Furman Greenbelt Sustainable Living Community

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Living in the Greenbelt Community gives you opportunities to learn and practice sustainability during the week, but weekends are also a great time to extend sustainable habits into your free time, especially when it comes to partying. Here are some ways Adel and I have changed our weekend routines to be more sustainable.

 

1. Getting Ready

• Perfumes and Cologne: Brief history lesson, until the production of Chanel No. 5, most perfumes didn’t contain synthetic ingredients. Afterwards, however, they became prevalent in most perfume brands. Organic perfumes are a lot more common than you would think. Even Rue21 has an eco-friendly line of perfume, and most brands that attempt to be more environmentally friendly will have labels.
• Other Products: You can use websites like the Skin Deep Cosmetic Database to check what harmful chemicals might be in your shampoos, conditioners, makeup, and other products.
• Clothes: If you’re worried about the carbon footprint of laundry, try not using to the dryer to lessen your impact. It’s better for your clothes, and you can reduce your emissions by more than half. Not using a dryer results in 0.7 kg CO2e if washed at 40°C and dried on a line. With a dryer, it’s 2.4 kg CO2e if washed at 40°C and tumble-dried in a vented dryer.

2. Carpooling

• Carpooling with friends to parties or downtown Greenville is a great way to reduce vehicle emissions.

3. Recycling

• Buying Beverages: Not so fun fact about the Greenville area, we can’t recycle glass. So if you’re buying soda, beer, liquor, or other beverages, try to buy plastic or aluminum so you can recycle it.
• Coffee: If you go to a Star Bucks for your coffee, and even other coffee places, you’ll notice that the cups and lids tend to have recycle symbols on them. Here in Greenville, our recycling center is perfectly capable of recycling the cups, but the plastic lids have a 6 within the recycling symbol, telling you what classification of material it falls under. However, this type of plastic isn’t recyclable in this area. Try bringing refillable cups to Star Bucks or other coffee places. Many offer great discounts if you do! In addition, for anyone who likes lattes or other milk-based drinks, try substituting dairy for soy or almond milk as a more sustainable and healthier alternative.
• Frat Parties: There’s nothing wrong with partying or drinking on the weekends, but frat parties off campus generate a lot of empty beer and soda cans. Try going to the house parties that recycle regularly, and if not, try suggesting recycling bins to the others.

4. Restaurants:

• Try going to restaurants that serve local food. Though eating out does increase your carbon footprint, it’s still a good idea to support businesses that try to adhere to sustainable practices like sourcing locally grown foods. My main recommendation is Southern Pressed Juicery in downtown Greenville, which makes gourmet smoothies and acai bowls that are all vegan and made from locally grown ingredients. They’re really good!

Hope these tips were helpful! 🙂

 

At this stage in the development of human society, the extent of our effect as a species on the natural environment has still yet to be fully understood, but with the massive losses in biodiversity and alarming increases in both climate change and global nitrogen levels, the future does not present the brightest of images. While many still choose to debate the legitimacy of environmentally-related claims, primarily right-wing politicians with supposedly serendipitous financial ties to the oil industry, there are some who have opted to respond to the collectively bleak predictions of our future environment with a seemingly naive sense of proactive optimism. Elon Musk is one of them.

After earning nearly $200 million from the sale of his first company, PayPal, Musk immediately began working on three new projects that have each had gargantuan impacts on their respective industries. His most commercially relevant venture, Tesla Motors, was a project whose sole purpose was to “accelerate the advent of sustainable transport” by ultimately producing an all-electric vehicle that was unquestionably superior to all other vehicles of its class, while maintaining a consumer-friendly price point. After the company’s first three products, the Tesla Roadster, Model S, and Model X, the firm has finally announced its fourth and most exciting product to date: the Model 3. With a base price of roughly $30,000 and a standard 250 mile range battery, Tesla has quite possibly achieved the most revolutionary feat in the automotive industry since the invention of the internal combustion engine.

As for his second venture, SolarCity, Musk’s intention was to provide sustainable energy to homes by creating a lease-based system that would allow individual households to lease the solar panels necessary to provide enough energy to satisfy all of their power needs, which would ultimately cost the household considerably less money than the average monthly electric bill. Additionally, the household would have the ability to store any surplus energy that their panels may produce, given that they now owned their own energy supply as opposed to the energy supplied by their previous electric company. SolarCity was largely a success, but due to recent financial struggles, Musk decided to purchase the company with his other firm Tesla to operate SolarCity as a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesla. Tesla shareholders, although initially skeptical of the financial viability of the acquisition, have now come together in full support of the purchase.

Lastly, Musk’s third venture, SpaceX, is an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company whose defining mission is to enable the human race to become a multi-planetary civilization. As a result of the high levels of risk and exorbitant costs required to operate a private company within the largely government-funded space industry, Musk faced a considerable amount of scrutiny in response to his decision to start SpaceX. However, after years of intensive work with some of the world’s leading physicists and aerospace engineers, Musk has defied all odds as he has continued to successfully operate the company while narrowly avoiding the ever-present threat of bankruptcy. The company’s arguably most revolutionary contributions to space travel have been the recognition of and response to the fact that well over 90% of the cost of space travel lies in the loss of the rocket after each flight, considering that the cost of fuel pales in comparison to the cost of a rocket. By introducing the concept of reusable rocket technology, Musk has reduced the cost of space travel by nearly one hundred fold by engineering rockets that have the ability to take-off and then land safely back on the ground after a flight. According to his predictions, Musk speculates that by the year 2060 there will be one million humans living in a sustainable community on Mars, but it is still far to early to accurately predict when exactly we will be able to expand human civilization to another planet. Nevertheless, the same radical optimism that Musk seems to all-too-eagerly apply to his lofty predictions has led him to achieve the monumental success that he has thus far.

-Noe Hinojosa

Kitties at Greenbelt

For me, life in Greenbelt is not only having three new roommates but also meeting three new kitties. I don’t know if Greenbelters have ever noticed or not that there are three (maybe more) kitties around us. I can see them walking in and out the woods, doing sunbath at the back door, frolicking with each other.

I LOVE kitties. I made a decision to feed them regularly the first time I saw them. Two of them are black and the other one is yellow. I haven’t given them name yet, so let’s do alpha, beta, and gamma currently. (I would really appreciate if anyone who can offer pretty names for them!) Alpha is the biggest and the fluffiest among the three. He is the friendliest one, though I still cannot pat him. It cost almost two months that he finally didn’t run away when he saw me. It eats a lot! When I placed the food on the stairs, alpha is always the first one rushing to the bowl, while the other two are extremely polite that they won’t even get closer to the bowl when alpha is eating. After alpha finished, beta, the smaller black kitty would move close to the bowl. It has brightening and smooth fur. It would come out from the bush immediately with alpha when I prepare the food. Unlike alpha, who can wait next to the bowl while I am pouring the food into the bowl, beta will run away even it knows that I am their friend and I won’t hurt it. Maybe it will take a longer time to let it get used to me. Gamma is the most unsociable kitty among the three. I will so lucky if I can see it once in a week.

As a Greenbelter, I need to follow some rules to live sustainable. Same for three kitties. They live in Greenbelt, then please have a sense of sustainability. I try to not feed them wet food that are used plastic package. If I feel that I need to offer them some treats, I’ll go for the metal package. More often, I bought a large recycled paper package of dried food, and also two stainless steel bowls. I pour then dried food into one bowl, and our some water into another bowl every day, which makes the kitties’ life more sustainable.

 

Be kind to the kitties,

Ruiwei

In November 2009, Furman University put the “Sustainability Master Plan” into action to achieve it’s goal of meeting all of the LEED sustainability requirements for the Charles H. Townes Center for Science building. The LEED sustainability requirements are basically guidelines to making buildings more sustainable and having less of an impact on the Earth. For example, the big window in Hipp Hall is a LEED sustainability feature because it allows a certain amount of sunlight and heat to enter the building such that less heat and electricity needs to be generated.

A comparison of alternate waste treatment systems quickly established that “The Living Machine” was the most energy efficient form of waste management with the lowest life cycle costs. It works by pumping five thousand gallons of wastewater from a campus sewer into tanks underneath the greenhouse outside of Plyler Hall. The wastewater is then cycled between different cells where it is oxygenated. The nutrients from the wastewater allows for abnormally large plants to be grown and studied by Furman students and professors. After this water is cycled through, it is treated and disinfected by UV light and then reused inside the Townes Center for toilet flushing.

If you have been in Greenville for more than two days, you have probably heard the phrase “Yeah that Greenville!”. I didn’t truly understand this phrase until I moved to Furman. Since I am from Virginia, I didn’t know a lot about Greenville when I moved here and so I was curious to learn all that I could about Greenville when I started school at Furman. Greenville is one of those places that is truly unique and is one that I have really grown to love during my time at Furman.

Over this past weekend, me and my friends decided to spend a day exploring Greenville. We just drove around exploring and found some new and interesting places in Greenville while doing so. While we were exploring we walked down part of the Swamp Rabbit trail, found a reclaimed skatepark, and visited some of our favorite hangout spots downtown (such as falls park). Just driving around Greenville really helped show me how many interesting parts of Greenville that I had never even seen before. It is really great to live in a place with so many unique opportunities and places. Greenville truly is my home away from home and I am so lucky to be able to go to school in such an awesome place.

Yours Truly,

Bella Metts

This past week in class, we all had the opportunity to make green cleaning products. We made a multi-purpose cleaner and a deodorizer. One of the main ingredients in both of them was vinegar, so you can guess how that smelled. We usually do rotations of cleaning to make sure the cottage stays clean, so when it came time for the group of the week to clean, we tried out the new products. We used the multi-purpose cleaner on the kitchen counter but once we noticed the smell, we stopped using it. It may have actually cleaned the counter, but there wasn’t any way to tell.

One of my roommates, Celia, said that the cleaner did not work and that it smelled bad. Actually, everyone in the house agreed that the cleaners didn’t smell great but it was fun making them. However, we’ll probably just stick to Lysol and Clorox even if they may be carcinogenic. (Just kidding, i’m not sure if they actually cause cancer)

One of my favorite parts about living in the Greenbelt Community, is always being able to meet with our neighbors every Friday for class. We often have interesting discussions or fun activities planned which makes it one of my favorite classes.

We here at the Greenbelt are often mistaken for hippies as many of my peers have mentioned. However, I’m here to confess to a bit of a hippie-esque hobby of mine. I love to hike.

This happens to be a great thing for where we live though, here at Furman because there are lots of places to go hiking nearby. In fact, this past summer I discovered that, there is indeed an app for that. It is called AllTrails and if you are also an avid hiker, this will be your new favorite app. It is great because it shows you all the trails near you, listed from nearest to farthest. It even includes all those obscure ones that you might not know about without having done intense research that no one has time for. In addition, each trail description is rated from easy to hard, includes pictures people took on the trail and has reviews from fellow hikers! And the thing I loved about it is that it goes with you when you’re traveling, adjusting for where you go.

Or even if hiking isn’t your thing, there are still lots of places to go just bask in the nature of it all. For example, if you’ve never been to Paris Mountain in the fall, you didn’t really go to Furman. It is surely one of the easiest places to go walking and hang out and maybe have a picnic with your friends. Or if you’re up for making a day out of it, you could drive up to Bald Rock, take that perfect insta photo at sunset and then chill out and have a campfire with your friends (Disclaimer: via personal experience I know that it gets very very cold at Bald Rock in the winter so layer up and if you need to improvise, socks will indeed keep your hands quite warm).

Regardless of how you choose to get your dose of nature, I’m a big proponent of the idea that the outdoors is good for the soul. That right there is my motivation to save it. My motivation to live a more sustainable life. So I’m here to encourage you to grab a friend and spend some quality time with the trees.

See you on the trails,

Noa Camp

Hey everybody! It’s Allie here. This week, as a Greenbelt cohort, we got together and made our own green cleaning supplies. Most of the name brand cleaning supplies that people use are actually pretty toxic and, as you probably already know, are expensive. By making your own, you can not only significantly reduce cost but also have a product that’s a lot easier on the environment and on your body.

My roommate and I made an all-purpose cleaner and deodorizer that’s great for kitchen appliances and counters. This cleaner was 1 part baking soda and 16 parts warm water. We added a smidge of lemon essential oil so it would have a pleasant smell but you can choose to add any essential oil you would like or not include one at all. This was all put into a spray bottle which you can get for under $2. What’s nice about using your own bottle is that you can keep reusing it too! I included a picture of what our finished cleaner looked like!

Some of our fellow Greenbelters made window cleaners, lemon oil dusters, and drain cleaners. There are plenty of other types of cleaners and “recipes” that can be found with a quick google search if this is something you’d like to try! Also, I recommend visiting www.ewg.org/skindeep/. This website allows you to search for any product that’s used on your body like shampoo, conditioner, makeup, fragrance, sun care, and oral care among many others. Once you find the product you’re looking for, the website will provide a hazard score from 1-10 as well as break down the hazard score and concern for each ingredient in your product. Give it a try; I think you’ll be surprised. I definitely was.

Being a senior this year, I have definitely found myself venturing off Furman’s campus and into the Greenville and TR area a lot more. One of the things I love that is right outside our cabin is the Swamp Rabbit trail. Whether it is running, biking or walking on it, I always enjoy it. Especially in the fall.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Swamp Rabbit Trail, it is a 21 mile multi-use greenway system that runs along the Reedy River. The Furman trail entrance is located right in the middle and you can ride your bike or any non-motorized transportation to downtown Greenville or TR, depending which way you go.

Some fun activities to do is to bike to Tandem for a delicious crepe or to the local farmers market that is held on Saturdays. For those of you that have never been to the downtown farmer’s market I highly recommend it. The last one is next Saturday, October 29. The fruit and vegetables that are sold there are always amazing quality and delicious. Right now, apples are in season and they make a great snack any day!

Another great place to bike to on the Swamp Rabbit Trail is to the Swamp Rabbit Café. The Swamp Rabbit Café is located just alongside the trail, close to downtown. They serve all organic and local food. It is a great detour to take and enjoy delicious local food. They also sell groceries that are perfect for making an organic and locally grown meal.

Furman students should take advantage of this amazing trail system we have just in our backyard. If you don’t own a bike you can always rent one from the PAC or FUOC. The next time you are looking for something to do, I strongly recommend going on a bike ride on the swamp and enjoying the great outdoors here in Greenville.