A Few Things

Green Club general meeting Tuesday 9/25 7:30 pm in Boggs 104.  Be there, or don't!

    We're having our second annual 2nd Line for Sustainability this Sunday from 1-3pm starting at the field in front of Reily (For those of you who don't know what a 2nd Line is, come and find out. You'll be glad you did)
    Tulane Brass Band will be there jammin out tunes for us to dance to. We'll be making cardboard signs with environmental slogans on them Saturday to tout while dancing our tootsies off. So come and dance! And bring friends, and dogs, and instruments, and parrots, and whatever you want!. Official event page is here

    One more thing: our clothing swap is nigh, so starting at this FAQ on LBC quad from 4-6pm we'll be accpeting clothes. For every piece of clothing you bring, you get to take one from the actual swap on Oct. 19th.

    Lastly, our nuclear power debate will be Oct. 9th at 7pm in GWH 1310. That event page is here. . It is going to be explosive (in a good way, not like a meltdown kinda way).

 

Warmly,

Nick Stracco

President ~ Tulane Green Club

 

Volunteers Needed for this Saturday!

Greetings!

     NOLA Wise, a local branch of Global Green that works on energy efficiency, needs help canvassing this coming Saturday the 22nd. Ya interested? It's gonna be a blast. They need people to get there at 10 and we'll be done by 1. We're taking the streetcar down and they will carpool us to where we need to go.

     If you're interested, please fill out the form here and send me an email at nstracco at tulane.edu with the subject "NOLA Wise." Please include your phone number in the email so I can get in touch with you to meet Saturday morning.

     In other news, we have just created a document detailing all the different projects we're working on right now. Turns out, it's a lot! Check out the document here. If you see a project you're interested in, feel free to hop in! Add your name. Also if you think of a project you wanna see done but it's not on there, feel free to add it to the list! And just so you know, that link will be kept in the right side of this page so you can access it even after this post sinks to the bottom.

Thanks for reading!

I'll leave you with a quote:

"The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth."    - Chief Seattle


Get a bike!

~~~

Nick "Taco" Stracco

President, Tulane Green Club: Greening the Green Wave

Tulane University | New Orleans, LA

New Compost Bins

Check out our official calendar for the semester.

It is official: Tulane Green Club with help from our Compost Captains have constructed 4 brand new compost bins behind Paterson residence hall. We're happy to say that the bins were built using used wood from Bruff Commons. We'll start collecting biodegradable waste from the dorms coming up soon.

So if you have fruit or veggie waste that you'd like to compost, bring it on by! Make sure to sprinkle 2 parts dead plant matter ("brown matter") for every 1 part food matter ("green matter"). That's to make sure the compost has carbon from the plants to balance out the nitrogen from food.

Check out some photos of the build:

Photo credit: Caroline Stoner

I'd like to thank all our awesome Compost Captains, as well as people who just showed up to lend a helping hand. We couldn't have done it without you guys!

With love,
Taco

President ~ Tulane Green Club

First Meeting Has Occured!

Wow!
I can't believe how many people turned out at tonight's meeting. I am so proud of the Tulane community for caring so much about the environment. Over 100 people came out! 

We heard a little from Our School at Blair Grocery and NOLA Wise and what they do, talked about plans for the year, took suggestions for what to do this year, and did some more guerilla environmentalism by handing out green tips to put all over campus.

Check out how packed the place was! I know it messes up formatting, but I think it's worth it

Here's a photo of some guerilla environmentalism we did:

We passed out a few hundred of these (printed on used paper of course) and asked people to stick them all over the place using name tags I found that were going to be thrown out.

Thanks for everybody who came out! We'll be posting a new blog soon with our calendar for the semester. 

Our personal policy that we're all adopting for the next 2 weeks is the following:
Try to skip paper towels entirely.
Just give a try. For two weeks, just shake your hands out and pat them on your butt instead of using tree products. Then at our next meeting we'll talk about how everybody felt about it, if it really makes an impact, and so on.

Keep being awesome!


With love,

Taco
President ~ Tulane Green Club

New Year Begins!

Hurricane Isaac is finally over, and classes are ready to begin. Hazzah!
The 2012-2013 Tulane Green Club Executive Board will be meeting this coming Thursday, September 6th to lay out a master plan for the semester. If you have any ideas or suggestions send them to us! We're always open to ideas. TUgreenclub@gmail.com

Find us at the Activities Expo this Friday, Sep. 7th on LBC Quad on Tulane's Campus. We'll have signup sheets and details about our goals for the year.

Check back later this week for a more detailed blog post after our meeting with our plans for this coming year.


Get a bike!



Nick "Taco" Stracco
President ~ Tulane Green Club

Year End Progress Report

So this is it. The 2011-12 school year is over. Looking back we have had an incredible year. Seeing how much momentum we've gained, especially relative to last year, is really impressive. Last year's meetings had only a handful of attendees; this year we had over 25 people consistently. We also threw tons of awesome events and really got stuff done. Here's an outline of what we accomplished this year:

• Threw our first annual Moving Planet 2nd Line for Sustainability along with thousands of other cities worldwide that organized events with 350.org to show that we care about this planet. We are featured in their international video TWICE! Check it out here http://youtu.be/7lteZulzEM4 we're at :06 and 1:14
• Volunteered over 170 woman- and man-hours with local environmental groups Verdi Gras, Bike Easy, Sierra Club, Hollygrove Market, Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and Green Light New Orleans, (we 
  saved 43,340 kilowatt hours and 49,170 lbs. of CO₂  by installing CFLs with Green Light)
• Collaborated with Tulane Veggie Club to give out free vegan and vegetarian food at Crawfest to hundreds of people and got signatures for a Sierra Club petition on toxic oil dispersants and a Bike Easy petition to improve a bike path in NOLA
• Expanded on-campus composting and pressured Sodexo to compost at our cafeteria (they're starting it next semester with NOLA Greenroots!)
• Took trips out to nature preserves to remind people what we're fighting for and that nature is worth saving
• Organized our first annual No Impact Week, a week of pledging to do small sacrifices in your daily life to minimize your environmental impact (ideally, to have zero). Idea crafted after watching the film No Impact Man
• Worked with Veggie Club to help with Go Vegetarian Week to encourage people to try out a vegetarian diet for a week
• Started the Green Club Lecture Series, inviting in Tulane faculty in a space to teach about something that they love but may not have time to explore in their courses
• Screened Mardi Gras Made in China and helped Verdi Gras, Phoenix Recycling, and Arc of Greater New Orleans with launching Mardi Gras' first on-site bead, plastic and metal recycling program (it's crazy that we've never recycled during Mardi Gras before this year)
• Created a ninja task force to place stickers that say Remember: These Come From Trees on every paper towel dispenser on campus. Each sticker can save up to 100 lbs of paper in a year. That's an entire tree!
• Learned how to make a bunch of stuff ourselves with B.O.S.S. (Back to Old School Sustainability) like nutella, hand salve, grape jelly, kombucha, and more

That's about everything I can think of right now. That's a pretty awesome list! Thanks to everybody who helped out this year! I can't wait to see what we get done next year. 

Get a bike!

Nick Stracco

President, Tulane Green Club

Storming the Brain with the President-Elect of Tulane Green Club

Greetings fellow humans!

We have decided who will assemble next year as the Executive Board of the Tulane Green Club for the 2012-2013 school year. Congratulations to the following:

President ~ Nick Stracco

Executive Vice President ~ Emma Collins

Vice President of Finances ~ Susannah Halbrook

Vice President of Education and Campus Concerns ~ Dan Coleman

Vice President of Lagniappe ~ Mallory Lowe

VP of Fresh Ideas ~ position left open for an incoming freshman with great potential 

This is Nick writing by the way. Hi there! I have been thinking a bunch lately about what I want to accomplish next year as president. I thought about sitting down and storming my brain, and I figured I may as well document it in our blog here. Ah yes! A brainstorm, that's exactly what I need.

Things to get done on campus:
♳ Create a policy for Technology Services to only buy recycled printer paper for our printers
♴ Continue and expand the Weird Recycling program (small bins in dorms to recycle weird recyclables like printer cartridges, batteries, cell phones etc.)
♵ Build new compost bins in the Glazer Garden behind Wall Residences
♶ Place compost buckets each of the dorms on campus. Regularly transport contents to the newly constructed bins in the Garden
♷ Change all the dorms' hallway light switches to motion-detectors and save tons of energy
♸ Petition professors to make double-sided printers the standard requirement for written assignments
♹ Get some dorms to install permanent clothes drying racks to reduce energy use by using dryers less

Events to throw:
♳ Moving Planet Day 2nd Line with 350.org (We got on their international video last year, TWICE! :05 and 1:15, check the Tulane shirts! Another link in case the first one doesn't have the video on it)
♴ Free vegetarian food for Crawfest! It was a huge hit this year and we should do it again
♵ Go on lots of nature and camping trips, both with the Reily Center and by ourselves
♶ Go Veggie Week with Tulane Veggie Club
♷ No Impact Week  ~ people pledge to try things for a week to minimize their environmental impact
♸ Green parties with BYOcups, non-disposable only
♹ More ninja task forces ~ guerrilla environmentalism i.e. friendly suggestions on ways to be less impactful on nature and natural resources
♺ Continue the Green Club Lecture Series ~ Invite professors and other well-informed individuals to present about anything they're passionate about relating to nature and/or the environment

Cool local organizations to volunteer with:
♳ Bike Easy
♴ Green Light New Orleans
♵ The Sierra Club
♶ Yours if you're in one and need volunteers! I'll leave my email address below

Leadership goals for the Executive Board:
♳ Be open to feedback
♴ Be accountable
♵ Accomplish something you're passionate about
♶ Have fun together
♷ Have each other’s backs
♸ Address conflicts early
♹ Interact with the general body, don’t just talk at them

I'm super excited about next year. The incoming E-Board is awesome (seriously, I'm very excited to work with you all) and we're definitely going to kick some butt. Again, this is just one of many storms of the brain. I likely left out some things, and I most certainly did not think of everything.
If you have any feedback at all, such as suggestions, inquiries, volunteer ideas, or just want to say Hi, feel free to email me personally. 


Thanks for reading.

Warmly,
Nick Stracco
nstracco (at)   tulane.edu
President-Elect | Tulane Green Club
May 17th 2012