Projects Past and Present

In the past few years we've conducted various energy waste audits on campus. Our efforts have focused on finding ways for the College community to use less energy, especially since coal power plants in general and the College's power plant, behind Mudd, in particular, are large-scale polluters. The College has helped out by retrofitting buildings with compact fluorescent light bulbs, motion sensors, low-flow shower heads, and low-flow faucets. The Adam J. Lewis Center for Environmental Studies is a model for environmentally friendly design. Unfortunately the College didn't follow its example when it built the New Science Facility.

What can you do?

• Wash your clothes in cold water.
• Hang dry your clothes.
• Turn off lights when they won't be used for awhile.
• Walk or ride your bike.
• Take the stairs - it's better for you anyway!
• Turn off your computer when you aren't using it. (A general rule of thumb is that your monitor uses half of the energy of your computer and monitor together. Screen savers don't count, but putting the computer to sleep is almost as good as turning the monitor off.)

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Projects Past and Present

The city and the college have been in discussions starting in earnest in 1997 to pool resources and have a city-wide composting system. Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) is presently composting its pre-consumer food waste at the Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project (OSAP)'s Jones farm. We are working with other groups and individuals to try to implement a composting system for CDS.

What can you do?

• Only take the food you will eat (wherever you eat).
• Appreciate dirt and compost and especially worms - they do good work.
• Start your own compost pile!
• Help OSCA have a productive compost facility by obeying the rules the OSCA composters post.

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Food service...

• We're working on reducing the amount of plastic wasted in the dining halls, particularly in Dascomb and the DeCafe which operate on a largely take-out basis. Our goal is to make reusable utensils as attractive as possible, and to make the items used for takeout recyclable or compostable. Therefore, every firstyear gets a reusable mug when they arrive and we're working on other ideas.
• Our CDS Recyclers (a position begun in 1998) try to make the recycling process as self-explanatory as possible so that people in the dining halls actually use it. There are many opportunities for recycling, particularly in Dascomb, but the recyclables, especially cardboard (pizza boxes etc) are almost always contaminated with food and therefore not recyclable.
• After quite a bit of research, we've found various recyclable or compostable disposable utensils (made out of things like cornstarch). These still have some bugs to work out, like dissolving in hot soup, but we hope to make them available in the dining halls soon.

And more...

• Oberlin Food Rescue is something recyclers occasionally help out with, to donate unserved dining hall food to Second Harvest food bank.
• We created a web-based office supplies swap program a few years ago. It was based on the premise that it costs less to recycle supplies institutionally than to order them from Staples or another distributor. In addition, packaging from shipping costs will be reduced as people clean out their offices.
• Recyclers have been known to do Food Waste Audits, most recently in the fall of 2001, with a view towards making our campus more compost-friendly.

What can you do?

Keep your eyes open, think about what you buy, use, and throw away! If you have questions, contact us - we'll do our best to answer them or point you to someone who can.