Sustaining the economy with the Local Food Drive

Happy fall, Sustainers.

You may have noticed some strange things around campus this week. Did you think you saw an egg running around Brady Fountain, or a pea-pod breakdancing outside Memorial Union? It's that time of year again, the local food drive.

Here's how it works, in three steps:

Step one: People on campus donate money (we love spare change!) during this week.
Step two: We use the money to buy fresh produce from local farmers (within 50 miles of Columbia)
Step three: We donate the food to the Central Missouri Food Bank throughout the year

In the past, Sustain Mizzou and it's partner organizations have raised around $3000 each year. That's a good chunk of change for wearing a costume around campus for a week teaching people about sustainable food.

The three best things about the food drive:

It helps hungry people be healthier. Food banks tend to rely on non-perishable foods, which are often less nutritious than fresh fruits, veggies, eggs, and meat.

It helps family farms. Food drive representatives set up contracts for local, often organic, farmers so they can adjust their production to meet the needs of the food bank.

It helps the economy. Healthier people are more productive, and putting money into the pockets of farmers almost guarantees it's going to get put back into the Missouri economy.

Oh yeah, and of course, it helps the environment. Most food travels hundreds of miles to get to your table, wasting gasoline, undergoing chemical treatments, and often after having been grown in a non-so-sustainable way. This eliminates excess pollution and land misuse.

So this week, if you see an apple (or is it a tomato?) running around campus, check your pockets and see if you've got a couple coins to make mid-Missouri a happier place to eat.

Kicking off the 2008 season (of Tiger Tailgate Recycling)

Mizzou students, parents, and faculty are now piling through the glorious gates of Faurot field to participate in a great MU sports tradition…fun, football games, and tailgating…while Sustain Mizzou volunteers are bravely reporting for duty for the 2nd most significant sports tradition…Tiger Tailgate Recycling!

With 31 sustainers, 85.84 volunteer hours, 62,305 Mizzou fans, 2 loaves of bread, 1 container of hummus, 42 latex gloves and only one Steve Burdic, were able to recycle 2.24 tons plastic, glass and aluminum. That is just as an amazing start to the season as a score of 52-3. Despite the campaigns of aluminum pirates (disguised as pick-ups) to thwart our recycling efforts by pillaging our bins and bags, despite the unfortunate event of a miscommunication with MU waste management resulting in the improper disposal of two parking lots of recyclables, despite the threat of looming thunderstorms leading to an early end of TTR, despite having a majority of greenhorn sustainers (which I was incredibly happy to see so many new people interested, keep it up!), despite all that challenged us Sustain Mizzou volunteers were still able to sacrifice their sweat, blood (seriously, we had an accident) and hygiene to yield an impressive quantity of containers.

But it seems we can do better. We have the support from the fans (they can’t get enough of the green team), we have incredible volunteers, fantastic sponsors and most importantly the motivation from within to make a difference. Therefore, let’s rock the recycling this season and really make a positive impact on the sustainability movement in Columbia and at Mizzou by recycling tons (literally) of containers and educating the community about environmental responsibility.

Thank you to everyone who helps out with TTR (especially those willing to wake up before 8am).

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.