Office of Sustainability

This week kicks off our next Recycle Mania contest, Caught GREEN Handed! Take a photo of you and your friends recycling, composting, or choosing reusable/recycled materials and send it to us via social media for a chance to win AWESOME prizes!

Tonight is also a FREE screening of TINY: A Story about Living Small at 7:30pm in the Beckwith Auditorium! Here’s a description:

TINY is a documentary about home, and how we find it. The film follows one couple’s attempt to build a “tiny house” from scratch, and profiles other families who have downsized their lives into homes smaller than the average parking space. Through homes stripped down to their essentials, the film raises questions about good design, the nature of home, and the changing American Dream. http://tiny-themovie.com/

Make sure to mark your calendars for the Blanket Swap Bazaar next week, too! Thursday, February 27 from 4-6p, in the Welker Room!

Next week as a part of Recycle Mania 2014 is the 2nd Annual Blanket Swap Bazaar! Bring your used clothes, accessories, and other items to trade or sell! February 27 from 4-6pm in the Welker Room. Sign up on my.chatham or just show up! All of the unclaimed items will be donated to Goodwill!

blanket-swap-flyer-1.pdf

Stay warm out there, and stay posted about other upcoming Recycle Mania events!

Recycle Mania is in full swing at Chatham, and we have a lot of awesome ways that YOU can help us win the competition this year!

Starting Next Monday, February 10, we will be collecting compostable cups from various collection bins on campus and bringing them to Anderson Dining Hall! Volunteers will be entered into a drawing for GREAT gift cards! Each time you sign up to volunteer, you will be entered again – so the more you sign up, the more likely you are to earn a great prize!

One of our featured giftcards is from East End Book Exchange in Bloomfield! East End Book Exchange is a neighborhood used bookstore that has a great selection of books, and is only about 2 miles from campus! Best of all, buying used books is a great way to shop sustainably! Check out their website at: http://www.eastendbookexchange.com/shop/eastend/index.html?id=fF3wnw3Z

To sign up for compost collection, fill out the information on the Google Doc below:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmlpfhyfyJyYdGhEUzg3elNjZzVNa0tQU2hDcUZ5NWc&usp=sharing

Other ways that you can participate in Recycle Mania 2014:

• Recycle ALL your paper, plastic, aluminum, and glass products on campus in ANY of our recycling bins!
• Compost your food waste and compostable coffee cups from Café Rachel in the Anderson Dining Hall composting bins
• Donate unwanted school supplies to OSX, the Office Supplies Exchange, in the Falk Hall Basement and Eastside 2nd floor study!
• Sign the “I Recycle” Pledge at http://americarecyclesday.org/pledge/ to help us win a recycled bottled bench!
• “Get Caught Green Handed” by sending us photos of you and your friends recycling or composting on campus!

Hello Recycle Maniacs!

It’s been a few weeks since our last post, with school starting again and life getting busier and busier! However, we are back and excited to give you all a heads up about Recycle Mania 2014!!!

Our official start date this year is Sunday, February 2, but today begins our online “I Recycle” Pledge Drive! Sign up here with your Chatham e-mail address: http://americarecyclesday.org/pledge The school with the most pledges wins a bench made out of recycled materials! Let’s go Cougars!!!

For more information on Recycle Mania, check out: http://recyclemaniacs.org/

Happy Friday!

We hope everyone had a smooth first week of classes and is excited to embark on their studies this semester! At the Office of the Sustainability, this has been a successful and productive first week back, as we are now connected through Hoot Suite to our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages!

Here’s a list of where to find us on the internet:
Twitter: @chathamsustain
Facebook: facebook.com/chathamsustain
Instagram: chathamsustain

There are a number of upcoming sustainability-focused events on-campus and in Pittsburgh, so make sure to follow us on Twitter, as we update that with event information most often! You can also check out the Greener Pittsburgh events calendar at http://www.greenerpittsburgh.com/community/green-event-calendar for a list of area events.

For next week, make sure to mark your calendars for…The Chatham University MFA in Creative Writing Program presents: Reading and Book Signing by Ashton Nichols. Tuesday, January 14 at 5:00 pm in the Beckwith Auditorium.

About the author: Ashton Nichols is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Chair in Sustainability Studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Revolutionary “I”: Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation and The Poetics of Epiphany: Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Modern Literary Moment, and the editor of Romantic Natural Histories: Wordsworth, Darwin, and Others. He has published articles in The Wordsworth Circle, ISLE, and The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, among numerous other journals. He is currently completing Thoreau’s Walden: An Ecocritical Edition.

Make sure to also sign up for the next installment of the Inspire Speakers Series at Phipps Conservatory on Thursday, January, 16! Details are in the previous post.

Have a great weekend!

Next Thursday, January 16, is the next installment of the Inspire Speakers Series at Phipps Conservatory, sponsored by the Green Building Alliance. We attended last month’s Inspire Speakers Series and highly recommend attending – the cost is only $15 for students! For more information, go to http://www.go-gba.org/events/inspire-speakers-series/