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“Green” Becoming Buzzword at SMC
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Sustainable Works students at a recent Club Row
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April is traditionally a month during
which attention is focused on ecological issues (Earth Day and Earth
Week activities are planned throughout the country), but SMC pays
attention to the environment daily.
Whether it’s in the classroom, or the design of
new buildings, or the “green” training of its students and employees,
or the recycling and worm composting programs, SMC is gaining a
reputation as an eco-friendly place.
But officials say they want to continue to work
to make the campus as green as it can be; in other words, to make
SMC a “sustainable campus.”
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| SMC
Recycling Coordinator Madeline Brodie at one of the college’s
recycle bins in the Student Cafeteria |
“SMC has a reputation for having one of the best
recycling programs in the state,” says Madeline
Brodie, the college’s recycling coordinator.
Indeed, SMC recycles 85 percent of its waste,
a very high figure somewhat inflated by the large volume of construction
waste that is recycled. Even without the construction waste, however,
the college recycles about 65 percent of its solid waste, Brodie
says.
Helping that effort has been the installation
in the past two years of 28 recycle containers (both barrel and
green metal ones) throughout campus, thanks to funding from the
California Department of Conservation and the California Collegiate
Recycling Council. A new Conservation Department grant of $87,000
will fund another 24 green metal recycle containers, additional
signage for the existing containers, as well as a lift-gate truck
and an electric dump truck to collect and transport the materials.
Despite these gains, however, an estimated 30
percent to 40 percent of recyclable bottles and cans don’t end up
in recycle bins – they either get dumped in trash cans, discarded
on the ground or off campus, or, in some cases, are hauled off by
scavengers.
Consequently, students in the Sustainable Works
program – a nonprofit program that trains SMC students, as well
as Santa Monica residents, to live greener lives – have been going
into classrooms to make students aware of the recycle bins. It has
been discovered that students sometimes toss recyclable materials
into a garbage bin thinking it is a recycling container or not realizing
recycling containers are nearby.
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An additional
24 sturdy metal recycle containers will soon be installed
on campus |
Sustainable Crews – the groups of students trained
in the Sustainable Works program – will also be giving out nice
surprises to students from April 24 through May 4. The crews will
hand out “thank you” coupons – good for a slice of pizza and a drink
from Abbot’s Pizza on Pico Boulevard – to SMC students whom they
observe using the recycle bins.
The Sustainable Works program is funded by the
City of Santa Monica but located in SMC’s Center for Environmental
and Urban Studies in a house on Pearl Street. The center not only
offers environmental courses in a wide variety of disciplines, it
also has a library, video collection, native garden and more. In
addition, it offers a Thursday night speakers series on environmental
issues.
Another area in which SMC is showing progress
in greening is its effort to make new buildings on campus as eco-friendly
as possible. Examples include such features as relying on natural
ventilation rather than air-conditioning and installing waterless
urinals, which can also be found in several restrooms in existing
buildings. Greg Brown, facilities planning
director, says the college is seeking for most of its new buildings
an ecological seal of approval – called LEED – from the U.S. Green
Building Council, an industry group organized around promoting environmental
awareness.
On another front, the Sustainable Works program
is expanding to include SMC employees.
For six years, the program has trained about 200
students each semester over a nine-week period to lead greener lives
in a variety of ways. Those 200 students make up about 20 crews
that are required to do three hours of community service work each
semester that has included such activities as campus cleanups.
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| SMC’s
worm composting project is one of the college’s more unusual
recycling features. |
This semester, the program offered for the first
time a class for SMC employees – 10 signed up for the current session
– that covers a wide range of ways to be environmentally friendly
and save money in the process.
Perhaps SMC’s most famous eco-friendly feature
is its quirkiest – the vermicomposting project that uses worms to
turn three tons of SMC waste each year into clean and organic fertilizer.
The worm machine is also used for educational purposes.
“The worm bin is a favorite with students,”
says Maryam Hall,
Sustainable Works student program coordinator. “They expect their
visit to be unpleasant and are surprised that the worm compost looks
and smells like dirt. At least a few students start composting at
home each semester after they see how it works on campus.”
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