Therma’ Mia
ESW Climate Witness Challenge – Cornell
ESW Update – by Carmen Iao
The year 2007 was a busy and exciting one for the students in the Cornell chapter of Engineers for Sustainable World, one that saw the beginning of several new initiatives and the expansion and growth of preexisting events.
Last April, ESW helped promote more sustainable lifestyles by holding its second annual “Drive Not to Drive” campaign, where more than 200 participants agreed to seal up their car keys in an envelope for a week and take alternative modes of transportation. The club passed out buttons and sold “Not Driving is Gorges” tees, parodying the infamous t-shirts that can be seen everywhere around town. To kick it all off, an alternative transportation race was held on campus, where bikers, unicyclists, rollerbladers, three-legged-racers and a guy in a TCAT bus #30 costume competed in a friendly dash. To wrap up the week-long campaign, ESW joined other sustainability groups on Ho Plaza to celebrate Earth Day, distributing food cooked in ESW’s very own solar ovens and ended by raffling off prizes to those who participated in the Drive Not to Drive. One lucky winner received a brand new bike while others got TCAT bus passes and bike saddles. The event was cosponsored by TCAT, Cornell Transportation Services, The Bike Rack and Cayuga Cycling. Students are looking forward to kick off the event again this coming April.
ESW’s spring semester was concluded by a project symposium, held in Duffield atrium, where members from different groups, such as AguaClara, the Cayuga Watershed Project, and the Solar Oven Team displayed their work from over the year. The event was an educational promotion of all the projects and events ESW is involved with. Over the winter break, two of the Solar Oven Team members travelled to Nicaragua and took a course on solar oven culture.
To start off the fall, members conducted tours to ENGRG 150 classes, the freshmen engineering seminars, to introduce freshmen to the student organization and express ways to get involved. These tours included a presentation and a tour around the engineering quad to see the AguaClara lab, the Solar Oven lab, the Vegetable Oil Van and the Student ESW Office. Students also took part in the first campus wide Sustainability Day in mid-October, where a zero-waste zone was temporarily set up on Ho Plaza. ESW members promoted sustainability by selling compact fluorescent lights, passing out food cooked in the solar oven and explaining the design and history of the project.
Another project ESW Engineers are taking part in is “Greening the T”, a local initiative to make textiles that are consumed more sustainable. We are calling engineers to use their creativity to rethink the way shirts are used in campus organizations.
To further publicize ESW’s presence on campus, three speakers were invited to campus in collaboration with other groups in the fall of 2007. Bill McKibben, an environmental author, educator, and organizer of the National Step It Up Campaign, was invited with collaboration from KyotoNow! and two other sustainability groups on campus.
ESW was also privileged to have Susan Kinne from Grupo Fenix, an NGO from Nicaragua whose mission is to contribute to the wellbeing of rural communities by creating awareness of sustainable lifestyles through technical and cultural exchange, promotion, and research in the field of renewable energy. The Solar Oven team works with Grupo Fenix with the supervision of Tim Bond. Kinne discussed a photovoltaic powered battery recharging center and a new community center to be built. The talk was followed by discussion over dinner with food cooked in the solar ovens.
In November, Dr. Sylvester Johnson gave a presentation about global climate change and its effects on agriculture, as well as the current and possible policies that deal with it, which was broadcasted live on CUTV.
The Cornell ESW chapter has also continued volunteering with the Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Service to help with efforts of sustainable demolition, using housing materials to be recycled into new housing in the community. A trip to the Ithaca’s Farmers’ Market was also organized, arriving in the ESW Veggie Van to help promote local foods. ESW purchased pumpkins that the Farmer’s Market for a Halloween carving event that followed in October.
Looking back at the happenings of 2007, the group is eager to start the year 2008 with the planning of another solar oven dinner and the 3rd annual Drive Not to Drive campaign already underway. ESW members hope to continue even greater participation from engineering students and especially from the local community. The group will also collaborate with other engineering organizations in the on-campus Engineering Olympics to celebrate National Engineers Week. ESW will continue to work with other sustainability organizations on campus via the Sustainability Hub, and exchange ideas and publicize events using the Hub’s campus and local online blogs on sustainability. Future work also involves aiding Cornell’s efforts to become carbon neutral with the possibility of working with the Climate Commitment Working Group to identify major heat leaks in dorms and campus buildings. ESW will also be cosponsoring a documentary titled “The Unforeseen” with Cornell Cinema in late February, which discusses the effects of overdevelopment in Barton Creek at Austin, Texas.
ESW will continue to look for further education and awareness opportunities throughout the next exciting year. It is a great time to be a ‘green engineer!’
For more pictures and updates as the year progresses, visit ESW’s website at www.rso.cornell.edu/esw.
