The GLRPPR Blog

The Campus Environmental Resource Center provides comprehensive environmental compliance assistance and pollution prevention information for colleges and universities. The center was developed by the National Association of Colleges and University Business Officials with support and funding from EPA. The Web site makes it easier for school officials to learn more about applicable environmental regulations and ensure a safe and sustainable environment for their students, faculty, and staff. The online center provides information on topics including waste management, air and water resources, drinking water, and public safety. Viewers can find out what types of campus activities are regulated by EPA, see how best to comply with environmental regulations, query federal enforcement and compliance data, learn how to apply for federal grants, and e-mail comments to EPA on regulations under development.

Please note that GLRPPR Sites of the Month are now being posted on the GLRPPR Blog, and will display on the GLRPPR homepage at the first of the month. Sites of the Month from May 2008 on will be archived in the blog category “Sites of the Month.” Previous sites of the month are listed at http://www.glrppr.org/news/site_of_the_month.cfm.

If you find the RSS feeds for individual Sector Resources useful, you might be interested in trying out GLRPPR’s RSS feed for the latest document additions to all Sector Resources. If you want to keep up with resources on a wide variety of subjects, this could be helpful. Keep in mind that this feed only features new resource links added to the Sector Resources; it does not include events, news or funding opportunities, which are included in the individual Sector Resource feeds.

If you have problems or questions related to the “recent documents” feed, contact GLRPPR Webmaster Tyler Rubach.

Earth Day is next Tuesday, and if you’re interested in finding local events to participate in, check out the Earth Day Network web site.  In the “Earth Day Events” section of that site, you can search for events by keyword, location or date.  You can also view a list of all the events submitted to the EDN site or submit a description of your own Earth Day event.

If your company or organization is planning a special event or activity for Earth Day, consider sharing your plans in the “Comments” area of this post–you might give another organization a great idea for next year.

Did you know you could rate the usefulness of the answers provided in the GLRPPR Help Desk Archive? Just click on the “View Answer” link for any question in the archive. Below the response displayed, there will be a prompt saying “Was this answer helpful to you?” and you may click “yes” or “no.” Note that if you would like to add to or comment upon the information provided in the archived answer, you can click the word “Comments” at the bottom of the response and fill out a simple online form to submit your comment. This is your opportunity to share information about a resource that you’re aware of, but which wasn’t included in the archived answer, to say how you used the information provided, or to simply thank our Help Desk Librarian for the great info.

Remember that submitting a pollution prevention related question to the Help Desk Librarian is easy–just fill out the online form and submit it. You’ll get an hour of free literature and Internet searching by a professional librarian and a response within a week that will provide a great start for exploring the topic you’ve inquired about. Archived Help Desk questions and answers are also integrated into relevant Sector Resources on the GLRPPR web site.

If you have questions or would like further information about the GLRPPR Help Desk, contact Laura Barnes.

Cheers to the folks at Green Guardian for using the upcoming holiday to promote container recycling. GreenGuardian.com is a web site created to promote environmentally responsible purchasing and disposal choices among the citizens of Minnesota’s Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The site is sponsored by the region’s Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board (SWMCB) and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and is organized into sections geared specifically toward residents, businesses and children.

I receive their electronic Green Tips newsletter, and was pleased to see them taking the opportunity to tie St. Patrick’s Day to raising environmental awareness. The lead story in the latest newsletter was entitled “Kiss Me, I Recycle” and is an obvious play on the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” slogan you’re likely to see emblazoned on t-shirts, buttons and hats starting this weekend. (Incidentally, the SWMCB web site provides a handy “Kiss Me, I Recycle” St. Patrick’s Day button template for anyone interested in wearing green and simultaneously promoting green activities.) As eluded to in my previous post, there are likely to be lots of bottles and cans associated with St. Patrick’s Day festivities, and the SWMCB and MPCA are trying to ensure that folks consider recycling and are aware of how to properly recycle as well as what can be recycled. The “Kiss Me, I Recycle” story links to a helpful can and bottle recycling guide on GreenGuardian.com. The guide not only tells you what and how to recycle (which is strictly speaking, not pollution prevention since it’s an “end of the pipe” sort of activity) but also highlights the energy savings associated with recycling, as well as the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and water consumption that result from recycling containers as opposed to throwing them in the trash–all of which are important environmental benefits that are certainly complimentary to P2 activities.

This sort of campaign got me thinking about opportunities for similar outreach activities on college campuses. For example, I’ve heard that Mather House at Harvard University has a “green happy hour” for St. Patrick’s Day that involves the promotion of recycling, sustainability and waste reduction. I’m curious to know if other campuses have been involved in similar activities, perhaps on a wider scale. If you know of a “Green St. Patrick’s Day” event or promotion at a college or university, or if your organization, like SWMCB and MPCA, is tying environmental awareness campaigns to St. Patrick’s Day, please take a minute to share what you’ve done in the “Comments” section for this post.

Social tagging (also known as social bookmarking) is a practice that has been gaining some steam over recent years — it relies on the actions of a large crowd of users to assign topical categories (“tags”) to documents or other information objects (photos, videos, etc may also be tagged) in order to help categorize their meaning.

Some popular web sites, like Flickr, del.icio.us, even Facebook — make use of tags, as do most blogging applications.  The basic idea is one that has sometimes been called “folksonomy” — creating controlled vocabularies by consensus and from the bottom up.

This is the sort of thing that gives librarians bad dreams at night, or so I’ve been led to believe.  So it’s somewhat ironic that a group of library science types has launched a pilot project to improve the accessibility of EPA documents by opening them up for tagging via the popular del.icio.us web site.

Now, it’s not clear to me what this group is expecting to accomplish.  I’m not even sure it’s clear to them.  But it seems to revolve around the issue of “findability” of EPA data — an important issue, as Wikipedia and other social media continue to gain ground on more authoritative sources of information about regulations.

I’ll continue to monitor this experiment, and report back if anything interesting happens.

So.

The other day, I was invited to make the occasional contribution to this blog. I was handed a password and a user ID, few constraints and even less guidance as to what would be an appropriate set of topics on which to record my thoughts. I guess they figured someone who has been doing P2 related work for 20+ years can be expected to say something relevant now and again, even if only by accident.

This is akin to giving your 16 year old son the keys to the Porsche (and no, I do NOT have a Porsche — yet) and telling him to “feel free to take it out for a spin, but don’t get in any trouble.”

Yeah, that’ll work out real well.

Well, we will see what we will see. I promise to try and be well-behaved. If I find myself diverted down some back-country dead end miles from the Information Superhighway, I will rely on our readers, and the good folks at GLRPPR to point me back in the direction of the main road.

What I intend to write about — mostly — is the intersection between pollution prevention (and other forms of technical assistance) and information technology. How do we put the right information — in accessible forms, at the right time, and most importantly in the right context — in the hands of people who are faced with decisions that make a difference to the environment? How can emerging technologies and trends — social computing (turning loose the wisdom of the crowd), semantic web technology, even this blog — play a role in producing a greener world?

These are the sorts of questions that have kept me up at night for the past 20 years. Well, those questions, and “where’s the remote control?” — that one’s usually good for a few hours. And while, as a researcher, I have always been more interested in the questions than the answers, I’ll try to at least point to people and programs that I think may be on the right track in some way.

So. We’ve got a full tank of gas, the keys to mom and dad’s car, and miles of road ahead and behind us. The iPod is filled up with songs.

It’s time for a road trip.

We may not get there very fast, but then again, it’s all about the journey, right? At least, that’s what I always told my parents when my trip to the grocery store ended up with me 80 miles down the highway, wondering if they’d hidden any gas money in the car.

We’ll see how far we get before they take away my keys.

For those of us who live in the Great Lakes Region, it’s the time of year when snow and ice set the scene. Visions of a winter wonderland may be inspiring you to participate in any number of wintry recreational activities, including skiing, ice skating, snowmobiling, etc. Before you join in any reindeer games, however, you may want to take a moment to consider how P2 applies. Here are some resources to help you out.

• Ski Areas Topic Hub: Developed and maintained by the Peaks to Prairies Pollution Prevention Information Center, this P2Rx Topic Hub provides P2 information for ski area operations managers and technical assistance providers.
• Clean Snowmobiles Topic Hub: Another great resource from the folks at Peaks to Prairies, this guide discusses the pollution and wastes associated with snowmobile operation, more environmentally-friendly snowmobiles, and what snowmobile dealers, tour operators, fleet managers and enthusiasts can do today to prevent pollution from their snowmobiles.
• GLRPPR’s Outdoor Recreation Sector Resource includes a subcategory devoted to Ski Areas. The Tourism/Leisure Sector Resource may also provide helpful information if you’re traveling to a resort.
• The GLRPPR Help Desk Archive includes a question and answer related to how to make an ice arena more energy efficient.
• A recent post from Treehugger discusses an environmental scorecard for U.S. ski resorts provided by the Ski Area Citizens Coalition.
• Check out the web site for Crystal Mountain resort in Michigan. This ski area has a chairlift called the Crystal Clipper that is powered by wind energy.
• The USDA Forest Service provides Ski Area Best Management Practices (BMPs).
• The Green Room is a database of ski area environmental programs and practices provided by the National Ski Areas Association.
• Protect Our Winters (POW) is a non-profit organization that focuses on global warming and the winter sports community.
• Venture Snowboards and Arbor Snowboards are a couple of snowboard manufacturers that use sustainably harvested materials and donate portions of their profits to conservation efforts.

GLRPPR has developed two new school-related Topic Hubs as part of the P2Rx Topic Hub project. Before any Topic Hub is published, topical experts review its narrative portions for accuracy and completeness.

“Energy Efficient Schools and Students” describes energy efficient practices and research available to schools and introduces resources that support changes in operations, maintenance, and behavior. Numerous ways exist to reduce escalating energy costs and this Topic Hub assembles guidelines and comprehensive energy programs, identifies educational efforts and case studies, and provides examples of best practices for schools.

“Sustainable School Design” addresses many areas, including: indoor air quality; energy consumption and options; construction materials; education materials; water use; waste management; transportation; community interaction; landscaping and the building envelope. It draws upon the myriad resources available to school administrators, school boards, and community planners with the hope that these tools will guide the design of more optimally sustainable schools. The Topic Hub deals with the big issues of construction and retrofitting, siting and commissioning, and actual design of new and remodeled schools. Pollution prevention opportunities and alternative technologies that include lighting, acoustics, air quality, and well-being needs for students and school staff for a healthy and safe learning environment, are presented.

If you’re interested in reading the narrative portions of these hubs and providing some voluntary feedback, please contact Joy Scrogum or Bob Iverson. We’re looking for 2-4 experts to evaluate each of these new hubs; one person may evaluate both hubs if they desire. If you are selected to review the hubs, we’ll contact you with a link to the information you’ll need to read and further instructions. Your name will be included in the “Acknowledgments” section of the final published Topic Hub as a “Technical Reviewer.” See the Acknowledgments section of the Pollution Prevention for Arts Education Topic Hub for an example.

Our greatest asset is the technical expertise of our members and their willingness to share their knowledge with colleagues throughout the region. We appreciate your input and look forward to working with those selected to review these new resources.

Don’t let the name fool you–this useful database includes information on state, local utility, and selected federal incentives that promote renewable energy. Established in 1995 (and originally named the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy), DSIRE is an ongoing project of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Power Technologies and managed by the North Carolina Solar Center. In addition to renewable energy incentives, DSIRE has recently expanded to include state and federal incentives for energy efficiency upgrades, purchases of energy efficient products or systems and construction of new energy efficient buildings. Even if you’re already familiar with DSIRE, be sure to check the site regularly, especially the “New/Updated Incentives” list to see what new opportunities are available, and to keep on top of changes to existing incentive programs.