Tag: Engagement

#GreenGraduates: Featuring Raunak Shrestha

The Green Graduate series is a collective of interviews and conversations with environmentally-minded and eco-conscious NYU graduates. As these students move on to the workforce, graduate programs, and other opportunities, we are struck with how different the world seems today than it did a few months ago. Our hope with this series is to inspire, motivate and most importantly, honor the class of 2020. 

Raunak on a mountain

Throughout his four years of college, Raunak Shrestha has seen many victories, large and small, towards making NYU Abu Dhabi a greener campus. 

As a first-year, Raunak joined the student interest group, Ecoherence, which works to promote on-campus sustainability through efforts like increasing student awareness and pushing the school to adopt more environmentally conscious policies.

Read more

A teen with a bike and wagon

Community Composting Options in New York City

Amidst safety concerns and budget cuts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City temporarily suspended its city-funded curbside and drop-off composting services last March.  Thankfully, in the past few weeks, several neighborhood groups and nonprofit organizations have stepped up to provide an option for New Yorkers to recycle their organic waste, which makes up roughly 1/3 of our city’s waste stream! Whether you’ve been collecting your food scraps in the freezer for months or want to start composting for the first time, below are some resources to get you started. Please be sure to click through the links and review acceptable materials as they vary from site to site.

Read more

Green Grant Update: Environmental Justice Curriculum

by Kiersten Blake and Alexia Leclercq

Alexia and KierstenNew York City, our shared city, has a gap in environmental education programming, namely a lack of focus on environmental justice education. We decided to co-author and implement an environmental and climate justice curriculum at the High School for Teaching and the Professions (HSTP) in the Bronx. Our project-based curriculum covers topics such as environmental and climate justice, sustainable and equitable land use, public and climate health, and global effects, and was created with teacher, student, expert, and community-based organizational input to reflect on the multidimensional nature of the climate crisis from an interdisciplinary and social justice viewpoint.

Read more

Best Practices for Paperless Meetings

To avoid sharing printed copies of materials, follow these best practices for paperless meetings created by the IT Sustainability Initiative and the UCIO Council.

  • Prepare ahead of time by adding notes and presentation materials as attachments to your meeting invitation – let attendees know they can access them electronically and hard copies will not be provided. Make use of cloud-based storage solutions (such as Google Drive) to easily share documents.
  • Use a projector / laptop / electronic display to display the agenda and other related meeting documents. 
  • Consider holding a remote meeting via web conference, using NYU Zoom.
  • Encourage meeting attendees to take notes on their laptop or another electronic device to further reduce paper waste.
  • Scan paper handouts and email meeting notes to participants after the meeting.
  • Use an electronic signature service (such as DocuSign).

If you have to print, #ThinkBeforeYouPrint:

  • Only print the pages you need.
  • Use an ink-saving font like Courier, Century Gothic, or Brush Script. 
  • Reduce margins and font size to waste less space on a page.
  • Set printers to print in black and white by default (color toner has a greater cost and environmental impact).
  • Set printers to print and copy in ‘duplex’ or double-sided mode by default.
  • Use print preview to avoid printing unnecessary pages.
  • Print multiple slides per page when printing PowerPoints.
  • Use recycled toner and recycle cartridges when empty.

 

#GreenGraduates – An Interview with Josi Riederer

The Green Graduate series is a collective of interviews and conversations with environmentally-minded and eco-conscious NYU graduates. As these students move on to the workforce, graduate programs, and other opportunities, we are struck with how different the world seems today than it did a few months ago. Our hope with this series is to inspire, motivate and most importantly, honor the class of 2020. 

Josi in grad capJosi Riederer, like many of us, is currently home with her family in Ashland, Virginia. When I spoke to Josi, she had just finished her thesis for Global Liberal Studies on the topic of rural-urban water inequality in Mumbai and Chennai. Through her research, Josi explores what she describes as “the rural-urban water inequality nexus.” Essentially, rural water is brought to upper- and upper-middle class urban residents and industries because those groups are made out as more economically valuable. Conversely, poor, rural communities are not seen to use water “beneficially,” which is used as justification for the diversion of water from rural to urban areas. For Josi, caring about water equality isn’t a choice, but a duty.

Read more