Sustainability Leadership Development Program for Freshman

HEY FRESHMEN! Interested in a resume building and career-oriented opportunity on campus?! Come to the ECO REPS infosession for the SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM put on by JHU's own Office of Sustainability, Monday December 9th at 2PM in the AMR MPR! Free food and an opportunity to meet some of our campus's many environmentalists!!

HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!

Our favorite day of the year has rolled around once again, and once again it is a beautiful, spring day!  So go outside and hug some trees, drink some tap water, and appreciate the earth!! Love your planet!!

BIRTHDAY SHOUT-OUT

     Truly a special day when two of our Eco-Reps celebrate their birthdays!  Happy birthday to Olivia, who joins the Hopkins family from the other coastline. A California native, she’s began her college career studying environmental science. She isparticularly interested in agriculture and its relationship with the environment based on geographical location, and specifically in opportunities in urban environments. With all the movement around greening Baltimore and urban farming in Charm City, we hope she puts her passion into practice right in our backyard. You know, when she’s crossed making Johns Hopkins the greenest school around off her list.

     And another birthday shout-out to Stephanie,who hails from Austin, Texas, where the Longhorns reign supreme and sustainability has caught on well. She’s majoring in Material Science and Engineering, and looks forward to turning her long-standing interest and exposure to sustainability into tangible impacts to her university of choice. She once went a day only eating peanut butter to win a bet, so we think she has the brawn for iron-fisting some big time green change at JHU.  Be sure to recycle today to help these two lovely ladies celebrate!

Green Lacrosse Game

This past week has been busy on campus with exams, spring fair and our very first green lacrosse game!  The game was a success and we had our green mascot running around reminding everyone to recycle their waste!

BIRTHDAY SHOUT-OUT!

Happy Birthday to our very own Noah Erwin! Noah is an important member of our Housing and Dining Task Force! A native of Tennessee, he plans to major in Global Environmental Change and Sustainability. In addition to his ECO-Rep duties, he is also involved with Real Food Hopkins, a student-run chapter of the national Real Food Challenge movement committed to bringing local, sustainable, humane, and fair food to the Johns Hopkins campus. Noah also likes to kick things when he’s not toiling away at saving the environment, but he mostly keeps it to soccer balls, but we do expect he’ll kick some sustainability butt during his time at Johns Hopkins.

Be sure to wish him happy birthday if you see him around campus!

Did you know?!

Did you know that 90% of waste produced on campus goes to the incinerator?  Before you throw something out, think about where it's going!

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REDUCE YOUR USE!

Check out the Facebook page for Hopkin's Sustainability and participate in the competition!

The Environment is Our Valentine!

In keeping with the spirit of Valentine's Day - just a friendly reminder to LOVE THE ENVIRONMENT TODAY! For those of you, like us, who need to call your mother every time you attempt to do laundry, or who tinted all of your white sheets pink during the first semester - this one is for you: laundry can be simple! Throw it all in the same washer and hit the 'BRIGHT COLORS' setting, which will use only cold water.  This is not only time-efficient for you, but it's energy-efficient, which benefits the environment.  It's a win-win! Using the cold-water setting saves 90% of the energy otherwise used to wash clothes and prevents up to 1600 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year! Happy Valentine's day to all - give a tree a hug today!

And look! It's not just us GECS majors and ECOReps who are spreading the love! Freshmen Julia Johnson (Economics Major) and Matan Grossmann (Mechanical Engineer) do their laundry the COOL (pun intended) way too!!

Project: Raise the Roof

The green roof team of the ECO-Reps at JHU is working on an initiative to increase understanding of green roof technology and benefits, as well as awareness of green roofs on the Homewood campus, among students.  We plan to implement programs that educate the student body about the benefits of sustainable green roofs and their important to resource conservation.  WE also hope that by increasing student support for such programs, our campus will become more sustainable and have the impetus needed to contribute using this and other techniques that improve environmental performance of campus infrastructure.

Currently, the Mattin Center at Johns Hopkins, an architecturally unique building on the main undergraduate campus and one of the main student gathering sites, has low, accessible roofs that are used for pedestrian traffic.

The goal of this project is to educate students about the benefits of green roofs, and this central location provides a prime space for installing a functional green roof to mitigate stormwater runoff, while also serving as a tangible and interactive educational display for the campus community. There also will be sample cross sections on display in planter boxes that exist around the perimeter of the roof space. Complementing this setup will also be a kiosk posted nearby to thoroughly explain environmental and cost benefits of the roofs. We will also conduct other outreach through interactive opportunities, like a garden party. It is at this event, ideally to take place during our campus’ Earth Week program, attendees will participate in an activity to learn about green roofs and conservation. Finally, we plan to work with the university to spread awareness at a home lacrosse game. This “Green Lacrosse Game” will involve other environmental groups on campus where we will provide tours of the green roof installed on the lacrosse building, work with fans to ensure all waste is recycled and composted correctly, and provide other tips and activities that encourage fans to learn about sustainability at Johns Hopkins and beyond.