Hi SOS!
Hope everyone’s dead week has started off on a good foot?~ Please remember to rest and eat appropriately throughout the week– overworking is not only bad for your body, but will hurt your memory retention as well! ( >_< )!!
I wanted to send out a sort of end of semester summary or recap of what’s happened this semester and what sort of things we can look forward to next year!
It’s kind of long, but I think that’s a good thing, right?
Recap of this Semester, Fall 2011:
September and October:
GT Bike Week and ViaCycle Launch:
GT Bike Week was a great success, with over 500+ commutes logged, making a total of more than 2900+ miles! This week-long campaign also led into the launch of ViaCycle, the new bike-sharing program on campus:
https://gt.viacycle.com/ SOS and StarterBikes will actively campaign next semester to promote this new program and increase rider-ship!
Game Day Recycling and Demonstration:
SOS members helped out a lot with Game Day Recycling this semester– thank you to everyone who participated! In addition, SOS also organized the Game Day Recycling Demonstration that took place at our home-coming game. We gave out organic fruits and had game-goers sign a pledge to support recycling and try their best to be “green tailgaters”! We collected over 130 signatures and spoke to a lot of people~
November and December:
Merging with Environmental Alliance:
SOS and EAGT merged this semester! This means more of our manpower and efforts can be coordinated together for the same causes~! EAGT will be turning into Sustainability Alliance, which is a campus-wide alliance and newsletter for all the campus organizations (including SOS of course) related to sustainability. The first newsletter and calendar should be ready for action next year, so look forward to it!
Plastic Bag Petition:
Yay!! Huge success~ We got over 349 physical signatures, and another 150+ signatures on our online petition. We spoke to a lot of students, and took 30 pictures of people holding recycling support signs! All of this will be compiled into a cohesive petition and presented to Recycling to push the Thin Film/Plastic Bag recycling program forward.
If you haven’t signed the petition yet, it’s not too late either~
Community Garden Expansion/Relocation:
- We have officially gotten a 2000+ sq foot space outside of the instructional center as the building site of our new community garden! We are currently in the process of requesting over $8000 of funding from various sources, and hope to have the garden built by March 2012.
- A schematic/layout of the new garden is attached to this post if you want to see where it’ll be and how it’ll look like! We expect to harvest over $6000 of produce a new from the new space!
What didn’t go so well:
SSREC Conference: Because of the bad-timing of our midterms, many people were unable to attend the SSREC Conference. There will be more conferences coming up next year, so hopefully we can get a good group of people next semester!
GreenCo Visit: Unfortunately, the visit to the GreenCo composting facility had to be cancelled too because there weren’t enough people… Again, better organization and timing should help next year– we will definitely manage a trip out there next semester!
Next Year: Spring 2012!
Community Garden:
With the expansion and all the building, we’re going to need a massive number of volunteers to help us make this work! We hope to hear back from funding early next year and start building like crazy in February! We also need people to signup to take care of the garden (watering and weeding) after its built~
Earth Day:
Earth Day is going to need a huge number of volunteers for planning and executing next semesters festivities, and SOS will definitely be helping out! Look forward to all sorts of fun activities and events, from movie screenings, to clothing swaps and more!
Sustainable Dining Committee: Campus Kitchens:
Campus Kitchens will be working hard next year to get this program established at Tech! We have already contacted groups for food packaging volunteers, and hopefully we can get Campus Kitchens underway by the end of next semester!
More Field Trips and Movie Screenings:
There’s the GreenCo visit that didn’t work out, and maybe another conference for next semester (Green Jobs?). We’ll also try to schedule more social events and movies, so it’s not all work and no play
Dorm Recycling Education:
So we’ve already designed some educational flyers and posters for dorms (about what to recycle, what not to recycle, etc), and next year we’ll be trying to get the word out more and post them up in all the freshman dorms! Campaign activities will include visits to hall meetings and working with PLs to make sure everyone knows where and how to recycle.
… And probably lots more!
Thank you so much everyone, for all your hard work this semester! Even if it’s just a little time volunteering, or even reading emails– every bit counts towards making our organization, and more importantly, our campaigns and projects, a success!
Let’s all keep going forward, into 2012!!
-Alice
