Environmental Sustainability at TRU

A lot has happened since I posted my first blog so here we go again! I experienced my first orientation period at TRU. Anna-Maria made a superb presentation at the International Student orientation and we had a table at the first year and general orientation events. We held a draw for three prize packages including a $40 gift certificate at Heartland Coop, a reusable water bottle and coffee mug (thanks TRUSU) The winners will be announced on the website this week. The initial response to the website has been very positive and I am pleased about that. In this day and age internet communication is a key part of getting the word out about sustainability. We also got a lot of volunteers for the Guerin Creek Cleanup which is taking place on September 27^th organized by TRU in cooperation with the Kamloops West Rotary Club and local citizens. One last comment on orientation. I really enjoyed the chance to flip burgers at the back to school BBQ for two reasons…no one got food poisoning from my efforts and I met a lot of new people.

As we were preparing to support the positive approach to encouraging people to drink tap water and wean them away from bottled water I discovered that there are almost 50 places where staff, faculty and students can refill their water bottles on campus including the 6 new refilling stations that will be added in September. At about the same time Memorial University got a lot of press for their ban the bottle campaign but TRU has implemented many of the measures that Memorial is just know committing to. It was truly amazing that the various departments, faculties and clubs on campus were able to work in a coordinated fashion to make almost 3,000 water bottles available to returning students…all featuring the new sustainability website URL. In addition TRUSU is going to give out another almost 1000 bottles in their campaign to encourage the drinking of tap water in the early fall.

I have a household garbage tip. I have been using cardboard containers such as milk cartons as storage places for garbage before I take it out. It cuts down on the use of plastic bags. We are making progress in the replacement of one way plastic by reusable bags. How do I know? Statistics Nah!! Better…the plastic bag manufacturing companies have come out with sponsored research that purportedly shows the dangers of using reusable bags!!!!

September represented a changing of the guard. Anna-Maria Viaud and Adam Hockin have returned to their full time studies and Kaitlin Boyd is the new coop student. Kaitlin comes with a wealth of experience including active involvement it TRU ECO and a coop term working for the City of Kamloops environmental programme. Among other things Kaitlin is going to be looking into developing a programme that will allow our existing buildings to be LEED certified.

Speaking of TRU ECO I had the pleasure to have dinner with Tria Donaldson, who was the student representative on my hiring committee and who is now the Director of Go Beyond. We talked a lot about her upcoming trip to Copenhagen where she will participate in the Climate Change Conference (Yes, Diana I did mention the need for her to complete the course work for the degree and Marion Hannaford joined us and had some helpful suggestions for Tria).

Last but not least I took the train to Edmonton, leaving early in the morning and spending virtually the whole day in the observation car of the Canadian. Wow! It was something I had always wanted to do and it was worth it. This country we live in is breathtakingly beautiful and especially so on the train. However, one negative thing did strike me, even though it was raining that day. Wherever I looked along the way the sloughs, creek beds, ponds and other catchment areas for water were bone dry. We are rapidly moving toward a water shortage if we do not already have one and we will have to some immediate action to prevent a crisis in the near future.

Finally, hats off to Liv Andrew who organized the Gazebo party…….a good time was had by all.

Welcome to the first edition of Tom’s Sustainability Blog. I have never done a blog before so as much for my sake as yours I will tell you what I am expecting. The blog will cover my current thoughts and impressions and hopefully encourage your responses. It will be informal as a counter point to the more formal information presented in the www.tru.ca/sustain website. It will follow a stream of consciousness pattern….assuming that I am conscious at the time of writing it.

I want to start out by talking about an experience I had at “ Going for the Green” the sustainability golf fun night that we organized with the excellent support of Gerard Hayes (who by the way was only organizing the campus services for the Lillooet evacuees at the same time….I have recommended him to President Kathleen for the Master Multitasker award on her next New Years honours list…but I digress) The Bookstore provided sustainable prizes for everyone ( water bottles, bamboo shirts etc,) and Aramark provide two “hundred mile” dinners for four. It was great fun and everyone got into the spirit of the event with their costumes, abysmal golf shots and hilarious attempts at blind putting. The entire women’s choir showed up from the advancement and alumni office skilfully disguised as construction workers accompanied by Elvis with his guitar shaped water bottle….really you had to be there to believe it!

The highlight for me however was meeting Helen and Harry Skoglund. Harry is 80 years young and Helen is his childhood sweetheart and new bride of a little over a year. They live in Lillooet and were staying with Jim and Diana Skogklund during the evacuation and came with them to the fun night. Helen was on the original Board of Governors of Cariboo College when is started out in a trailer on a reserve and talked about that and later when the college was housed in the basement of the armory. She just glowed with pride as she talked about the decision of the Board to take the risk and install the first computer assisted drafting machine and how she pressed the buttons to start it up for the first time. She obviously still keeps up with what we are doing today and she gave TRU a solid endorsement for maintaining the emphasis on quality and doing things a little differently (no I don’t think she was referring to the golf tournament). As a newcomer to TRU you can imagine what an impact the living history lesson has had on me.

As many of you know I had the good fortune to hire two excellent Co-op students to work with me; Anna-Maria Viaud and Adam Hockin. I had originally planned to hire one but because of the exceptionally high quality of applicants I hired two. They have been running me off my feet so I won’t make that mistake again!! We went together to the World Changing Careers conference at UBC. The conference was organized by a young woman Alysia Garmulewicz who wants to make a difference. There were a wide variety of first class presenters including Raffi (made all of us from Winnipeg and those of us who never will grow up proud!!) and the Chair of the Board of the Suzuki Foundation. The presentations were both informative and thought provoking. One of the messages that came through clearly that we have to get beyond the guilt approach to change (don’t drive a big car, don’t drink bottled water etc) to a more proactive positive approach…something we need to keep in mind as we move forward with activities here at TRU and in the broader community.

Anna-Maria, Adam and I also took the opportunity to visit the Kamloops water treatment plant that is a gold LEED building that most people do not know was co-financed by TRU. It is a pretty impressive place with interesting features including a roof garden.

The three of us have enjoyed great broadly based support from the TRU community as we put together the various components of the environment and sustainability programme. For example, when we decided to order reusable water bottles to give away as part of our strategy to reduce the use of bottled water on campus faculties, departments and clubs joined us and in the end almost 3000 bottles were ordered and have arrived in time to give to incoming students. TRUSU had already ordered their bottles so that total does not include the ones to be given out by the student union.

We have also been approached by a number of programmes and faculties on campus including TRU World, the Adventure Tourism Programme, the Career Education Department, Institutional Planning and Analysis, Student Recruitment and the Deans Offices in Science and Nursing to help them with specific issues or to organize more broadly based sustainability initiatives. I shouldn’t be surprised. My first contact last January was with Doug Smith, Manager of the Print Shop and while I was looking for business cards he gave me a good basic education on the things that we could do to make our paper use more sustainable.

I am sure that I have missed a lot of things that I should have mentioned but I think that is enough for the first blog. I look forward to your