This may be my last blog post as Tulane Green Club president. It has been an incredible year. Thank you so much to everyone who came to our meetings, events, rallies, and social events. You all are what made this year such a success. You inspired us to keep fighting the good fight. Thank you.
I'll do my best to list all the accomplishment's we've made this year:
Events
I am extremely pleased to say that we hosted five events this year that garnered over 100 attendees! These are the first five listed.
- Our very first meeting (about 115 people showed up)
- Nuclear Power Debate, featuring expert speakers from Public Citizen (where I am interning now!), The Alliance for Affordable Energy, Entergy, and Clean Energy America (over 140 people came!)
- Both semesters' clothing swaps (well over 100 people came out!)
- New Atlantis? Climate Disruption and New Orleans (About 130 people came and we sent 87 hand-written letters to Obama)
- Teamed up with TU Health and Veggie Club to give out free crawboiled vegetarian food at Crawfest since they don't cater to our needs. We also got a couple hundred signatures for Bike Easy and the Sierra Club
- 20 of us trekked all the way to DC for Forward On Climate, the largest climate rally in American history. The protest was organized by 350.org and the Sierra Club. Here's a photo album from the weekend
- Carried out a little guerilla environmentalism and placed little slips of paper with green tips all over campus (don't worry, the paper and the stickers were diverted from landfills)
- We were featured on a french documentary!
- Unofficially hosted 2 zero waste parties and a few potlucks
- Hosted our 2nd Annual Second Line for Sustainability. Here's some more photos
- Continued the Green Club Lecture Series by bringing in a bunch of profs. local businesspeople, and advocates to speak at our bi-weekly meetings
- Hosted our 2nd annual No Impact Week, asking people to make sacrifices for one week
- Sent 5 Green Clubbers to Bard College's C2C Fellows conference for young enviro leaders
- Made a bunch of upcycled stuff with our subcommittee BOSS (Back to Old School Sustainability)
- Went to a rally organized by Restore The Mississippi River Delta for the opening of BP's trial in New Orleans. Photos of us were syndicated around the world!
Greening The Green Wave
How we've made Tulane's campus a little bit greener (that includes students!)
- We finally received official approval for Tulane's first Residential Composting System and started collecting compost in the dorms with help from our lovely Compost Captains
- Tulane Technology Services, who mantains the printers at the library, Boggs and Willow's labs, has officially switched to 100% post-consumer waste recycled printer paper
- A few of us helped launch Divest Tulane, one of the campaigns at over 300 schools across the nation seeking to stop their schools from investing their endowments in fossil fuel companies
- We picked a Green Theme every 2 weeks at each new Green Club meeting, a small earth-friendly habit to try out for 2 weeks and then talk about it and (hopefully) adopt it thereafter
- Continued to make progress on working with Sodexo to switch BruffToGo to reusable to-go containers. We hope we can facilitate the switch sometime next year
Local Organizations We Volunteered With
Overall we contributed well over 300 hours of time to these awesome groups
- Bike Easy
- Sierra Club
- Verdi Gras
- NOLA Wise
- Gulf Restoration Network
- LA Bucket Brigade
- ARC of Greater New Orleans
- Green Light New Orleans
- Our School at Blair Grocery
Again, thank you so much to everyone for all your support. It has been great leading Tulane Green Club for two years. I have learned a lot from everyone and been inspired by you all. Stay tuned for next year. I have faith that next year's Exec Board is going to have some great things in store.
It has been truly meaningful to me to work with you all. I felt like being Green Club president was my calling. Thank you.
Yours in the struggle,
Nick Stracco
Outgoing Tulane Green Club president
