meeting Nov. 4: what's next!

First off, thanks to everyone who came tonight - biggest Silwood Green Club meeting ever, yes! I have a good feeling about what we can achieve this year =D

Points discussed in tonight's meeting:

-1st Green Cinema night is this Thursday at 8, probably showing the Great Global Warming Swindle. Send Elena all your ideas for future film showings!

In addition, Sarah is going to start Wildlife Movie Mondays in the bar, probably with a big David Attenborough focus.

-Everyone was happy with focusing on a Carbon-offset plan for Silwood, and pushing for an Imperial environmental policy, as two big goals for the year.

-So for the Carbon-offset plan:

• What was done last year: Using campus data, Natalie calculated a footprint for Silwood. We also did office audits and an online survey to get a feeling for staff & student behavior & opinions. The audits mostly highlighted problems like unreachable radiator knobs that need to be fixed by Estates, and might only useful in the future to check if these problems are resolved.
  
• Things to do this year: See if we can get any more campus data to improve footprint calculation. See if we can get the Carbon Trust involved to do a proper in depth audit - and if money is the main obstacle, raise money for this. Get online surveys established as a regular occurrence (maybe at start and end of each academic year to judge changes in peoples' perspective; also try to get at what would get people to change their actions to more sustainable options). Check if we can get Imperial involved in the Mayor's Green Procurement Code for London. Once we have a good footprint number, raise money to buy rainforest to offset this.

-Environmental policy stuff:

• Elena has the results of a survey of environmental policies and how they were established (I think) for universities around the world, that the Green group at her university in Ukraine did. She's going to translate these and send them around for everyone to see.
• I'm going to write up what I've been thinking of and will send it around for comment as well.
• We need to think about: how to convince Imperial that it's in their best interest to sign up; who we can sign up to support this initiative as well; what should be included in an environmental policy for Imperial

-Finally, some stuff for sustainability/problems on campus:

• There are lots of complaints for Accommodations & Estates that relate to Green Club interests as well. Charlie said she could collate these, so write a list of what you think needs fixing, and email it to her! Remember though that these should be related to sustainability/energy use/etc., and should be feasible things to tackle (not"all halls should have solar panels on their roofs")
• For the problem of transport around Silwood, one cool idea is to have the minibus shuttle between Sunningdale train station and Silwood once each morning and evening. We need to check whether the local council might have grants for this sort of thing, and whether Imperial could subsidize/support this. I'll talk to Ana Bento (union transport person) and Mick. If anyone else could help look into it I'd appreciate it (especially the council stuff).
• Possible good event for this term: a debate about air travel in the name of science. could possibly use it as a fundraiser if we serve refreshments . . .
  

Hope I didn't forget anything!