On January 17th and 18th, 2006, the Green Campus Program Interns, Felicity Blue, Lisette Ortiz and Oksana Harris set up a table at the Jack Brown Hall, loaded it up with snacks, water bottles and stacks of surveys, and got ready to direct crowds of students to the stairs instead of the elevators. Prior to the event, the Environmental Health and Safety staff examined the stairs to ensure safe conditions. Jack Brown stairs appeared to be in great shape! The Interns explained the importance of saving energy and pointed out the negative effect increases of energy rates could have on college tuition.

Small steps to conserve energy like taking the stairs instead of the elevators could result in big savings (over $10,000) considering the number of elevators in use on this campus. People who agreed to take the stairs that day received free snacks, water and Compact Fluorescent Lamps. They also completed a survey to indicate the most compelling reason to take the stairs. Staying in shape, burning extra calories, preventing pollution, conserving energy and getting to the second floor faster were amongst the top reasons identified.

On January 26th, 2006, the CSUSB Green Campus Program team traveled to Berkeley to attend the Green Campus Program Mid-Year Meeting. The meeting took place over three days on the UC Berkeley campus. It gave interns a chance to meet with each other and discuss important energy-related issues with their respective campus stakeholders. A reception held on Thursday night featured an ice breaker activity.

Friday's meeting consisted of interns and key stakeholders working together on program challenges as well as brainstorming for future program ideas. Breakout sessions followed the brainstorming and included topics on campus involvement, energy savings in resident halls and starting a class on energy. The Mid-Year Meeting proved to be a great vehicle of idea exchange.

On Tuesday, April 18th, approximately 100 CSUSB staff and students gathered in the Sycamore room of the Lower Commons to learn about renewable energy sources, fossil fuels, global warming, recycling, and other important environmental issues. Munching on free pizza and chips, the guests circulated in the room, visiting tables set up by Green Campus, Environmental Expo, Green Earth Club, and Delta Sigma Chi. Meanwhile, Coyote Radio and Paul Cash, an Eco-Magician, entertained the crowd with upbeat music and recycling tricks. The Green Campus Program Interns, Felicity and Oksana, handed out free Compact Fluorescent Lamps and goodies made of recycled materials, generously donated by Michelle Dyck-Turner, the CSUSB Recycling Coordinator. The interns also spoke to students and staff about the importance of saving energy and becoming a more energy sustainable campus. Posters that Felicity and Oksana made to support their presentation featured various graphs and statistics about CSUSB high electricity usage. CSUSB Celebrates Earth Day succeeded in bringing this information to light and making the public more aware of the need to conserve energy and strive for energy efficiency. GC Interns would like to thank the following for their support: Events Scheduling, Facilities Services, Environmental Health and Safety, Coyote Radio, Delta Sigma Chi, and Environmental Educational Research Center.

Saturday, April 22, 2006, Green Campus Program interns, Oksana Harris and Felicity Blue celebrated Earth Day at CSUSB’s annual Environmental Expo (EE). The GCP interns were volunteers and exhibitors for the event alongside Green Earth Club members, who had a separate table with fliers about the environment. CSUSB Facilities Services Electricians built a light bulb display that GCP interns used to educate people about different types of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) that are used for specific purposes. The light display included CFLs for outside lighting, inside lighting and offices, as well as reflector flood lights, recessed can lighting, and ballasts for classrooms. A dimmable CFL has not yet been incorporated into the display. Environmental Expo is an event focused on educating people from the San Bernardino community and the CSUSB campus community about ways to protect and preserve the environment. It was founded over 20 years ago by Dr. Darleen Stoner, the Environmental Educational Research Center Director. This year, the EE attracted over 10,000 people. GCP Interns distributed 500 CFLs to these folks. The energy savings from using a CFLs instead of an incandescent bulb for 4 hours per day during an academic year of 270 days, may result in savings of 34,020 kWh and $5,103. GC interns would like to thank Michelle Dyck-Turner, CSUSB Recycling Coordinator, Fred, Fernando, Keith, and Homer, Facilities Services Electricians for their support.

Felicity and Oksana announced the start of the Spring Quarter Resident Assistant Energy Awareness Contest at the Housing staff meeting on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006. The interns thanked Mark Darby and Debbie Christ, the winners of the winter quarter’s contest, for their outstanding efforts to raise energy awareness among the CSUSB campus residents. Mark had incorporated energy savings into his Sex and Wellness program, and Debbie held an energy saving themed hall-decorating contest. Felicity and Oksana encouraged other RAs to showcase their creativity in participating in this quarter’s contest. To give the RAs an example of the kind of information they could present to their residents, the interns handed out flyers with energy saving tips and statistics about CSUSB electricity usage. This contest should be a great help to Green Campus in encouraging energy efficient and sustainable behavior among the residents. RAs signed up to receive further information over email, and the interns are currently working on putting together a website with resources for RAs to use in the contest. GCP interns thank Housing for their support!

On Wednesday, May 24th, 2006, “Resident Day” organized by the Village Square Council drew together over eighty campus residents to celebrate the end of the school year with some swimming, volleyball, Coyote Radio music and food provided by the Village Square Council and the Green Campus Program (GCP). The GCP Interns had an opportunity to speak to the attendees about electricity bills on campus, how electricity costs are calculated into residents’ rent, and how conserving energy can help them keep this rent down. The electricity usage is divided up by the number of residents and estimated to cover the electricity bills of the Housing Department as a whole. Last year, Housing alone was billed $534,547 for 3,989,616 kWh of electricity used. By conserving energy, residents could help to keep the cost of rent from going up, prevent more pollution emissions, and preserve the environment. The event attendees received free Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), which use ¼ of the electricity normal incandescent light bulbs use, last longer and burn just as bright. The GCP Interns also handed out information about global warming, campus-wide electricity usage, electricity generation and pollution, and various ways to conserve energy on campus. Participants also received items made from recycled materials, generously donated by Michelle Dyck-Turner, CSUSB’s Recycling Coordinator. The Green Campus Program would like to thank Michelle Dyck-Turner, the Housing Department, and the Village Square Council for their generosity, support and cooperation.

The annual UC/CSU/CCC Sustainability Conference, titled "Turning the Tide: Implementing Sustainable Strategies" took place on June 25 through June 28 at the UC Santa Barbara campus this year. Ashley, Felicity and Oksana, three of the four CSUSB Green Campus Team interns, attended the conference as well as the Green Campus Program End of the Year Meeting held prior to the conference. They had an opportunity to meet with interns and staff from other campuses, network, and share programming and project tips. The conference attracted many staff members from various campuses. They came to share their expertise in areas of sustainability that campuses sought to address, including but not limited to Green Building projects, green purchasing, and reducing waste in dining facilities. During the conference, an award ceremony was held to congratulate noteworthy campuses that have made particularly remarkable strides towards becoming more sustainable.

• The Best Practice Award for Best Lighting Design was presented to Sonoma State
• Best HVAC Design to UC San Diego and Sonoma
• Best Integrated Design Process to UC Berkeley
• Best Overall Sustainable Design to UC Los Angeles, Sonoma State and UC San Francisco
• Best Lighting Retrofit to CSU Dominguez Hills and UC Davis
• Best HVAC Retrofit to Cal Poly San Louis Obispo and UC San Diego
• Best Load Management Program to UC San Diego
• Waste Reduction to CSU Chico and UC Davis
• Best Monitoring Based Commissioning to UC San Francisco and San Diego State University
• Buy Recycled to Humboldt Sate University and UC Merced.

Among these, CSUSB and UC Santa Barbara were proud to receive an award for Best Practices in Student-led Energy Conservation Programs. We would like to thank all the CSUSB staff and administration members for their support over the past two years. Their valuable support contributed to CSUSB Green Campus’ award.

 

 

On July the 29th, the Green Campus interns attended the “Go Green” event at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. The event aimed to educate the public about the latest advances in “green” technology and unite the neighboring cities under an umbrella of energy-conserving principles. Western Riverside County Clean Cities Coalition, Riverside County Public Utilities Commission, UCR, and South Coast Air Quality Management District attended the event among numerous other organizations. Approximately 280 community members attended. CSUSB Green Campus played an integral part in bringing the community members up to date on the various advantages of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs). The interns handed out their remaining 120 CFLs as well as informational fliers about the lamps’ energy saving potential, ENERGY STAR ® products and phantom loads. Some of the attendees were well versed in these important topics and eagerly discussed them with us. This event benefited CSUSB Green Campus by allowing the interns to reach out into the surrounding community to make friends and take advantage of networking opportunities.

Green Campus partnered up with the Office of Housing and Residential Life to host its first big event of the year, “Electric Shock Has a New Meaning.” The event took place on the first day of Welcome Week and aimed to promote energy conservation and efficiency to the returning and new campus residents. At least 200 residents attended to enjoy pizza and Coyote Radio music on the grass of the Serrano Village Quad. Many signed a pledge to conserve energy in their residence halls and picked up CFLs to replace their incandescent light bulbs. The ENERGY STAR® Bus helped to educate the students about energy efficient appliances. Green Earth Club held a Save the Rainforest T-shirt sale and recruited new members. Another highlight of the event was the rock climbing wall set up by Outdoor Recreational Sports. The Green Campus team conducted a quick lecture that touched on renewable energy, energy efficiency, electricity production, recycling, and other topics related to sustainability. Afterwards, our Energy Trivia locked this new knowledge into place, as the attendees answered questions for additional raffle tickets. We raffled off ENERGY STAR® qualified telephones, gift certificates to local restaurants, packages of Starbucks coffee, and Juice It Up mugs stuffed with goodies. Our special thanks go to Farmer Boys, Starbucks, Juice It Up, Hollywood Video, Red Brick Pizza, and GFE Java, and all campus participants for their support.

On September 13, 2006, the Green Campus team spoke at the Residential Assistant (RA) fall training. Oksana, Ashley and I spread the word about Green Campus’ past and present involvement with campus residential life. The three projects we called attention to included the RA Energy Awareness Contest, the Resident Energy Conservation Contest, and installing power strips in two freshmen residence halls. During the meeting, we awarded the winners of last school year’s Spring Resident Assistant Energy Awareness Contest with prizes of their choice. Debbie Christ won an iPod Cruiser, while Francine Morales and Jon Higgins won gift cards to the bookstore. Our session with the RAs also informally started the RA Energy Awareness Contest for the fall quarter. We asked the freshman residence halls RAs to remind their residents of the Resident Energy Conservation Competition. Andre Castillo, the RA of last year’s winning residence hall, gave a few words about how rewarding his hall’s participation in the contest proved to be. San Manuel received a large ENERGY STAR® TV. Among other things, we passed out flyers with energy saving tips and information about phantom loads to all the RAs. These flyers should serve especially well in the two freshman halls that we equipped with 100 power strips (see next article). The RA training concluded with many RAs excited about the opportunity to win a prize through the RA Energy Awareness Contest. Some RAs have already contacted Green Campus to arrange for energy-saving programs.

In the beginning of the Fall 06 quarter, the Green Campus Program set up a table on the main CSUSB walkway and proceeded to give away free school supplies. We hoped that positioning the Green Campus Program as a student-supporting organization would provide significant leverage in our efforts to raise energy awareness, encourage energy efficiency and conservation, and promote other environmentally friendly behavior. We assembled “test kits” from recycled-content products purchased at Staples. These included pens, pencils, post-it’s, index cards, and 100% recycled notepads all neatly tucked into manila folders along with scantrons and blue books. We promoted the Share a Ride program run by Commuter Services to encourage carpooling. We also distributed CFLs to those willing to take our Energy Conservation Pledge. The pledge simply asked students to make a difference by conserving energy in simple ways like turning off the lights. For a complete list of energy saving tips please check out our website. Promoting recycled-content products, energy efficiency and conservation received mixed responses that day. One student claimed that recycling paper uses more energy than producing it from virgin material. Another insisted that the Middle Eastern countries could be manufacturing oil in underground labs for all we know. Such myths reminded us once again why it is important to educate the community about energy-related issues.

After successfully installing power strips in two of the freshmen residence halls, Badger and Waterman, and posting flyers about the proper use of power strips on each door, we decided to further reinforce the importance of proper power strip usage. In the spirit of Halloween, we dressed up as Phantoms of the Opera, to symbolize the wickedness of phantom loads, and went door to door in hopes of “spooking” the residents into taking our advice on power strip usage. If residents neglect to turn power strips off when appliances are not in use, increasing the number of power strips in the resident halls may actually boost electricity consumption on campus rather than reduce it. We explained this to the residents and reminded them once again that electricity costs are incorporated into the rent they pay. Each resident we spoke to who was able to answer some of our questions or at least willing to listen received a candy bar. We found this “reverse trick-o-treating” to be helpful in leaving a lasting impression on the residents. Oksana and I plan on returning to the halls in the not so distant future to check on the students’ progress in energy conservation. Educating the community is the first step in reducing energy consumption on campus.

The week of November 13th was a busy time for CSUSB Green Campus Interns. We held four events, Monday through Thursday, one in each of the pairs of the Serrano Village freshmen residence halls. The purpose of these events was to promote the Resident Energy Conservation Competition and encourage residents to be next quarter's winners. We brought pizza and some healthy alternatives to attract the young crowd. Residents gathered around in the common rooms to enjoy the food, chat with each other and learn about various energy-related issues. We explained that a large chunk of our electricity needs is met by burning fossil fuels, exhaustible natural resources. Many CSUSB students do not know that this process negatively impacts the environment by contributing to air pollution and global warming. We pointed out that conserving energy and using energy efficient appliances reduces the demand for electricity and helps to reduce these negative effects. We discussed different ways to conserve energy on campus including turning off the lights, turning off power strips, doing laundry during off-peak hours, taking the stairs, and many others. The connection between energy and other environmental efforts isn't always apparent. For instance, many residents were surprised to learn that recycling an aluminum can saves 95% of energy used in producing a new can. We talked about how long it takes for things to decompose in landfills and what is recyclable on campus.