George A. Smathers Libraries Green Team

• Barbara reported on the green team captain’s meeting:
  • the office of sustainability is taking requests for Green Team polo shirts.  They’ll be $15.  If you’re interested, please let Beth know.
  • The One Less Car campaign will happen again this October.  It will encourage all participants to recruit a friend to take part.  If you recruit a friend, your team will gain extra points.
  • PPD is visiting various buildings on campus to retro-commission air conditioners.  The goal is to save energy
  • Environmental Health and Safety is working on a task lighting project.  The light clips on to your desk and it uses less energy than an LED light.
  • Barbara was given 2 switch plate stickers to remind folks to turn off the lights when they leave a room.  We would like to get more of these for common areas.

• Sustainability tip sheet.
  • Please think of additional tips to include and try to keep it brief and specific to library employees and the things that they can do at work to use less energy, paper, etc.
  • Eventually, we’ll put this on a Green Team folder that everyone in the library can access.  We’re also thinking of including a separate document for sustainable tips to use at home.
  • We also talked about making a quarterly or monthly (?) poster that would highlight a couple of sustainability tips that could be viewed by both library employees and patrons.

• Used supplies exchange:
  • Laurie is working on making a shared folder (the same one mentioned above) that will hold the supplies exchange spreadsheet.  Everyone will be able to access this in the libraries.  The spreadsheet will include items that library departments/individuals have, but are not using.

• Biodegradable supplies for library events:
  • Beth researched the best company to buy these supplies from.  She looked at World Centric, Eco Products (both online), and went to Target and Publix to see what they have in stock and she called Indigo.  The best “bang for the buck” is World Centric. Target and Publix carry one brand of plates, but they would cost around $100 for 500 and then we’d still have to buy cups and utensils.  We can get 500 plates, cups, forks, knives, spoons, and napkins for approximately $200 from World Centric, which is the price that has been allocated for supplies by the Employee Recognition Committee.  Beth emailed Ben Walker (chair of the ERC committee) a spreadsheet of World Centric prices and item numbers.

• Green Libraries (http://www.greenlibraries.org/) and Library West
  • Beth wrote a draft and submitted it to the team.
    

• Library West stairwells:
  • Rob Roberts asked our Green Team to make a sign for the 2 east facing stairwells in Library West.  They have noise detection lights and he wants us to come up with a sign that will warn people that the lights will come on when they enter the stairwell.  There is some concern that individuals may get startled if they see a dark stairwell and that may cause them to use the elevator instead.  Christine and Beth visited one of the stairwells and the lights came on right when we opened the door.

• Cycling for solar energy (http://www.thesolarcyclediaries.com):
  • There are 3 individuals cycling around the world for solar energy awareness.  Bonnie has emailed the media people that work with the cyclists to see if they can stop in Gainesville when they cycle through Dunnellon this January.  We hope they can give a presentation to the UF Green Team network.
    

Just want to point out the activities going on in April for Earth Day/Month.  I copied this from the Office of Sustainability website.  One thing that isn’t listed below is the hazardous waste round up that will be on the plaza of the Americas on Earth Day (April 22).  You can bring stuff from home, like CFL bulbs that no longer work. The round up is just for stuff from home, not for UF stuff.

April 9, 2009, 8pm Dr. Jared Diamond

Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

Co-sponsored by: UF Office of Sustainability, UF Department of Soil and Water Science, UF Dean of Students Office, UF Water Institute, UF Honors Program, and UF School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Dr. Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography (UCLA) and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, will present a lecture related to the subject of his latest book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. He will talk about the signs that collapse is near, and how, if we see it in time, we can prevent it.

April 14, 2009 “Sustainability Mythbusters”
Weil 270, 6:30pm
UF experts address common sustainability myths and offer tools for answering questions about reducing our environmental impact.

April 16, 2009 “Is Collapse Imminent?”
Weil 270, 6:30pm
Showcase of research being done at UF on interactions among climate, environment, and society.

April 18, 2009 Earth Day Celebration at UF Museums
Florida Museum and Harn Museum of Art, 10am-3pm
Enjoy live performances, games and eco-friendly craft activities hosted at the Florida Museum and the Harn Museum of Art. Find out about local conservation efforts and how to get involved. Celebrate the Earth and discover how going green can be easy and fun!

April 19, 2009 Green Run/UF Hustle for Humanity
This 5K run/walk aims to bring attention to green building principles and benefit UF Habitat for Humanity.

April 21, 2009 Sustainable Products Trade Show
10am-2pm, Reitz Union Grand Ballroom
Participating vendors, UF Departments and student organizations educate the campus community about sustainable products purchased by UF and options for green products for personal use.

April 22, 2009 Earth Day Celebration
10am-3pm, Plaza of the Americas
Featuring President Machen’s annual report on the State of Sustainability at UF, sustainability recognition awards, student organization fair, and other activities

April 22, 2009 Earth Day at Shands
9am-3pm, Shands Hospital Atrium
Celebrate Earth Day and learn about Shand’s environmental initiatives.

In our meeting today we discussed:

-the incandescent/CFL lightbulb exchange that the Office of Sustainability is coordinating.  We sent out an announcement about it out to the watercooler list.  Jack, Beth, and Bonnie will be contacts.  We’ll collect incandescent bulbs or $1 bills until this Thursday, Dec. 4th and then Beth will let Jason Fults konw how many to reserve.  We’ll pick up the CFLs on Tues., Dec. 9th sometime between 11am-2pm.  Those that reserved the CFLs will pick them up from our offices on Wed., Dec. 10th.

-Green Team t-shirt: Alicia is going to look into some companies that can print organic cotton shirts.

-Take the stairs sign: Bonnie (I believe) came up with the clever phrase :Burn calories, save watts.” Alicia is going to get in touch with Barbara H. to have the sign changed.

-Saving energy: Laurie will inquire about making the computers more energy efficient.  Robena will check on the status of having the monitors use sleep mode in the next branch meeting (? or some other meeting)

-Mr. Beale, the retired environmental engineer: Alicia will get in touch with him to see when he may be available to either come to one of our Green Team meetings or to present some ideas at a staff/town meeting

-Green Team captain meeting that was on Nov. 20:

1. One Less Car update- will have the challenge every fall semester.  The winning team will be a combination of the most active team and the number of participants.  There will be an honorable mention for the team that saved the most CO2.
2. Change the Margins campaign-  The default margins in Word are 1.25″ on the left/right and 1″ on the top/bottom.  If we change all sides to 0.75″ we will have 19% more typing space.  If everyone did this on campus we could save 22 million sheets of paper, 72 acres of forest, $120,000/year.  The Office of Sustainability is going to ask that the margins be changed in all computer labs.
3. Sustainability Recognition Awards- 2 tracks: student track and faculty/staff track.  Each track will have awards for water saving, energy/waste reduction, and a Bright Idea award.  The Bright Idea award will recognize the best idea for advancing sustainability.  The faculty/staff track will include an award for the most active Green Team.  The awards will be presented on Earth Day (April 22, 2009) by Dr. Machen.  Green Team volunteers are wanted to help design the rewards.  If you want to help, please contact Jason Fults in the Office of Sustainability, jason@ufl.edu

Please comment if I left anything out.

Here are a few information sources and links that were mentioned in the UF Green Team captain’s meeting:

The Office of Sustainability Green Team Google Group.  This is a way to share information across all campus Green Teams and for the Office of Sustainability to share information with us.  I’ll be sending you an invite shortly to your work email address.  You could sign up with your gmail account if you prefer to do that instead.

If you haven’t done so already, you may want to sign up for the Office of Sustainability newsletter at http://sustainability.ufl.edu/ Click the link and sign up with your email address near the top left of the page.

The website for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) is a nice resource.  UF has a membership to it, so you can sign up with your ufl email account.  You can browse the site to see what other schools are doing with recycling, energy, etc.

Hi Team,

The suggestion of organic cotton t-shirts is a good one!  Would someone on our team be willing to look into getting an estimate from a t-shirt company regarding costs that would include:

1. Price of an organic cotton t-shirt

2. Set-up charge for the printing of the shirts

3.   Cost as it relates to quantity printed. For example 50 t-shirts $480.00, 100 t-shirts $401.00 etc.

Lastly, is there someone on our team who would like to designing the t-shirt or should we discuss this at our next meeting as a group?  Please share your comments and feedback.  Have a great day!