The College at Brockport loves advertising the fact that we are considered to be a “green” campus. And for the most part, we are. Every week the blue recycle bins located in the dorms are set out in the hallway, full of empty pizza boxes and old notebook papers, and every week they are magically emptied. Wherever we look, a new recycle bin has popped up, whether that be by the bus stop across from Tower Fine Arts or at Kinetic Kafe, Brockport’s newest on-campus eatery which probably house the best recycle bins on campus.
It’s great that we are all being so eco-friendly on campus. However, there is still so much that isn’t being done to support the environment. Things as simple as throwing your pizza box in the recycle bin instead of the garbage at Trax. Yet these simple actions will never be taken if they are not addressed.
Let’s talk food. Brockport is known for its food. On a larger scale, the United States is known for its food, too. We are a nation of people who stereotypically love to eat, and we don’t like to skimp on the portions.
But what happens to all the food we don’t eat? Often at home it gets thrown away. Sure, there are health codes preventing anything but this from happening, but one health code shouldn’t mean the waste of plates upon plates of food.
What about compost? The amount of food students leave uneaten on their plates at dinner alone is mind-blowing. There are people all over the world who have nowhere near the same access to food as us, yet we swipe our Eagle One card and are offered an open buffet of all kinds of food imaginable, and are encouraged to put as much on our plate as is physically possible.
Once dinner is over, we dump the food in the garbage and go on our way. How hard would it be to have one garbage can for paper napkins and un-compostable material — such as dairy products — and one container for compostable food? This uneaten food could then be used to make fertilizer, instead of simply being thrown in a landfill somewhere.
The untouched trays of food in the dining halls, too, could be composted, instead of simply being thrown in the garbage at the end of the breakfast, lunch or dinner shift.
Composting our discarded food shouldn’t be limited to the dining halls. It wouldn’t be difficult to make a separate trash receptacle in our houses and apartments for compostable food and then create a community compost bin.
According to dosomething.org, “We generate 21.5 million tons of food waste each year. If we composted that food, it would reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas as taking 2 million cars off the road.”
Paper products are also constantly being wasted. One of the most popular places to hang out on campus after a Friday or Saturday night out is Trax. The tables are always full, and there are often times when people have to be kicked out once closing time comes around.
If this is such a popular place to eat, why is nothing offered except to-go boxes? Even if the campus wants to stick with using paper products at Trax, a paper plate uses half the amount of paper a box does. While a plate is an option at Trax, most people don’t know about it. Because servers do not ask whether orders are going to be eaten at a table or taken to-go, boxes wind up being the go-to for almost every meal.
Utensils used at Trax are also discarded. It would take barely any work to insert a container for recyclable plastic next to the garbage and paper containers at Trax, as is done at Kinetic Kafe, yet this is not done.
Does BASC or the student population hate the Earth? Of course not. However, often people simply do not open their eyes to reality. We are the generation of today, and everything we do has an impact on this earth, no matter how small.
That cigarette you casually flick to the ground on campus (yes, we all know the “smoke free campus” idea didn’t catch on; just check out the lawn by Mortimer) could be ingested by a squirrel or bird, or picked up by the wind and carried to a water supply, where the chemicals and toxins will then be released into the ecosystem.
As a basis for Tempo's expanding commercial-industrial LED lighting product line, the CLIP begins with the extruded raceway housing that serves as the industrial-strength backbone for mounting and thermal management. Fully integrated light engines, consisting of drivers, emitters and optics, are then mated to this multifunction raceway housing. With its rigid design and adjustable mounting points, the CLIP can be installed in high ceiling applications without requiring the addition of a costly truss mounting system, while greatly reducing the number of necessary power feeds. CLIP-based systems are targeted towards the breadth of commercial & industrial applications typically addressed by surface- or pendant-mounted fluorescent linear solutions and high-power HIDs. Examples include grocery stores, manufacturing and warehouses, convention centers, parking structures or large retail spaces.
Tempo Founder, Chairman and CTO, Dennis Pearson, principal architect of Tempo's vision for LED lighting product and systems development, commented, "We conceived of CLIP as an encompassing architecture to address well-established challenges in LED lighting, including thermal management, and user-accessible modularity with a design that provides maximum flexibility and longevity, regardless of the application. We quickly realized that CLIP solves challenges that were rather more fundamental to all commercial and industrial lighting as it massively reduces the overall costs of building electrical design, installation, commissioning and maintenance. The design of the housing and integral drivers, mounting methods, maintenance access and adaptability to the changing use of space were all key factors."
Terrence Walsh, President & CEO of Tempo commented, "It was Frank Lloyd Wright's prescription that 'form follows function' and CLIP embodies that precept, allowing designs in which the lighting platform serves as an extension of the overall architectural intent. CLIP was designed with both attention to current technical requirements as well as to the rapidly changing landscape of the SSL/LED market where future technical breakthroughs must be incorporated smoothly."
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