Hey! Look over here!

Everybody! The Think Green meeting Taylor and I went to tonight gave us some excellent cross-over information about "green" architecture and living "green." I'm beyond excited to "greenify" our house with Wendy asap! Here are a couple of quick tips that we got that I feel I need to share with all of you!

Green Tip #1

Before you go to buy groceries the next time, check out goodguide.com. It has all kinds of wonderful information about which products are the greenest! Check it out!!! It will make shopping so much more fun and environmentally-friendly!

Green Tip #2

If you decide to wash your windows, use old newspapers instead of brand new paper towels! Anna gave me this idea and it works fantastically! 

Stay classy Summit!

-Amy 

Summit: A Journey Unfolding

Thus far my experience in Summit housing has been wonderful.  Apart from the immediate perks and comforts of the actual houses, the atmosphere of the house has also been very enjoyable.  There have not really been any huge conflicts and everybody seems to enjoy each other’s company.  Being a fairly different living situation then what I have ever been accustomed to, I have adapted well.  Summit, like college park, challenges its inhabitant to support themselves and their habits without any outside assistance.  Not having an authority figure or RA telling me what to and what not to do might seem like a dream.  However, it has been quite a task being in charge of my own wellbeing.  I’ve learned to cooperate with my housemates to find routines and schedules that work for us.  Having my own room for the first time in nearly ten years has been a drastic change as well.  While that has strangely affected my sleeping habits, I have been working to find a groove that works for me.  I thoroughly enjoy that fact that both the upstairs and downstairs groups in my Summit house are genuinely connected.  Being able to talk to and hang out with any one individual in the entire house or go out as a big group has made all the difference for me.  With this being said, everyone has their own time either alone or with friends outside which helps balance any overwhelming or suffocating feelings that might be derived from hanging out with the same people all the time.  Also, being good friends with the people in the house makes it easier for outside friends to feel comfortable when hanging out at the house.  Overall, I think that while Summit has presented me with some challenges, it has so far been an amazing experience and I strongly look forward to working with my housemates on our Summit project.  Each and every person in my group brings great contributions to the group which should make for an outstanding project come the end of this school year.

Summit Rivera

I wanted to live in Summit because it's a great opportunity to develop a community service project in an area that I've never lived in before (as I am an international student), and look into the different kind of needs that this area has as opposed to the community service projects I've carried out in my own country, Guatemala. The housing is awesome, and that was a great motivational factor to get involved with the project.

So far, living in Summit has been great. I have no complaints, and it is a great step up from the dorms. The housing is beautiful and very well located. I've learned that the house is designed to comply with the environment, and certain things have been modified to make sure we live in a Think Green state of mind. I've never before lived in a house where we recycle glass, plastic, and paper (in Guatemala, recycling is not a priority for most people, unfortunately). This has made me grow into the good habit of always recycling, and being conscious also about the energy and water consumption. We met up with Wendy Anderson to talk about how else we can be conscious of things, and I learned certain aspects of the house that were done on purpose that I was unaware of up until that point. Because our project (Go Green at Boyd) is very at level with the mentality behind the housing at Summit, I'm excited to start out with the Boyd kids and to learn things that I've never thought of before until now that I'm exposed to the knowledge and good habits behind being environmentally conscious.

Where's it at? (Summit! Summit!) That's a habitat.

 

     This episode of Sesame Street aired yesterday morning, the word on the street being, habitat. For my entire life, the Midwest, and the Ozarks have been my habitat. For the past year, Springfield has been my habitat, and for the past month or so, Summit has been my habitat.

Habits make a habitat

     Keeping up with certain habits is vital to maintaining a habitat. But with this "greener" Summit Park house, out goal is to not only maintain a habitat, but also maintain it in a sustainable way. An important part of living a greener lifestyle is to realize that picking up certain habits and dropping others can also effect other, more natural, habitats. 

     The rapping real-estate taught Big Bird about various habitats for birds such as the beach, the swamp, and the rainforest. While watching this episode, I thought, "Wow, not one of these bird habitats is completely safe from human manipulation or destruction." One of the goals with this Summit house was energy efficiency. I never knew all of the plans for this particular Summit house, but I know that some of them fell through. And so, our Summit group can't simply depend on an energy-efficient dishwasher or a  solar-powered television so that we can call ourselves "greener".
     We all have habits that are not all that energy efficient. These are habits that we've learned from our families, or our friends, or the people on TV. But it's important to become aware of wasteful habits. I'm as guilty as anyone else. But here's a few easy ones to change if you just take the time to think about it:

1. Turn off the lights when you leave the room.

     I remember when I was little, right before we were going to leave on vacation, I once turned on all of the lights in the basement to see if it would become blindingly white. Luckily, my parents checked to make sure all of them were off before we left.

P.S. My basement didn't become blindingly white.

2. Turn off the television when you leave the room. 

     Sometimes you're just going to the bathroom or grabbing something from the other room. Sometimes someone else just went into the other room and you thought they were coming back. But don't be lazy. If they've been gone for a while and you don't want to watch TV anymore, but you want to be polite just in case, ask them (they'll probably say no, they don't want to watch anymore TV) and then turn it off. 

3. Waiting for the sink water to get real hot so you can wash your hands real clean-like.

     This is one I'm recently/currently guilty of. Sometimes it takes a long time for the sink water to heat up, and that is a lot of wasted water. Well, maybe not a lot. But too much. Unless someone posts some sort of statistic saying how much healthier and cleaner I am going to be if I wash my hands only under hot water, I am going to start, sigh, washing my hands in cold water. 

And for a few that take a little more effort (but not much, so you should definitely do these, too):

4. Ride a bike!

     It's better exercise than driving, and the weather is wonderful right now. It's great if you ride it around Drury campus, but maybe next time you're going downtown or to do some minor grocery shopping at Price Cutter or Dillon's, why not ride your bike? If you don't have one, maybe you have a friend who doesn't ride his/hers much and would let you borrow one. And if that's not a possibility, walking or running is an option. True, it's not as time-efficient as biking or driving, but if you have some extra time on your hands and want to go somewhere relatively close, why not just walk instead? It's often even better exercise than biking!

5. Recycle (And Reduse, and Reuse, too, please)

    It can be a hassle, kind of, since all we have are those tiny black bins for all of our recycling. Our Summit house has been trying to come up with a regular schedule, and I think maybe now we've finally got one that works! For a Summit house, I would say it's good to do once a week, just so things don't get too out of control. We've just been using regular old containers and boxes to keep ours and then a couple people will gather it and take it over to the Drury recycling center on Central and Summit. They've got plastic recycling (with a few exceptions for things you can't recycle such as to-go containers), cardboard recycling, paper recycling, aluminum recycling, and glass recycling. 


Hopefully our group can start teaching the kids of Boyd Elementary all of these good habits, so they can learn them while they're young.

One last thing that is sooooooooo bad (and we've been noticing it just piles up). Styrofoam. Sometimes it's easier just to take the Commons to-go. Especially when they surprisingly have a lot of wonderful desserts that you don't want to eat all at once.
My suggestion: (which I have yet to implement but will begin to do so today) bring in your own tupperware container (swipe your card still). I'd like to see if there are better to-go options than styrofoam, but none of the options are too great.

-Desirée

summit house 629- Ethan Graham

I love being here with the boys, its a lot of fun around these parts.  They asked me to be apart of this group last year at the end of the year.  I couldn't turn it down.  The house in wonderful and we have ajusted to each others life style very well.  I am hoping to teach the kids at Boyd how to think green and how to pick up after themselves in a green way.  Not only will we be teaching the kids, but hopfully the kids will take it back home with them and have teach their parents how to be green as well.  This has so many effects on the world.  If you start with kids, then as they grow older and older, they will teacher their kids and their kids will teach their kids and so.  But not only will they effect their childern but other family members as well.  This cycle will change the world as we know it as far as thinking green.  This is what i hope will happen from this project of ours.  If it does then the next group of people who live in summit can teach the next group of children at Boyd the same thing so the cycle never ends.  As far as this helping my life, it will help me to become better at thing green.  I have to say I am not the best think green person around, but i am hoping to change that after this year.  I hope not only will it change me but be able to change my parents and other family members how to be green as well.

Summit; Month 1- Taylor Smith

     My first month living in the Summit house has been great. All the hard work I put into getting this house has finally paid off. Having a kitchen and my own room makes Summit so much nicer than the dorm was. What got my initial interest in Summit was my friend who lived in a house last year, so when the time came for new people to try and get in, I was excited to hear that my friends were already putting together a group. When I found out that I could be living in the first carbon-neutral house on campus, I got even more excited. Not everything has gone according to plan, but things are working themselves out.
      Unfortunately when I got here I found out not much was done to make the house green. In fact, the only thing I could tell had been done was that our light bulbs were changed out. Fortunately Wendy Anderson has told us that she has some money we can use to help make the building greener. We are looking into using the money to purchase more energy/cost efficient appliances, as well as caulking the windows. We have already begun to recycle, and so far we have made three trips to the recycling center.
      Our project, Think Green at Boyd Elementary, is off to a pretty slow start. We have contacted our community leader about helping them with their Think Green group, but the group has not yet started up this year. They are discussing moving their twice a month meetings to Tuesdays instead of Thursdays, but I wish they would make up their minds so we can get started! I am excited to be able to influence kids about a green way of life and I think with what our group brings to theirs Think Green at Boyd Elementary will grow even larger.
      When the time comes that I have to leave Summit, I hope that I will take some things with me. The experience I gain in leadership while living here I will be able to use throughout my life. I also hope to learn some new ways of being green, and influence some kids to adopt a green way of life. I want to establish ties with community leaders and businesses that are green in Springfield, and I think that can be done by organizing field trips.
      Overall my Summit experience so far has been a pleasant one. I have had a lot of fun settling in, showing friends the house, cooking food in the kitchen, and not having to pay for each load of laundry. I just wish the project could have been started by now.

Thinking Green Starts in the Home -Proszek

Our Summit group's environmentally conscious project involves eco-friendly thinking at Boyd Elementary. It is therefore likely that our primary efforts will be concentrated at the school and in the immediate community. One place where I did not think we would have to focus our efforts, however, is in our own home. At the end of last semester, the acceptance of our "Think Green" project came with the promise of a energy-smart home that reflected the core ideals of the project.

Upon our arrival this semester, my group discovered that the "green standards" of our humble abode were barely above average. Thus we have taken on a new challenge of reducing our carbon footprint in our apartment. Here are a few of the problems and solutions that we are working toward this semester:

1. Recycling: Initially the only recycling option available was one black bin on each floor. The only collectible recycling bin is all the way down central street. Our solution is to place three large bins on each floor of the house. One for glass, cardboard, and aluminum, while keeping the small black recycling bin for paper. In addition to adding recycling bins to the house we are going to petition the university to place a collectible recycling bin in the Summit parking lot.

2. Appliances: Currently our dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer are the same out-dated systems that are common to all Summit apartments.These appliances must be switched out with more energy efficient systems in order for our group to reduce our carbon footprint. We hope to find and purchase energy efficient appliances with some of our budget money for both floors of our apartment.

3. Renovations: Small home projects that can reduce our energy consumption have not been performed in the house. Caulking windows, foaming the space between electrical outlets, readjusting the hot water temperature, and installing solar panels are all innovations which could help make this house more green.

Again, as the semester progresses, our group will concentrate our efforts not only at Boyd Elementary, but also at the home to make sure that we think green at all times.

Life Lately at 629 E Calhoun- Anna Regan

   Although we only moved in a little over a month ago, it feels as if we have been back at Drury for months! Between Summit commitments, extra curricular activities, and a full schedule, this semester is proving to be quiiiite the busy one. Even with all of the crazy scheduling, however, living at Summit and our "Think Green" project are looking like they will be an extremely enjoyable aspect of sophomore year.
   Over the past month it has been exciting to get to settled into our new home, and to enjoy the first month of the post-dorm lifestyle. Although I knew most everyone in our house before moving in, it has been great to get to spend more time with them while brainstorming our upcoming events for our year long partnership with Boyd Elementary.
   Since our group is "Think Green at Boyd," we have started the year off, most appropriately, by thinking green in the context of our own home.  Last week our group met with our advisor, and campus sustainability contact, Wendy Anderson.  With her help we have begun planning changes that we can make in our home, including caulking windows, lowering the thermostat, insulating our water heater, forming a recycling plan, etc. in order to make sure that we are not only promoting green living at the school, but that we are also practicing it ourselves!  We are also looking at long-term projects such as installing solar panels and more energy efficient appliances, and possibly expanding our garden in front of the house as a way of leaving behind a more green summit house than the one that we have inherited.
   It is my hope that our project will not only be impactive on the students at Boyd, but that our group will be able to learn more about sustainability and living a green lifestyle along the way too. 

Why Summit is the Place for Me- Scherrer

          Living in Summit for the past month has been more than I expected, in all aspects of the word. It has been more fun, more excitement, more work, and more of a community than I had anticipated. I originally chose to live in Summit Park because of the opportunity it would give me to make a difference in the lives of local Springfield community members. I became even more interested when I discovered that there would be an option to live in a carbon-neutral home and that I would have the chance to implement an environmentally friendly project. I was excited for the possibility to live in a house, a real house, with my friends and work with elementary school kids at Boyd!

        I hope to gain many valuable experiences throughout the 2010-2011 school year in Summit. First of all, I wish to better my friendships with all of the members in our Summit group and I hope to better our professional relationships as well. I would like to build a good reputation at Boyd Elementary with the principal, teachers, and Think Green advisors. In addition to cementing my friendships and professional relationships, I hope to truly educate the Think Green members at Boyd and the other Boyd students. Using our leadership skills to direct Think Green meetings and give eco-friendly in-class presentations to students of all ages, my group and I should be able to introduce the children to a new realm of “green” culture. I hope to feel fulfilled and accomplished by the end of the school year, knowing that I made a difference in the lives of young “green thinkers,” and promoted environmentally friendly practices in the next generation.

         I undoubtedly see the Summit Park project impacting my life in a positive light. I will be able to share my passion for environment and eco-friendly practices with my peers, local school students, and professionals in the local area. I have high hopes for the months to come.