Earth Week 2012

U of S Earth Day Fair 2010

Earth Day 2012: Sunday, April 22nd

Earth Day is only about a week away!  This list of U of S Earth Week events at https://foursquare.com/univofscranton/list/earth-week-events makes it easy to learn what environmentally themed activities are happening on campus starting with tomorrow’s annual Street Sweep.

Included in the list are Library activities like the opening reception for the Environmental Art Show, which will take place Monday at 7pm in the Heritage Room.  As part of this year’s Foursquare Frenzy,  there will be a special prize for the first students who check-in during the reception, and it’s not too late to submit artwork! Just bring in your submissions to the Library by Monday morning.

Want to learn more about how you can go green? Check out resources on sustainability in the Library Catalog or Research Guides.

You can also visit the Media Resources Center to watch one of the top sustainability themed films available at the Library:

  1. The Age of Stupid– DVD- feature film
  2. The Day After Tomorrow –DVD- feature film
  3. Eating Alaska– DVD- documentary/educational film
  4. King Corn-DVD- documentary/educational film
  5. An Inconvenient Truth –DVD- documentary/educational film
  6. No Impact Man-DVD- documentary/educational film
  7. Flow: For Love of Water-DVD – documentary/educational film
  8. Food, Inc. –DVD- documentary/educational film
  9. The 11th Hour– DVD- documentary/educational film
  10. The Great Warming -3 parts VHS- documentary/educational film
  11. Warnings from the Ice VHS- documentary/educational film

Final Call for Art — Environmental Art Show

The Library is still accepting submissions for its annual Environmental Art Show! You now have until Sunday April 15th to bring your Environmentally themed artwork into the library.

The purpose of the Environmental Art Show is to promote sustainability through outreach and artwork. By submitting a piece (or pieces) to the Environmental Art Show you are showing your support for the Environment and letting the local community know that The University of Scranton cares about Sustainability.

Environmental Artwork can be broadly interpreted and includes, but is not limited to: Photographs oil paintings, water colors, acrylics, mixed media, recycled goods. Environmental subjects include, but is not limited to: flowers, nature scenes, trees, animals, environmental degradation and destruction, etc.

I strongly urge you to show your support for sustainability and submit artwork to the Art Show.

Iggy’s for sustainability… are you?

Iggy stopped by the library today to get a drink of water. As you can see, Iggy practices a sustainable lifestyle, using his Save Our World BPA-Free water bottle to fill up at the library’s purified water station. If only we were all more like Iggy.

Save Our World Water Bottles on Sale!

In collaboration with SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise), the library will be selling the “Save Our World” water bottles for $5 all week (Monday December 5th through Friday December 9th).

Stop by the Circulation Desk and pick-up the cheapest, most environmentally friendly bottle on campus! You can even pay with your Royal Card!

Trail Clean-up

The Weinberg’s Green Team participated in a trail clean-up Saturday morning along their adopted section of the LHVA Heritage Trail. The team worked for two hours and made it through half the trail.  In that short amount of time, they succeeded in filling 9 bags of garbage, several bags of recycling, a pile of metal, and a tire! Their adopted section is the CNJ portion and runs from 7th Avenue, along the South Side Sports Complex, to Elm St. The team will be planning more clean-ups in the future. Visit our Flickr page for more pictures from Saturday!

Earth Week 2011 Wrap-up and Green Team First Year in Review

This year marked the second year the library celebrated Earth Week in order to raise awareness about sustainable issues…

Even though I’m happy to report our structural engineering skills have improved from 2010; unfortunately, our sustainable use of paper did not. However, the increase paper usage is likely because all computer labs on campus have eliminated student printing. Considering almost all students (excluding personal printers) were sent to the library to do their printing, its probably safe to say our “paper awareness” and educational outreach efforts  throughout the year had probably payed off.

The good news is that immediately after Earth Week we installed double sided printers throughout the building. Part of the credit for double sided printers should be given to the anonymous student who wrote on our 2010 Earth Week student suggestion page which asked “How should the library Go Green in 2010?”

For Earth Week 2012 we fully expect the paper tower to be a fraction of the size of it’s ancestors thanks to a combination of duplex printing and outreach by the Green Team.

The “wasted paper” display is a tough comparison for a number of reasons. In 2010, we didn’t have the clearly labeled WedgeCycle recycling bins throughout the building and by and large most people weren’t sorting their recyclables. So, paper that otherwise might have ended up in a trash last year is now being properly placed in a paper recycling bin this year. Also, this year we did 10 days worth of recycling whereas last year we did 7 days.

Speaking qualitatively, it would seem that this years “wasted paper” display was an improvement over last years. It was approximately the same amount of paper, but there was no trash mixed in with the paper.

Curbing the amount of wasted paper, unnecessarily duplicated prints, and print jobs left at the printers is definitely a priority for the Green Team.

New for 2011, we had a Craft Night where students, staff, and faculty had a chance to come to the library to make Origami figures out of reused book covers. Pictured above is a display of some of our masterpieces.

This year we hosted our first ever Environmental Art Show as an alternative way to educate about sustainable issues and to reach out to the community. Considering this was our first time hosting an Art Show, we think it turned out pretty good. We are looking forward to see what Environmentally themed art our Students, Staff, and Faculty will have prepared for next years Environmental Art Show! Click the following link for more pictures from the Reception for the Environmental Art Show.

In this poster we displayed all of the library Green Team’s many accomplishments. Some of which include the selling of Reusable Water bottles at the same price it cost us to make them, the installation of a Water Bottle Filling Station, the installation of double-sided printers, tri-colored recycling bins, the adoption of a section of the LHVA’s Heritage trail, collaborating with the Communications department to make Sustainability PSAs which air on our TVs, and collaborating with students for their poster board session at the University’s Sustainability Fair.

The Green Team knows it has a lot of work to do if we are going to to accomplish as much as we did in our first year, but we welcome the challenge!

Boost Your Environmental Awareness

April 22nd is Earth Day, and the Media Resources Collection has many films that cover topics related to the global environment including  No Impact Man,  An Inconvenient Truth, and The 11th Hour.

An area of growing concern is the environmental aspect of agriculture and how producing the foods we eat has changed over the past fifty years.  King Corn and Food, Inc. are two eye-opening documentaries that shed light on these changes and question whether or not they benefit our environment, our health and our farmers.

Check for their availability by searching our Library catalog at http://wml.scranton.edu/search.

Environmental Art Show Reception

The Reception for the Environmental Art Show will be held tonight (Monday April 18) from 7 to 9pm. Please come by the Heritage Room (5th floor of the library) for a chance to meet and greet the artists. The Reception is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served at this event.

Second Call for Art

The deadline to submit your Environmental or Sustainability related art is quickly approaching!

Please have your artwork delivered to the library (either the Circulation or the Reference Desk) before Monday April 11!

All types of artwork are invited to be submitted to the Environmental Art Show. The exhibit will run from April 14th to the 21st in the Heritage Room. On Monday April 18th at 7pm there will be a Grand Opening event for a chance to meet the Artists and discuss their work. Refreshments will be served.

For more information about the Environmental Art Show please visit the original blog post: Calling All Artists

Save our World!

Now available at the Library for purchase are BPA-Free reusable water bottles. These BPA-Free reusable water bottles are only $7 and you can use the Library’s new water purifier to fill-up for free!

The Library Green Team has been dedicated to tackling as many environmental issues as we can. By purchasing one of these bottles and filling up for free at the new water purifier in the 24 hour room, you can help show your Scranton Pride and support Sustainability!

The water bottles are 28 ounces and are made with BPA-Free plastic.