Location: Sayles 253

Time: 4:00 am

Present Mathias Bell, Mark Krusemyer, Bessie Schwarz, Rob Lamppa, Steve Spehn, Alex Chohlas-Wood, Mark Kanazawa, Mikaela Hagen

Absent Gary Wagenbach, TBA staff member

Secretary: Bessie Schwarz

Mathias -Two more staff member positions need to be appointed. Hopeful this person will be from Res Life or Development office.

Move to amend charter so that there are four student voting members. One of whom is an underclassman and one of whom is a secretary. MOTION PASSED.

Mathias- purpose of meeting mainly is to update on what happened over the summer, to organize taskforces, and to set a meeting time.

Meeting time was agreed upon for Tuesday at 4:00 bi-weekly.

Progress on Presidents climate commitment (Steve Spehn)
– Report limited to the climate commitment
– Carleton is on tract to meet all deadline (examples in progress report)
– We are working on roughly five of seven
– Suggests that the college take on two more options
o Adopting energy star- purchasing is working on this, should be easy
o Adopting Leed-silver as a minimum standard for new projects like the middle school and a new residential building. Leed-silver would be the base standard. Silver is the recommended minim standard by the climate commitment.
– This is a working document
– College council and the controller’s office has receive this information

Elizabeth Webb (guest)- asked why LEED Gold is not the college’s standard?

Rob L.- The college may end up making the building LEED Gold if expenses allow, but since they do not know the costs yet they are staying with the Climate Commitment minimum which is Silver.

Mathias B. recommends that the college adopt a fifth initiative in the PCC involving waste. College has already adopted policies to comply with this iniative, but students will need to conduct RecycleMania, a nation-wide 10 week campus recycling campaign. This will happen in the Spring.

Steve S. on composting- we are not composting on site, but using Research Recovery Technologies. The compost is transported by Waste Management. Currently, the college produced on average 100 bags of compost a day. Composting sites are in the Snack bar and the Dinning Halls.

Eliza B. (guest)- asked about the contamination threshold for our compost waste

Rob L.- the company will likely bare with us as we have a high contamination in the beginning.

Natalie C. (guest) – asked for signs delineating what waste goes into the compost bins.

Katie B. (guest, Sustainability Assistant)- STAs are working on this.

Elizabeth W. (guest)- This compost initiative build off of the momentum from other

Adam S. (guest, ENTS) – The Earth Tub project from the last academic year did receive the EPA grant.

Mark Kan. – gave a history of the Earth Tub project as a part of Beth Bennet (’07) capstone and clarified that the EPA grant covers one earth tub for $10,000. 7 tubs would satisfy all of the college’s food waste over the year. If off-campus houses utilized the tubs as well, we would likely need more than 7. Next year, we may qualify for $70-80,000 for more tubs. He thinks there may have been a miscommunication between the student initiative and the facilities compost project. Grounds has said that they could use some amount of the compost produced by the college.

Steve S.- Currently the plant that receives our compost takes the composted product to golf courses.

Mark K.- SOPE has taken over the earth tub project.

Car Share project (Bruce)
– St Paul based car share NGO called OurCar. This program has Priuses only.
– President for small college uses care shares programs. Oberlin is an example.
– Carleton has 13 mini vans and in theory these could be replaces by OurCar vehicles
– The NGO is interested in discussing options with Carleton and sees a joint program as feasible. Northfield members could also participate.
– Discussions about cost would be necessary
– Zip car is another organization that the college could use, although OurCar seems to have more hubs in and around our area.
– Another option would be purchasing our own cars if there is enough demand on campus.
– There might not be enough of a critical mass for private use to make a collaboration with OurCar economically viable.

Adam S.- this could be used for athletics, class field trips and more, as well as private uses. Five years a car share car drives 275,000 miles.

Sub-committee formation:
The possibility of having further divisions within the sub-committees.

1. Communications
a. Interested People: Mikaela, Rob, Eliza, Kenley, Becky, Alex

2. Paper

a. Interested People: Gary

3. Climate Commitment… this taskforce can decide the break up and report to the EAC at the next meeting.

a. Interested People: Meredith, Noah, Bruce, Steve, Rob, Eliza, Alex, Natalie, Shawn, Kenley J.

4. SRF

a. Interested people: Bessie, Mark Kan, Mathias, Lampa, Mark Krus (Bruce, Natalie, Kenley, Noah)

5. Transportation
a. Interested People: Adam, Bruce, Mark Krus

6. Waste/Composting
a. Interested People: Shawn, Katie, Mikaela, Becky, Elizabeth, Steve, Alex