Green Committee Meeting Minutes
February 1, 2010
Present: Ruth Staunton, Victor Zabileski, Nancy Wyatt, Callan Bentley, Kathleen Odigé, Rob Como, Ray Bailey, Skyler Kopko, Susan Thompson, Milan Hayward, Jennifer Richardson.
Spring program; Callan gave us an update on speakers he is wooing for a Green event this spring. Ray can contact Greg Perry (Manassas) for suggestions and other contacts. Skyler suggested that her contacts at the Washington offices of Greenpeace offices may be useful as well.
Pepsi Presentation on the “Re Program”: Because NOVA currently has a contract with Pepsi, the Green Committee was interested in whether this company could help us with our focus on recycling. Nancy arranged for Jason Gilbert, Regional Sales Manager for Pepsi, and Rob Rushia, On-Premise Manager for Pepsi, to attend our meeting and explain what recycling services or information they might offer. The Re Program is a focus on recycling mandated by Pepsi’s CEO to improve bottle recycling in institutions like college campuses. Mr. Gilbert explained how Pepsi may be able to help us with the main components of recycling: waste assessment, infrastructure, communication, interaction, and annual review. He suggested he would be willing to meet with all campuses not covered by the Fairfax contract to begin a recycling audit of the campus in order to know how effective we are now, and make some goals for the future.
Mr. Gilbert mentioned a local consultant, Ed Hindy, whose pamphlet, “How to Design a Successful Recycling Program” may be useful to us. He will distribute via email.
Nancy will let Rob Rushia know whether our recycling contracts are single-stream or not.
“Greening” the Curriculum: Ray shared a list of “green” projects that have been requested or implemented at NOVA. Milan Hayward is to chair a committee on green programs for those looking for a grant, or with proposals for special projects. Many programs are workforce based, so workforce development is prominent in the proposals. Milan is looking for Subject Matter Experts for an alternative automotive energy program. He reported that the Curriculum Committee recently approved a Construction Management course in sustainability as an official course, and that related Architecture courses will be before the Committee this fall. Sherry Robertson may be willing to meet with us about sharing ideas across committees.
Sustainable Transportation Data Update: Regarding transportation between campuses, Ray reported numbers from George Gabriel’s office: currently 5,000 students take classes at multiple campuses; 1,900 travel between Alexandria and Annandale. We discussed whether this would be a good test project for shuttle services. We discussed if a poll would be useful to discover how many students would take advantage of a campus shuttle. Ray, Callan, and Victor will discuss poll questions with George Gabriel’s office. The poll data will decide if the next step should be talking to Vice President Miguel Garcia about parking issues on our campuses.
Copiers: In order to save paper, we discussed whether it was desirable to ask college departments to set their copiers to double-sided printing as a default setting, and whether it should be implemented as a formal college policy. To do so would require an update of the Administrative Services Procedures Manual. Some of us will inquire with our Provosts to ask that select departments try double sided default settings on copiers as a test. Alternatives: professors can reduce copies used in class by instead posting documents on Blackboard, simply remind staff that double-sided copies are an option, and promote re-use of single-sided paper.
The next meeting is to be Monday, March 1.