Photos

Hey everyone!

It's Sustainability Awareness Week. I hope everyone is getting involved and enjoying what the campus has to offer. Today I attended the Sustainability fair and WON and super cool reusable glass waterbottle. I just thought I'd share a few photos I took while I was there.

All Images from: jdesaute. (2011). Personal collection [digital image], retrieved on October 22, 2011, from:http://www.flickr.com/photos/

The new and improved Pecha kucha - on Prezi

SUSTAIN SU Pecha Kucha

Cassandra

SUSTAIN SU

Welcome to SUSTAIN SU, the student based sustainability group on campus.

Kalin

TIMELINE

The student sustainability service started in 2003, and was known as ECOS, the environmental coordination office of sustainability.

In 2011 the name was changed to SUSTAIN SU to encompass a broader concept of sustainability.

Jamie

QUESTION MARK

What is sustainability?

Cassandra

It is the process of living within limits of available physical, natural, and social resources.

SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENTAL

Kalin

ENVIRONMENTAL

The practice of composting around campus is an example of environmental responsibility.

Jamie

ECONOMIC

The free store is an example of economic reinforcement of sustainability. It promotes the reuse of goods rather than buying new.

Cassandra

SOCIAL

Sustain SU is a group that works with an entire social society including students and professors. They are also affiliated with several other groups on and off campus, including the Office of Sustainability.

Kalin

RAIN DROPS

Each year we work on 8 major projects.

Jamie

QUESTION MARK

Ask SUSTAIN SU allows you to ask sustainability based questions online or at the green boxes at info link. We will do the research and let you know the answer.

Cassandra

BIKE

The Bike Library offers one month bike and lock rentals for a $40 deposit. You can also bring your bike from home to receive free bike maintenance. It is located in the basement of SUB.

Kalin

FLOWER

The campus gardens are located in East Campus Village and the Education building. Organic vegetables are grown using sustainable agriculture techniques, which also promote food safety.

Jamie

CELL PHONE

Rethink drop boxes are found at info link. We recycle your ink cartridges, old cell phones, and batteries for you.

Cassandra

PLATE

The Reusable Dish Program lends dishes to all events on campus. This helps reduce waste and you can even return them dirty! We do the clean up.

Kalin

101

Sustainability 101 Seminars are held for various groups in order to induce personal change. The seminars are presented to students in lister to teach them how to live sustainably.

Jamie

ARROWS

Sustain Exchanges are forums for students to discuss sustainable concepts in a peer to peer style. We held a health, fitness, and life skills seminar this semester. We would love to see you all at the next one in January.

Cassandra

PARTY HAT

The final project includes workshops on how to travel and party sustainably

Kalin

SUSTAINABLE CAMPUS

All these projects help contribute to our sustainable campus.

Jamie

FACEBOOK, TWITTER

Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for news about our upcoming events.

Cassandra

Thank you all very much, and we wish you a sustainable Christmas!

SAW POSTER (Topic of Choice for marking)

Hello once again!

Seeing as this past week was Sustainability Awareness Week (SAW), My partner Kalin and I decided it would be a great topic for our poster presentation. Due to the fact that our topic is on an event and not an article, there have been several minor changes to the format of the poster. I believe this gives you all a good example of what different posters may look like and gives insight towards communication about events in your field.

In Maria's lecture on how to create an effective poster presentation we waere able to gather a few tips such as: use an interesting but short title and use appropriate font sizes relevant to the content (i.e. author is larger than the content but not as large as the title). If you wish to check out more tips on creating an effective poster presentation you can check out her powerpoint on the class blog by clicking here. We were also able to apply some pointers from the powerpoint lecture to my poster. Keeping the text to a minimum, including photo's and noticeable titles and having contrasting colors helps keep the audience interested.

Saw poster

View more presentations from jdesaute.

As you can see we chose bright green as the background color. We have done this for two reasons, first of all, because it is bright and will initially grab someone's attention over a more plain color and secondly, I believe green is a good representative color when speaking about sustainability. Green represents new life and the environment, which one of the focuses of sustainability. Another technique we used in making the poster was using complementary, but contrasting colors for the titles. The Sustainability Awareness Week title is the actual logo for the event, from that I was able to match the colors of the event titles which were orange, brown and blue. The titles are well spaced out giving room for the eyes to rest and they vary in sizes and orientation to give it a more unique and creative look. Lastly the photos that were add were all taken by me from the event itself to give it a more personal feel and to show our involvement with the event. In order to post this poster I had to create an account on a slide share website which can be found here.

If you'd like to read more about how and why we made our poster this way, you can visit Kalin's blog and see what she has to say about it. If you have any suggestions or comments about our poster please feel free to leave a comment below. I sure do love hearing feedback from my fellow classmates.

Have a great day!

Sustainability Awareness Week

Hey Everyone!

Next week October 17th to the 23rd is Sustainability Awareness Week (SAW). Tones of events will be held throughout the campus. Some events include the SAW kick off on monday, it will be held from 11:30 am until 1:30 pm in QUAD. Sustain SU will be doing a free bike check from 1:00 pm until 4:00 pm monday at Celebration Plaza. There will be many tours held throughout the week including the University's Devonian garden, a campus sustainability tour, Net Zero Energy Home Tour, the CCIS and ECHA Green Building Tour and the Edmonton Waste Management Tour. Over ten presentations on sustainability topics will be running at various times. Tones of local food from bistros, farmers markets and cafes will be dispersed between Lister, HUB, ECHA and a few other locations. Last but not least, there will be a closing event put on by Sustain SU and Party With a Purpose on Saturday at 6pm. Not only will it be a concert it will be a SUSTAINABLE one. Like I mentioned last week, the concert will be biked powered. So cool!



Today I had the pleasure of spending another hour volunteering with Sustain SU. My task for the day was to promote the bike check Sustain SU was putting on for SAW. Here is what the flyer looks like:

I went around campus posting these fliers on bikes all around campus.

If you have a bike, go check it out! It's a great way to keep your bike tuned up so you can continue to reduce your carbon footprint.

For more information about times and events visit the Office of Sustainability.

Image from:

Top - jdesaute. (2011). Bike Flyer [digital image], retrieved on October 12, 2011 from:http://www.flickr.com/photos/67941823@N03/6239024215/

Left - jdesaute. (2011). Bike Rack [digital image], retrieved on October 12, 2011 from:http://www.flickr.com/photos/67941823@N03/6239023855/

Right - jdesaute. (2011). Bike [digital image], retrieved on October 12, 2011 from:http://www.flickr.com/photos/67941823@N03/6239542506/

Community Service Learning (Topic of choice for marking)

Hey Everyone,

I hope everyone is having a good week. It is getting well into midterm season and I bet everyone is getting pretty stressed out, I know I am. It may be the middle marker in the term for some classes but in my CSL program I am just beginning. I have been placed with a fantastic group on campus called Sustain-SU, formerly know as ECOS. Our first meeting was held last Wednesday. This group focuses on social, economic and environmental sustainability. They offer student involvement through volunteering and events, services, through their 8 ongoing major projects and collaboration with other campus organizations.

The 8 projects Sustain-SU is involved in include: Ask Sustain SU, Bike Library, Campus Gardens, Rethink (E-waste), Reusable Dish Program, Sustainability 101, Sustain exchanges and workshops. Personally I will be involved in the communication portion of the group, keeping the Facebook page updated, the twitter feed live, posting posters and taking photos during events. One event I will be involved in the planning is Party With a Purpose, an exciting bike powered concert that finishes off Sustainability Awareness Week. Keep visiting my blog if you want to keep updated on this even it will be an exciting one.

I have the honor of working with two other ALES students Cassandra and Kalin for the CSL Sustain-SU program. They are both very interesting and dedicated individuals. I am very excited to work as a group on sustainability projects and I hope to learn a lot from them. They are definitely inspiring individuals. Click on their name and you will be linked to their blog where you can get to know them better and learn more about our projects with Sustain-SU. 

The official Sustain-SU web site is currently under construction. As soon as it is completed I will add a link. Until then you can check out their ECOS page from 2010/2011. Here you can find out more on what sustainability is all about as well as learn more about their ongoing projects.

Enjoy!



Images from:
Top - Cogdogblog. (2010). One good/ Two bad [digital photograph], retrieved on October 15, 2011, from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/5091713405/
MIddle - Uberculture. (2005). Bike [digital photograph], retrieved on October 15, 2011, from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uberculture/23086390/
Bottom - Gos, Jon. (2006). Green Plant [digital photograph], retrieved on October 15, 2011, from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jongos/319344491/