The environmental club has worked hard in selecting two high quality stainless steel bottles to sell to the WA community to facilitate the ending of the use of single serving water containers. Though tap water can have issues, it is more heavily regulated than bottled water and the city of Worcester’s water is heavily monitored and of high quality, particularly so after being filtered as all drinking tap water on campus is. Given the life cycle impacts of stainless steel bottles – you must use it 500 times before the environmental benefits exceed using an equivalent number of single serving plastic containers according to one study- the Environmental Club encourages as many people as possibe to take the Back 2 Tap Pledge and use their own reusable bottle or buy a new WA bottle. For more information on bottles and the pledge click on Bottles

Wading into the voluntary renewable energy market this past October, nearly 10% of WA’s total electricity demand will be met by 100% renewable energy produced throughout New England. Through the New England GreenStart program (Green Start) WA will purchase and retire Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) for all electricity used by Alumni House and off campus faculty apartments and athletic facilities. The energy sources include low impact hydropower, biomass, wind and solar. For a map of energy source locations click on Green Start Sources and for a Green Start disclosure label Disclosure Label. This program is available to all Massachusetts National Grid customers. Another renewable energy option available to all residents and organizations is the New England Wind Fund NewEnglandWind.

Worcester Academy has converted its campus wide use of 5-gallon bottled water containers to filtered municipal tap water. The city of Worcester has some of the best municipal water in the world, while the filters act to remove sediment and residual chlorine that can effect taste. The conversion will reduce WA’s electricity use by approximately 16,000 kWh/year, and reduce our annual CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 11 metric tons. Relying on the city of Worcester’s municipal watershed for thousands of more gallons a year rather than using trucked in bottled water will further enable WA students and community members to develop social responsibility and a sense of place. For more information on Worcester water click on WaterQualityReport2008 for the 2008 annual water quality report. Click on Filter1 and Filter2 for information on campus tap water filtration technology.  And for local and general water managment information click on Water 1 and water 2

On Tuesday, September 8th as part of a Community Harvest program, members of the class of 2014 planted late season broccoli and cabbage at Brigham Hill community Farm in Grafton, MA. The farm has exceeded 40,000 pounds of crops this season.

For more information go to communityharvest.shtml

Three trees native to the northeast were planted over the summer in honor of WA’s first Environmental Hall of Fame inductees. Pictured above are an eastern hemlock, balsam fir, and a river birch. See the WA Hall of Fame page for more information.

In collaboration with METECH international Worcester Academy recycled over 4,000 pounds of electronic waste in the spring of 2009. In 2007, the U.S. “recycled” 500 million personal computers. Planned obsolescence of consumer products is a central problem to this consumption-waste cycle. Inherently, our current use of electronics is unsustainable. Further,”recycling” electronic waste is problematic due to a potential lack of transparency and enforcement and participation of international governance instruments such as the Basel Convention, as well as  the sheer economic force of resource transfer, job creation, and profit potential between and within developing and developed nations. For more information about Metech and electronic recycling visit

Waste

Metech Field Trip

Metech International

Testimonies were given by various faculty, administrators, and students at this weeks Earth Day Assembly (click on “value of place” page above). First time WA Environmental Hall of Fame Inductees George Delaney, Don Irving, and Elizabeth Bowles (click on WA Hall of Fame page) were recognized and will be honored by the Environmental Club by planting three different native tree species on campus. Immediate actions steps were also covered by Environmental Club members:

1. Sign the Green Cup Pledge To commit to simple daily action steps that can make a difference (click on page above)

2. Ride the (soon to be named by vote) Bike for community services hours in Mr Segesdy’s room during extra help, and other periods by schedule.
-enter your suggested name for the bike by clicking into renewable energy posts.

3. Join the campus dialog on food and welfare (click on agriculture posts)

4. Stay tuned for announcements about the 2009 WA E-Waste Collection Program. For now you may want to start figuring out what you need to recycle and how you can get it to school.

This post was created to facilitate campus dialogue regarding where and how our food is grown/raised/produced and the related benefits and costs to workers, animals, environments, indivudal consumers, and local and collective communities be it a school, town, region, nation or the world. The initial impetus came from a student’s acute concern over animal cruelty. Though this thread need not be limited to animals, it may be a good place to start given the power of the video sent out to the community.

In beds of newspaper scrap and some starter soil (w/ sand for worm’s digestive system and to introduce decomposing microorganisms) food “waste” become worm food, which in turn becomes nutrient rich plant fertilizer. Above are photos of one of two vermiculture bins being used for the pilot program. Worms are fed nearly all food scraps except for animal products and they seem to like melons the most. The starter bin with newspaper will be converted within a few months to rich organic worm compost. The photo on the left depicts a processing tray in its last stages.