Sustain-a-Lingo & First meeting = accepting money, friends, announcement

Welcome back to the Sustainablog, or welcome for the first time.

A quick lesson in Sustain Mizzou lingo:
Sustain-a-
can go before anything.

Examples:
Sustainameeting (a meeting of Sustain Mizzou people, or about sustainability)
Sustainaflag (the yellow flag with a recycling symbol on it displayed at our Wednesday table in Brady Commons and at Recycle Mountain in the spring)
Sustainabling (jewelry made from recycled materials, such as aluminum cans, washers, or safety pins)

Now that you know, I can use the proper terminology to describe out first meeting:
Tonight (Wednesday, Sept 3) was Sustain Mizzou's first general meeting of the semester. "General meeting" is a meeting that is general, everyone is invited, and the topic isn't specific, it's just a sustainameeting.

We had around 80 students show up on a rainy, cold night. Thanks a bunch to all the sustainatroopers out there, it was great to see so many happy faces on a day so gloomy.

We voted to accept money for a community garden project (see article below from Thursday's/tomorrow's paper) and to accept money from Anheuser-Busch Corp. for Tiger Tailgate Recycling (explained in an earlier post).

We broke up into small groups, about 5-8 people in a group. My group had six people, and we talked about what we liked about sustainability on campus (hooray for lots of recycling bins, but we could use more), and possible ideas for future improvements (a clothing swap? a sustainatrivia competition?).

Then we heard announcements, a few from Sustain Mizzou project leaders, and then a few from other people. We were out of there around 8:02 p.m.

From other people:
one about registering to vote in order to vote on issues of renewable energy
one about joining PedNet's walking school bus program, which rocks, btw.
one from Steve Burdic, the Solid Waste and Recycling Coordinator for Mizzou, about recruiting students to be "recycling champions" for the Indoor Beverage Recycling Program (iBurp)

Here's two articles to check out:
About the community garden/composting class, grant, and project:
Columbia Missourian: Graduate Student Begins Composting Program


And from a few weeks ago, a story about a project to put energy monitors in some Residence Halls, so students can track and lower their energy usage:
Columbia Missourian: Student Wins Grant to Help MU Cut Energy Use


Rock on sustainers. Or shall I say, sustain-a-rock-it.