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Meeting Minutes

 

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Sep 18, 2016

Meeting 3

All: Please fill out both of these short forms to indicate your preference for indoor and outdoor social activities/ events! Semester Camping Trip poll , Indoor Events Poll 

 

  • Divestment group: Do at least one class or student group rap. Here is a Link to petitioning script and Link to petitioning sign-on sheet. You can have students and faculty sign either the official sheet or notebook paper, just be prepared to direct them to our website or Online petition if they want to see the actual petition ;) If you would like a buddy to do a class rap with, or if you missed the meeting and are interested in helping, please let me know!  Record which class you present to here.  

    • If you are one of the people who signed on to contact a specific faculty or person to be a guest speaker at the Divestment Event on Thursday Oct 27 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, I will email you soon with our description of the event. 

  • Sustainable Food/Waste group: Meatless Monday suggestion (flyers or posters, education campaign). Minimize food waste - access what level of  food waste is; Catch up with Food Recovery Network 

  • Governmental Affairs: start petitioning to ban fracking in MD!!  Begin with class raps for this week, and we will move into petitioning around campus. Amelia will write SGA bill in support of banning fracking statewide. Think about environmental film festival, research potential New Projects:

  • Conservation → partner with Save the Bay 

  • Butterfly → white turtle huts (volunteer day)

  • Community Greening Event → charge tax for plastic bags BUT ineffective so far 

  • Clean Energy Jobs Act (Hogan Vetoed)

  • City Affairs: Think about what issues we would like to work on this semester and want we want to do with the Green Dining results from last semester. For a  quick review: This spring, SSC set out to determine the top tier of sustainable restaurants in CP, using 14 survey questions related to waste, energy, food, and restroom resources usage. Here are the 7 restaurants that stood out amongst the 40+ businesses surveyed:

    • NuVegan, Starbucks, Chipotle, McDonalds, Sweet Green, The Board and Brew, Noodles & Company. It seems that big corporations are the ones that can afford more sustainable practices, such as dine-in options, recycling, and antibiotic-free food.  Almost 90% of the restaurants we surveyed had three or more vegetarian options and one vegan option as well, however, only one restaurant, McDonalds, relies on renewable energy to power (written by Jay Rao). 

Announcing the:

 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ART CONTEST - Accepting submissions until Oct 24 - $$ Prize

 

UMD's SGA Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) is accepting entries for its visual arts contest about fossil fuel divestment.  By pressuring the University System of Maryland to "divest", we ask that they remove its $71 million invested in dirty energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas and redirect those funds into renewable energy companies. Art submissions must relate to divestment, "dirty money", or other ideas regarding our environment, energy, economics, power, justice, etc. All student submissions will be showcased at the SSC's Divestment event on October 27, 2016. Contest winners will receive a gift certificate to a local College Park business.

 

Submission details:

Submissions of two-dimensional pieces may be emailed to umcpsgassc@gmail.com, either as an attachment or as a photo of the art piece. Please contact that address for details regarding submission of three-dimensional pieces. 

**Send this to your listservs!!

 

 

If you are interested in helping with / learning more about our SUPER COOL Sustainability Fund Project experimenting with organic lawn treatments, please contact Errin Saunders at errin.t.saunders@gmail.com, more help would be appreciated! Have a great rest of your week, and if you have any feedback, questions, etc please let me know!

Love,

Maya

Sep 11, 2016

Meeting 2

  • Divestment

    • Current status of the movement

      • Petition Goal: 1100 signatures

    • re-vamping the B1G divestment coalition!! Have each school sign on to list of demands. Who wants to be on this team? Amelia, Willem!, Darren?

      • Contact Jack about designing logo

    • working more closely with other schools that have divested/ are in the process of divesting (build on Power Shift 2016? next week we will hear from the people who went to Power Shift!)

    • getting the USM Foundation to divest from oil and natural gas-- we will not give up until they have committed to 0% invested in all fossil fuels. Who wants to help with research / Foundation communications?

    • Event ideas? → I need to order more stickers (shirts we likely would not get funding for)

    • OPED!!!!!!  Supportive moving in right direction but not as fast as needed

    • Celebration event (Camille?)  free event like divestapalooza thurs night near halloween

    • Possible speakers for event: Martin O’Malley, Dan Mote (Cayli will be on this), Dean Orr

    • Forming a fossil fuel divestment coalition with other umd green and social justice groups

    • USM Divestment Coalition - Power Shift contacts?

    • Invite other DC universities

 

  • Campus Sustainability / Waste

    • Ideas so far (put name next to issue if you’d like to work on it)  (Maille is interested)

      • expanding composting (grant for more composting in residence halls?)

      • more education on waste sorting in Dining Halls/ across campus

      • having sustainable food more readily available

      • addressing food waste in Anytime Dining

    • Stop the Straw campaign: encourage restaurants to participate in this waste-reduction campaign geared toward straws( nonrecyclable and incredibly wasteful!) A half-sheet is distributed with menus that has the Stop the Straw logo and a two-sentence blurb encouraging customers to ask for no straw --> servers will only distribute straws if the customers ask for them. Interested in participating in this campaign or learning more??


 

Action Items (8:15-8:30):

 

Write a letter to President Loh, Provost Rankin, and VP’s about the lack of mention of sustainability or climate change in the Campus Update. In letter:  letter draft helping draft letter: Eric, Marcus

  • Discuss the Sierra Club downgrading us to 44th (the submissions for consideration of cool school ranking deadline was March, before the Foundation released May statement, so this ranking is incorrect);  

  • Request that the timeline for carbon neutrality be moved up, from 2050 to 2030 or even 2025

 

Beyond Campus Breakout Groups quick discussion (8:30-8:40; once the directors have been decided, next week will meet for full half hour)

  • City Affairs

    • get recycling in terrapin row (Annie)

    • more recycling in College Park businesses and bars, reduce food waste

    • work with town on being more sustainable

    • Annie and Kate to email Town Hall about recycling

    • beautification projects, Clean City Project (Upcoming event on Sept 11! Sign up here!!)

    • reducing trash

  • Governmental Affairs

    • ban fracking in MD!!!

    • petitioning the state government to allocate more funds to energy efficiency upgrades

Sep 04, 2016

Meeting 1

  • City Sustainability issues (City Affairs)

    • get recycling in terrapin row

    • more recycling in College Park businesses and bars, reduce food waste 

    • work with town on being more sustainable

    • beautification projects, Clean City Project (Upcoming event on Sept 11! Sign up here!!)

    • reducing trash

  • Statewide issues (Governmental Affairs)

    • ban fracking in MD!!!

    • petitioning the state government to allocate more funds to energy efficiency upgrades 

  • Divestment 

    • re-vamping the B1G divestment coalition

    • working more closely with other schools that have divested/ are in the process of divesting (build on Power Shift 2016? next week we will hear from the people who went to Power Shift!)

    • getting the USM Foundation to divest from oil and natural gas-- we will not give up until they have committed to 0% invested in all fossil fuels

  • Campus Sustainability / Waste

    • expanding composting (grant for more composting in residence halls?)

    • more education on waste sorting in Dining Halls/ across campus

    • having sustainable food more readily available

    • addressing food waste in Anytime Dining 

    • Stop the Straw campaign: encourage restaurants to participate in this waste-reduction campaign geared toward straws( nonrecyclable and incredibly wasteful!) A half-sheet is distributed with menus that has the Stop the Straw logo and a two-sentence blurb encouraging customers to ask for no straw --> servers will only distribute straws if the customers ask for them. Interested in participating in this campaign or learning more? Please respond to this email if interested!

 

  • Other ongoing initiatives that will meet primarily outside of meetings: 

    • Sustainability Fund organic lawn treatment experiment led by Errin Saunders at errin.t.saunders@gmail.com (this group will meet during meetings but most of the work on the treatment plot, such as aerating and seeding, will be done outside of meetings) 

    • Mini Grants subcommittee  (contact us at umcpsgassc@gmail.com to learn more, we could do with one more person to help review sustainability mini grant proposals!)

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