With finals beating down our doors, college students across the United States are barricading themselves in libraries with a constant stream of caffeine and all of the reading they didn’t do all quarter/semester. But last minute cramming (or carefully planned out studying if it may be) doesn’t have to be as big of a drain on the environment as it is on your brain. There are some ways to study sustainably, and maybe even make it more enjoyable:


1. BYOB: Bring your own reusable water bottle or mug.
-You will save money by bringing a refillable bottle or mug with you.
– Your own bottle will keep your drink hot/cold longer than the paper alternative
-In the United States we use more than 40 million paper cups per day. Break the cycle and enjoy your drink from the mug that makes you smile. 


2. Use recycled paper and recycle it when you are done.
– Every year the United States consumes over 90 million tons of paper. This is an average of nearly 700 pounds person. 
– It takes more than 1 and 1/2 cups of water to make one sheet of paper (about the size of a typical soda can).
– Using recycled paper saves trees, energy, water, and landfill space. Keep trees out of the landfill and recycle your paper when you are done. 


3. Study with other people in the library or someone’s dorm room.
– Instead of everyone studying in their own rooms with all of their lights and lava lamps on, get together in a library or common room instead. You will save energy and have more fun studying. 


4. Study during the day to use the daylight
– Turn off the lights, open the blinds, and absorb some of the suns light. Who know’s, it may be the only sun you get for a few weeks. 

5. Snack on local, organic food
– Ditch the processed snacks and instead feast on locally grown fruits and vegetables. 
– On average, food travels 1,500 miles to get to your supermarket. Shrink your carbon footprint and support local farmers while fueling your brain. 


6. Drink fair trade coffee or tea
– When you need a caffeine pick-me-up, choose fair trade. 


7. Print double sided
– Duplex printing saves you money and can potentially cut your paper use in half. 
– If you are at SCU you can print double sided in the library.


8. Buy used books
– I would hope that by now you have all the books you need for the quarter, but if not buy used. It’s not only better for the environment, but will give you more money to spend on late night snacks. 

In a few days college students around the country will pack up and go home for Thanksgiving break. All I have been thinking about this week (aside from all of the homework I have to do) is the few cherished days I will have before dead week and finals. But for many students, they are faced with the choice to spend hundreds of dollars to fly home, or spend Thanksgiving alone and wait the two weeks to go home for Christmas break to see their families. 

Students and faculty have suggested to the university that instead of having two weeks of school after Thanksgiving break and before Christmas break, school should start two weeks earlier and Thanksgiving week should be the first week of Christmas vacation. This would not only allow students to save money on plane tickets and allow more students to be home for Thanksgiving, it would also severely reduce our carbon footprint as an institution. Having students leave campus two weeks earlier means that the electricity to all of the dorms could be shut off 3 weeks earlier. It would also save the carbon from all the students who will travel home twice in such a short amount of time. 


Hopefully Santa Clara will consider making the changes that other universities have so that we can start school a little earlier and end the quarter before Thanksgiving. 

Students around Santa Clara who want to reduce their waste are often left standing in front of trash and recycling bins trying to decide where to put their red cups. After a great deal of deliberation, most red cups will still end up in the landfill. So what are the options for the ubiquitous red cup?


After a long weekend at most universities red cups fill trashcans like confetti after a surprise party. In order to be able to recycle red cups locally, it really depends on local recycling facilities. There is currently a great deal of debate and confusion on if you can recycle red cups in Santa Clara.


However, across the U.S. TerraCycle is offering a free program to all college students (or anyone else) who would like to responsibly dispose of their used red cups. The money they make from the recycled materials is given to a charity of your choice. All you have to do is:


1. Sign up online


2. Fill up a cardboard box full of cups in order to ship as many as possible at once.


3. Go online and print out your pre-paide postage label and put it on your box. You can drop off your box to any local UPS. 


For more information…

Although this program is a great way to divert waste from the landfill, at least for a few years, ultimately it would be best to avoid the use of red cups all together. Reusable cups are always the best choice. 


To see what else you can recycle, check out TerraCycle.

My roommate keeps paper towels in the bathroom that she uses after she washes her hands. My heart breaks a little bit every time I see her tear one off and throw it in the trash. However, her behavior has made me realize that the paper towel industry has made us forget the alternative completely — a reusable towel (you know, that regular, old-fashioned, cloth towel). 

Image courtesy of Savybrown.com

Instead of using a paper towel for everything and then throwing it out, consider using a regular towel instead that can easily be washed and reused. If you buy a single towel for $5 or a roll of paper towels for $1, that towel will last you more than 5 years, but that roll will most likely be gone in a few weeks. Some families will save more than $100 a year by no longer using paper towels. 

It seems like we have forgotten that these:

Image courtesy of thecontainerstore.com

 Come from these:

Image courtesy of Seventoten

Paper towels are not only manufactured from trees that need to be cut down and processed, but they also take a great deal of chemicals to make. In the process of creating the paper towels the wood is bleached and coated in chemicals. Anything that is made out of wood and is as highly processed as paper towels also use a great deal of energy, not to mention the fuel and emissions to take the tree from the forest, to the factory, and ship it to you. Plus, the carbon reducing trees you cut down to clean up your spilled milk go straight to the landfill and increase our carbon emissions. 

So the next time you spill something or want to clean your windows (or any other surface), put the paper towels back in the cabinet and pull out your regular towel instead. Your wallet and the environment will thank you. 

I have quite a few half started posts that I have not had the chance to finish. With finals beating down my door and late nights at the paper, I have not been giving as much time to my blog as I would like. The good news? Finals will be over soon (relatively) and the paper is finished for the quarter. This means that my blog will be getting more love from me. 


Things I am planning (and excited about):
– Sustainable Holidays
– What is a GMO and why are people so concerned about them
– Holiday Recipes (cookies, warm drinks, and other delicious items thoroughly tested by myself : ) )
– and quite a few more


In the meantime, you can see my other work that has torn me away from my blog at The Santa Clara! Check out my recent article about our community garden, the Forge:

The hot sun beat down on the three volunteers as they struggled to pull the dry, dead plants from the soil in order to plant for the next season. The garden was empty, except for the three volunteers and the plants swaying in the wind.

At the start of its third year, the Santa Clara Forge Community Garden, located on the corner of Benton and Sherman streets, is in a time of transition. The garden’s previous director, Patrick Archie, left over the summer and a new team has taken his place. New Director Joanna Johnson, Program Coordinator Natalie Yoder and Education and Outreach Coordinator — and Santa Clara alumna — Cara Uy (’11) have been doing their best to make the transition as smooth as possible, especially finding ways to attract more student volunteers.

“(The transition) has been really rough, but we’re getting a lot of support, and nobody’s really pressuring us one way or another,” said Uy. “We get to kind of make the Forge our own.”

One of the biggest challenges for the team is the lack of student volunteers. Volunteer workdays have been moved to Mondays and Thursdays from 2-5p.m. to make the times as convenient for students as possible.

However, many students have no idea that the university has a community garden, let alone where it is located or when they can help.

“We have this feeling that campus doesn’t really quite know about the Forge,” said Leslie Gray, executive director of the Environmental Studies Institute.

To keep reading go to The Santa Clara or pick up a copy on campus!

My roommates are often baffled at all of the things I tell them about sustainability. I honestly think they are under the impression that I am crazy, but I have been slowly seeing changes in their behaviors (which makes me incredibly happy). For something as complicated as living sustainably, even the smallest behavioral changes can make an impact.


Things my roommates have started doing:
1. They ditched the bottled water habit! I haven’t seen bottled water in our apartment since the first week of school. A major part of this was that our fridge came with a built in water filter. As the filter has slowly stopped working as well, they have gotten used to the taste of the tap water. 


2. They turn off the lights when they leave the room (for the most part). 


3. They pack the dishwasher as full as they can before turning it on to save water and energy. 


4. They take really fast showers. Way faster than me (in my defense they are athletes so they take a few really fast showers a day).


5. They dress in layers instead of turning on the heater.


6. One of my roommates hangs her laundry up to dry.


7. Open windows instead of turning on the air conditioning. They have also worked out which windows and blinds to open during certain parts of the day depending on if we want to cool the apartment down or warm it up. 


8. They indulge in coffee and hot chocolate to warm up on cold mornings and nights.


9. We go to bed early which means we use less energy than if we stayed up late and got up late (in the mornings we only need the daylight and our lights are not on for long at night). 


10. When they do not have enough laundry to fill the washing machine, they ask around for who else needs to do laundry, which saves water and energy.


11. Instead of just throwing things away they ask me if it can be recycled.


What small things are you doing to be more sustainable?

At the beginning of this week it was in the high 70’s and I was seriously over dressed in a sweater dress (I really don’t know what I was thinking on that one). Yesterday and today are now at least 20 degrees colder, and I am struggling to stay warm just thinking about going outside. 


As the winter weather settles in to stay, we need to beat the temptation to just turn on the heat and keep wearing our shorts and flip flops. Instead of pretending it’s spring or summer year round, bundle up and enjoy the weather. Warming yourself up without turning on the heater will save energy and money.


1. Dress in layers. This way you can take things off or put things on depending on the inside/outside temperature. 


2. Don’t touch that dial! Resist the temptation to notch up the thermostat. See if you can leave it at 67 or 68. If you are really brave, see if you can live without it for most of the day (obviously if you live where it snows this isn’t brilliant).


3. Put on another sweater and a blanket when you are at home. 


4. Eat and drink warm things. Soup and tea keep me toasty.


5. Invite friends over. People can warm up a room in no time. 

I was shocked last year when I heard that SCU had a goal of being carbon neutral by 2015. I knew Santa Clara was starting many initiatives to decrease our carbon emissions, but I had no idea we had the ultimate goal of carbon neutral. The more I talked to people around campus, the clearer it became that students didn’t know about our goal either. 


This lack of awareness led to dig deeper into our goal and how we were planning on getting there. For more information check out my article in The Santa Clara (front page above the fold!!!):

Santa Clara University has reduced carbon emissions for the first time in four years since committing a pledge for higher standards of sustainability on campus.  

The change comes just one year after President Michael Engh, S.J., set the goal for the university to be carbon neutral by 2015.

“Our goal for the end of 2010 was to reduce our emissions 20 percent below to ‘97 levels by the end of 2010 — we got to 11 percent,” said Lindsey Cromwell, director of the Office of Sustainability.  “A little bit disappointing, but we went in the right direction.”

For the rest of the story go to The Santa Clara or pick up a copy on campus!