a green roof on top of Walters Hall, which collects rainwater, and serves to cool the building while simultaneously getting more water to recharge into the hydrosystem. Additionally, porous pavement around campus helps do just the same. Centennial Hall, the new residence hall, is made with tons of natural materials, and almost all of the furniture is natural, environmentally friendly wood – just another one of the many ways ESF is staying sustainable.

In keeping with his theme of making sure ESF’s students are ready to lead the world in moving the needle, Murphy reminded us one last time: “If we can’t do it, who can?” So ESF did it. What is it? Well, currently under construction on campus is the state-of-the-art Gateway Building, the latest project on the path to meet the goals of ECN 2015 (ESF Carbon Neutral by 2015), the building will not only serve as the new “gateway” to campus, but will be the most sustainable building on campus, and one of the most sustainable in the world. According one of President Murphy’s anecdotes, the architects of the building offered them increasingly impressive designs, hitting LEED Silver and Gold, which weren’t good enough for the college, and even when they approached him with a design that would attain LEED Platinum, he still told them: “It’s not good enough.” Murphy made it clear – this building would defy expectations, and even LEED itself.

What will make this building so sustainable? Integrated heat and power systems, powered by 3 turbines within the building itself (two are natural gas, one is biodiesel) will drastically reduce energy costs within the building and around campus. A wood chip boiler with a pre-gasifier will create a state-of-the-art steam/thermal heating system – and all of the biomass to be burnt will be created by the Agriforestry department. The building itself will create a whopping 22% reduction in the school’s carbon footprint, an enormous accomplishment. The building will also have a special thermal wall, made of glass that will pre-heat air within the building using natural sunlight to make the heating system even more efficient.

But this isn’t enough for ESF. As has been mentioned before, the students need to be able to ask and understand what is going on. So the building will not just be super sustainable, but students will be able to use all of its various systems to learn about how to do things like it themselves! Oh, but that’s not the end of it. The building will be finished off with green roofs and a series of wetlands, simulating environments starting at saltwater and filtering down to completely freshwater, using just rainwater and snow. These wetlands will provide students with the opportunity to study environments right on campus, instead of having to take time-heavy trips (on busses or in cars that would create tons of greenhouse gasses and CO2) to places miles away where these environments exist naturally.

Oh, and one more thing – the entire project will have paid for itself within 7 years. Impressive, right?

The message of all of this? No more of this “do as I say not as I say, not as I do” crap. It’s generally considered to be terrible parenting, and it should be eradicated from our education system as well. ESF has got it right – how can a university “move the needle” and teach students to make sustainable changes in this world if the ones teaching them haven’t done it themselves? It just makes sense.

Shades of Green in Madison County!

This past Friday, I was fortunate enough to attend the Shades of Green in Madison County conference on sustainability. The conference took place at Morrisvile State College in Madison County, NY, and while the focus was on sustainability measures being implemented in Madison County and the surrounding areas, many of the messages and ideas transcended location. As described by the conference’s website, the purpose of the event was to:

“…help individuals, businesses, and communities advance green initiatives throughout Madison County to achieve more economically viable, sustainable and healthier places to live, go to school, work, shop, and enjoy!  Check out the agenda on the conference program page and register today! Shades of Green in Madison County: A Green Living Experience is an initiative of the Madison County Community Economic Development (CED) Committee.”

The day started off with a presentation by Peter Fleischer, the Executive Director of Empire State Futures (ESF), a coalition of over 50 organizations working towards a more sustainable and equitable New York State, promoting the idea of “Smart Growth” for land use and business expansion. Mr. Fleischer discussed how ESF works to promote sustainable development across the state. One particularly poignant example was ESF’s work with the food industry. According to Mr. Fleischer, New York State annually produces 4.5 billion dollars of food annually. Now, this seems like a huge amount of food, but compared to the $30 billion of food consumed by New York City alone each year, it is clear that New York cannot sustain itself, which led the speech in the direction of discussing what kind of things are done to make this consumption more sustainable.

The rest of the conference followed this discussion. It was a sustainability junkie’s heaven – discussions and presentations were available about a variety of topics, ranging from historical preservation to composting, sustainable gardening to retrofitting lighting systems, and had just about anything you would want to learn about in a sustainable context. This is in addition to the dozen or so exhibitors from around the state, including some local energy companies, NYSERDA, and my good friends at YouSave Green! As an inspiring finale to the day, SUNY ESF‘s President Cornelius Murphy gave a brilliant Keynote speech on how ESF (Not the same as the first Keynote speaker’s ESF) has changed the world of sustainability and environmental awareness.

I managed to rack up a bit of information during the conference:

Attn: Readers - Prepare for a knowledge infusion.

I plan on using all of this information, combined with what the presenters spoke about to bring a whole smothering of new posts over the next few days, starting with an overview of President Murphy’s speech, and continuing on to include:

• Home Energy Efficiency
• Geothermal Heating Systems
• Shopping Locally
• Home Gardens and their Sustainability Impact
• Reusing Waste to Create Energy Sources
• Effective Composting
• Coordinated Transportation Systems

Check back often to see all of these awesome posts!

Anything specific you want to learn about? Let me know!