Going Green @ Haverford

Happy Earth Day!

Looking for some ways to celebrate this day of appreciation of our planet? The Arboretum and the EarthQuakers are hosting events all day:

It’s not too late to join the Arboretum on Barclay Beach from 11-1 to plant trees.

From 1-1:30, Dr. Seuss’s ever popular The Lorax will be read on Founders steps. The reading will be followed by a celebration with homemade cookies and other snacks, live music, games, and painting.

Tonight from 8-9:30, Bidder 70 will be screened in Stokes Auditorium.

Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970. While it is nice to have a formal day dedicated to our planet, just remember that every day is Earth Day. You can show appreciation and enjoy Earth by taking a walk on the nature trail, going for a bike ride, planting some flowers, or simply taking a nap under a tree. When enjoying the outdoors becomes important to people, they are more likely to look out for the health of our planet. Have fun outside today, and Happy Earth Day!

Bike season is upon us now that spring has arrived (hopefully to stay!). After a winter in storage, many bikes will need a bit of routine maintenance; bike riders are in luck!! This winter, a Dero Fixit bike station was installed at Haverford’s Foundry near the GIAC and the Fine Arts Building.

The station contains tools to add air to tires, adjust the breaks, and much more! Not a bike expert? Don’t worry! Use a smart phone to scan the Quick Read code on the front of the Fixit, and you will receive detailed instructions on how to use the tools and fix your bike.

The Dero Fixit station would not be here without the initiative of William Leeser ’15, who applied for funding through Students’ Council and The Greening Haverford Fund. We asked him a few questions to learn more about his process:

How did you first hear of the Dero fixit? Why did you want to bring it to Haverford?

WL: I first heard about the fixit on reddit, where I saw a post by a student at UVA who spent a year organizing the installation of a fixit there. I immediately thought that the project was really cool because there are plenty of bikes at Haverford, but only a few pumps, and fewer tools available. This was an excellent solution for general maintenance, because it was simple, accessible, sustainable, and I think it will fill a need for many members of the community for years to come- all from a one-time investment.

Did you face any obstacles in the process? Is there anything else we should know?

WL: In terms of the process of getting the fixit installed, everyone involved did a really awesome job. It took about five minutes to find out about the Greening Haverford grant, and it took only two months after the application was submitted to secure the full funding. Edward Gracia of bike club and Claudia Kent played huge roles in making the project a reality; Ed made the project a priority for Bike Club, and went through SC to secure half of the funds, and Claudia, who was immediately enthusiastic about the project, designed a custom sign for the station, and ensured that the installation took place right away.

An exciting new change in Founders Great Hall indicates Haverford’s continuing effort to minimize environmental impact.

Bill Anderko, Assistant Director of Facilities Management, recently alerted CER of the recent light bulb swap in Founders. The incandescent light bulbs in Founders Great Hall’s eight large chandeliers have been replaced with LED bulbs. The work exchanged the ninety six, 60 watt incandescent light bulbs for 12 watt dimmable LED light bulbs.

The change will ultimately save energy, money, and man-hours for Haverford. The 12 watt LED bulbs will save 4,608 watts per hour compared to the old incandescent bulbs. Further, the exchange, which cost $2000, will have a payback of less than two years! Estimating 8 hours of light use per day, the school will save about $1,100 annually using the lower wattage bulbs. In terms of man hours, the new LED bulbs have 25 times the lifespan of the incandescent bulbs, so they will need to be replaced much less frequently! These new bulbs could go eight years without being replaced, while the old ones needed to be replaced several times each year. Replacing light bulbs may not sound like a big deal, but when the chandeliers are 20 feet high and require scaffolding to reach, each exchange can be a burden.

The next time you are in Founders Great Hall, take a moment to admire the new bulbs, knowing they are saving energy, money, and effort here at Haverford!

Hey Haverford! I know there are a lot of us who like to get off campus, and maybe where we live at home, it is difficult to get around without a car.  Well, Haverford is different, thanks to some new (and old) transportation initiatives!  From bikes to trains to Philly Car Share, there are plenty of options for students, faculty, and staff to get to where they need to go without always hopping into their cars.

Foundry Location for Bike Station!

Bikes are a great way to get around the Haverford area.  If you don’t have a bike, well you are in luck! Each semester Devereux hosts a used bike sale on campus and sells them to students for $40 to $100.  Just be sure to show up to the sale early; this fall, 26 of the 30 bikes for sale were sold in the first 15 minutes!

In other bike news, the Committee on Environmental Responsibility (CER) and the Students’ Council teamed up to purchase a Dero fixit bike station.  Located at the Arts Center Foundry between the South Lot and Safety & Security, the bike station will provide students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to repair their bikes for free.

Trains also provide a convenient option to travel into Philly, or even towns nearby.  The Student Activities Office provides FREE Septa tokens and tickets.

Subsidies are available for students using Philly Car Share

When you do need a car, Philly Car Share is on campus!  Even better, CER will subsidize students for the first hour of use, essentially making the first hour free!  This subsidy can be redeemed up to three times per student per semester so team up with friends and take advantage of this great opportunity!  Find more details here: www.haverford.edu/news/stories/61371/381

By planning out your travels and not always relying on a car to get around, you will be responsible for fewer greenhouse gas emissions.  Haverford provides cheap and convenient transportation options, so why not take advantage of them?!

On Wednesday October 24, Haverford was one of 283 colleges across the country celebrating Food Day. Haverford’s celebration included a potluck dinner, film screening, and discussion and was a “raging success” according to David Robinson ‘14. More than 100 members of the community, including students, faculty, and staff, came together and conversed while enjoying an abundant supply of homemade food and fresh apple cider. Just when we thought we were running out of gourmet macaroni and cheese, lentil soup, and quiche, eHaus arrived with two large vats of minestrone and plates of corn bread. Many members of The Beet Goes On Co-op cooked with their CSA veggies, and the dining center provided their Sweet Potato Crunch made with local sweet potatoes.

With full stomachs and smiling faces, many guests stayed to watch the short film “Food MythBusters: Do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world?” (foodmyths.org/food-mythbusters/). The film was followed up with an in-depth discussion about food at Haverford and how it works.

The event united six different food-conscious and environmental groups on campus as co-hosts of the evening: The Beet Goes On, The Committee on Environmental Responsibility, the EarthQuakers, the Haverford Garden Initiative, eHaus, and Quaker House. Sam Shain ‘13 of the Co-op had the initial vision of the Food Day celebration at Haverford and she reflects, “Food Day was such a resounding success because we came together as a community– from planning to cooking to enjoying– many, many heads and hands were at work. We can build a more equitable and sustainable food system, but only if we continue building coalitions and relationships like we did for Food Day. Thanks for making this possible!” Sam and The Beet Goes On are coordinating a Real Food Challenge retreat on November 16th-18th to learn more about “real” food and to develop leadership skills necessary to revolutionize food systems. Contact Sam if you are interested!

On Sunday September 30th, the Haverford College Student body convened at Plenary, a biannual tradition at the college during which students debate and subsequently vote on proposed resolutions. In an effort to reduce environmental and monetary costs at Haverford, Eve Gutman ‘15 and Tim Ibbotson-Sindelar ‘13 proposed to eliminate paper towels in dorm bathrooms in exchange for installing personal towel hooks. Gutman and Ibbotson-Sindelar had done their homework, presenting a thoughtful argument for their cause. They reported annual paper costs over $11,000 for the 1.4 million paper towels used at the college each year in relation to a one-time cost for hook installation. A week before Plenary, they also held an open forum for the public to express their concerns with the resolution.

Though opposition was vocal about sanitary issues and inconvenience in the pre-vote debate, the resolution passed by a decisive margin (decisive enough so that a paper tally was unnecessary). Students fearing germs can keep their personal towels in their bedrooms down the hall. Also, a limited supply of paper towels will remain available in halls in case of spills and messes.

This resolution marks the third environmentally-related Plenary resolution presented in the past two semesters. Last spring, students voted in favor of implementing a composting program for food at the college, but failed to encourage the words “the environment” to be included in the Honor Code. The recent support for the elimination of paper towels indicates the Haverford student body’s conscientious nature and sense of responsibility.

Congrats, Eve and Tim; your hard work paid off!

Ten acres around the pond just became a Penn State certified pollinator garden. Pollinators need our help.  Both native bees and domestic bee populations are declining, affected by habitat loss, disease and contact with pesticides. The criteria to become a pollinator garden are as follows.

1) Provide Food for Pollinators

• Provide pollen and nectar sources from early spring to late fall
• Provide a variety of flower shapes and sizes
• Incorporate pollinator friendly native plants into your garden

2) Provide water sources for pollinators:

• Butterfly Puddling Area
• Birdbath or shallow water source
• Pond
• Stream
• Water Garden
• Spring

3) Provide Shelter

• Dead wood
• Rock Pile or Wall
• Spaces of bare ground
• Man-made bee houses
• Leave garden cleanup till late spring

4) Safeguard Pollinator habitat

• Remove and/or avoid use of invasive plants
• Protect existing natural woodland or meadow
• Reduce or eliminate pesticide use (Haverford does not spray in the vicinity of the pond)

Any size garden can be certified to become a pollinator garden. Visit: ento.psu.edu/pollinators/public-outreach/cert

Many thanks to Penn State for providing the information for this blog and overall creating a great program.

Nell Durfee received a grant from the Greening Haverford Fund. Below are her reflections of her experience.

I’m just now back to Block Island after spending about a week a way—the first five days at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center near Haverford, for a conference on Quakerism, activism, and environmental concerns, and the next seeing family. I’ve been having a lot of trouble translating my experience into words—this might be because this year the conference, an annual young adult delegation, was condensed from seven weeks into five days. The effect was to super-charge an inspiring conference into a five-day crash course into how to be an activist. I’m leaving feeling like I was just read a mini-manifesto on environmental activism—and understanding that we not only have to stop fueling climate change, but that we can. An inspiring conference, indeed.

David Robinson received a grant from the Greening Haverford fund this summer. Here are his reflections of the experience.

Fellow Haverford student and I touring the McGill University student gardens

Earlier this summer I received funding from the Greening Haverford Fund (along with funding from the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship) to attend a conference called Degrowth in the Americas, which was being held in Montreal. Degrowth is a radical sect of environmentalism. Proponents of the movement maintain that environmental problems are, above all, due to the growth imperative of society’s economic thought. In other words, infinite economic growth is incompatible with a finite planet and therefore in order to solve environmental problems we must completely scale down our growth-oriented economy.

I first heard of the degrowth movement from a Haverford alumni, Peter Brown. He is currently a professor of geography at the McGill University School of Environment and was one of the organizing directors of the conference. He came to speak at Haverford in the spring about degrowth and suggested that I come to the conference to learn more about the movement and about degrowth thought.

As a whole, the experience was very valuable, but not for the reasons that I had expected. The sessions at the conference tended to be very hit or miss. Some of the parallel sessions were not as useful as I had hoped. I found that while some of the presenters had a very clear idea of a desired degrowth society, there was very little discussion of a means to reach that end. The keynote speakers, however, generally had much stronger presentations. In particular, David Suzuki, a Canadian biologist, environmentalist and celebrity, gave an inspiring talk. Other keynote sessions had panels of experts that discussed a gamut of environmental issues from population to environmental ethics.

My problem with lectures is that it is a one-way track. As an attendee of the conference, I could only listen to people speak and try to soak in as much of it as I could. I am an interactive learner. As a result, what I found the most valuable was the opportunity to talk and discuss with other attendees, especially other students. On most nights a group of students would go out to dinner or a bar and have discussions about the day’s events and topics. It was here where I felt I learned the most.

A keynote panel session at McGill University

One of the questions that I kept thinking about during the conference was, how, as a 20-year old college student, could I contribute to a more sustainable and degrowth-oriented world? Talking with other students was actually very empowering in this respect. One person I met, a student at Concordia University, has already started his own NGO that facilitates a network of permaculture businesses in Quebec. Speaking with young people who are active and innovative is empowering, and it shows that perseverance can accomplish a lot. In the same respect, during our time in Montreal there were student protests against hikes in tuition. On one night there was a protest with over 50,000 people in the streets. While the cause was different, seeing young people take to the streets and come together in protest had a similar empowering influence on me. The final event of the conference was actually a street protest against industrial expansion in pristine areas of northern Quebec.

Overall, I came away from the conference with the inspiration to do two things. First, I want to live a low-impact lifestyle. This means limiting my consumption, limiting the amount of things I own, when I need to, buying sustainably-sourced things, riding a bike, and eating sustainably-produced food. And second, I can try to be as involved as possible in grassroots environmental movements. I believe wholeheartedly that these seemingly small actions can make a difference on a larger scale, and I am glad that this conference reinforced these values.

I want to thank the CER, as well as the CPGC for giving me the opportunity to attend this conference. I feel lucky that these opportunities for personal and intellectual growth are readily available to Haverford students.

David Robinson

Marissa Gibson-Garcia was a recipient of the Greening Haverford Fund. This fund assists students and faculty in raising environmental awareness and enhancing environmental practices at Haverford. Each recipient is asked to provide reflections of their experiences.

Food Justice Leadership Training in College Park, Maryland

I was recently supported by Haverford’s Committee for Environmental Responsibility to attend a food justice leadership training workshop hosted in College Park, Maryland—a four-day event that took place from August 16^th to the 19^th. The training was run by an organization called the Real Food Challenge (RFC), a nation-wide campaign that works with college students to bring what is coined as “real food” to their campuses, real food being food that is local, healthy, humane, and ecologically sound. Myself and three other students from the Bi-Co attended this training with about 8 other students from across the mid-atlantic region, and in truth, it was one of the most empowering weekends I’ve ever experienced.

Our workshops took place mostly in the same house where we ate and slept, a cozy three-story home with posters and drawings hung on the walls, and a kitchen abundant with vegetarian and vegan foods. There were three RFC organizers who served to facilitate workshops and agenda-setting, but the intentional atmosphere of the group was one of shared power and responsibility; each day, new people were delegated to be in charge of cooking and preparing meals, of leading the clean-up of areas we had been using, and of making sure everyone was on-task and on-time as we transitioned from activity to activity.

Emphasis was placed on storytelling, and the power that a well-told story can have in building solidarity and strengthening a campaign. During the first workshop of the weekend, we were prompted to share our past experiences in activism, first one-on-one with another person and then with the entire group. My story rose out of me at a surprisingly un-chipper note: I talked about how I’d felt skeptical of the probability of success in the activist work I’d done in the past, and how I wasn’t sure that I’d ever had the faith in a cause, though my well-wishes abounded, that was perhaps necessary for its success. The group responded with an overall sense of understanding, and of empathy for those exact feelings of skepticism. Looking around, I thought about how these people, who had already begun to prove themselves in my eyes as exceptionally capable leaders and change-makers, were no strangers to the doubt that I had found so paralyzing. I felt an overwhelming sense of encouragement, and a push of hope, which was the beginning of the growth that I would experience throughout the weekend.

Of particular interest to me, going in to the training, was to learn about the way that the corporate food system works with universities. I was shocked to learn how utterly oppressed farmers are by the whole system, caught in a squeeze between corporate-controlled materials needed to produce food and corporate-controlled buyers needed to sell the food to, making for easy exploitation. As a result, farmers are in higher debt than they need to be and have lower food quality, wages, and on-the-job safety. Additionally, corporations (like Aramark and Sodexo) make demands from universities called “compliance numbers”—demands like “You must buy 90% of your chicken from one of our preferred vendors,” forcing an extra amount of dependence on the university’s part.

What, then, can we do? How can we as members of a college community ensure that our food is real food? Well, for one thing, we were given an excellent tool called the Real Food Calculator. Using this calculator, students and administrators are able to keep check of which kinds of foods are actually real foods, guiding us through dishonest food labels such as “organic” and “natural” which are meant to make foods look healthier and more ethical than they actually are, a process called “greenwashing.” With the Calculator, it is possible to ensure that food on campus is legitimate and greenwash-free.

Other workshops gave us a breadth of knowledge about community organizing , and helped us formulate plans for furthering our own food groups on our campuses. One of the most crucial lessons I took away was from the “Types of Leadership” workshop. It began with a roleplay—we sat in a circle on couches and wooden chairs, and small slips of paper were given out, which we were instructed to keep to ourselves. My paper said “You love brainstorming. You are full of new ideas.” We then began our “meeting,” acting as if we were a student food justice group on campus and needed to figure out what to do with a $1000 grant. The meeting didn’t go so well. One guy acted like a know-it-all, one girl chatted with the person next to her the whole time, one girl tried to bring everyone back to the agenda in a frustrated manner, someone else gave no input and became flustered when she was asked to speak, I spurted out ideas loudly and frequently as my slip of paper directed me to, and a handful of other problematic personality quirks made the meeting largely unproductive. After the roleplay, we discussed the different types of personalities demonstrated, and how while each one of them had the potential to add to a meeting’s chaos, each one also had the potential to be useful if put to the right task. The girl who chattered to friends next to her the whole time, for example, was clearly a very social person and could be used for community outreach and recruitment. In a similar way, each type of personality represented had its own place in a successful team.

Activities like these were playful, fun, and gave me a new way to look at problems that I had faced in group organizing in the past. With this particular activity, I was not only given new ways to think of disruptive behavior during meetings, but I was also able to look at myself and see where my strengths lie. I found that I am largely a “task” manager and somewhat of a “visionary” as well, so my strength in a meeting is to take initiative in starting and running current projects rather than to come up with big-picture strategies. This was a huge paradigm shift for me, because my frustration with strategic leadership had been a large, discouraging weight on my head. Now, I have a more solid picture in my head for how I plan to go forth in applying my strengths, for Haverford’s food collective as well as in other future community organizing roles.

For the experiences, lessons, and inspiration that I received over this training weekend, I thank the RFC organizers and other weekend-attendees deeply. I also thank the CER for funding this weekend that was important to my development as a mover and a shaker in this world. I believe I can speak for the other Beet Goes On members who were at the training and say that after the training, we all feel confident, inspired, and ready to bring real food to Haverford.

Marissa Gibson-Garcia