Silwood Green Club starts a new year! wahey!

And an exciting new year it is - we've only had one meeting and already we have a blog, amazing!
(Thanks very much to Lawrence for setting it up!)

For this first post, I'd like to introduce the club and then summarize the results of the first meeting, in which we had our first discussion of plans for the year to come.

What does the Green Club do?

The Green Club tries to improve sustainability at Silwood in a variety of ways -

We run a recycling & composting scheme for the Refectory
We organize a Green Week every spring with events & a Green Fair
We're the ones responsible for getting recycling and composting into the residence halls on campus
We talk to Estates & Accommodations about building improvements and that sort of thing
We run events like film showings or locally-sourced beer festivals to inform & excite people about green issues
and we help with on-campus initiatives, like the Silwood Centenary Fund that raised money to buy rainforest in honor of Imperial's 100th anniversary.


But I can't emphasize enough - the Green Club will do whatever YOU want it to do - so if you have an idea, tell the club and we can all work together to make it happen!


What are the plans so far for this year?

This year, in addition to the usual events & things, we're keen to choose a big initiative to work on. There are a few ideas:


-Last year we started on a project to quantify Silwood's carbon footprint and then come up with a plan to offset it. As a result of the investigations and audits we did, we have an estimate of Silwood's carbon footprint, and we also have support from the faculty & department. One idea is to offset this amount by buying more rainforest - as this would have many clear benefits outside of just carbon offsetting, and would tie in well with the type of work that many people at Silwood do. This seems popular among our new members, and we'll have a deeper discussion at the next meeting.

-Another point of interest is environmental policy - neither Silwood nor Imperial college as a whole have an environmental policy - the closest approximation is a couple of policies that the Estates division of Imperial has, relating to Lighting, Waste, and Building construction (or something like that). This is something I know the environmental society in SK is interested in working on too!


Plus there are already lots of ideas for other events & initiatives around campus:

-Olena is going to head the organization of a series of Green Cinema nights, screening environmental films like an Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car, etc. Email her if you'd like to help!

-Michael is going to investigate UK wide organizations connecting university green clubs

-We'd like to do some events together with the SK environmental society - possibly a trip to the Eden Project or Centre for Alternative Technology, or volunteering in London with an organization like the British Trust of Conservation Volunteers, or maybe events targeting the wider community here and in SK

-I'm going to talk to Accommodations & ICT about getting more rubbish bins around the halls, and about getting recycled paper in the printers

-Lots of people are interested in sustainable food, and there was talk of having a farmer's market on campus or something like that.

So that's where we stand at the moment!
The next Green Club meeting will be on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at 5pm. We'll start making concrete plans for the year to come, hopefully while drinking tea and eating cake.

Hoping to see lots of people there - the more ideas and opinions the better!

Yael