The ball is rolling!

[Steinberg, 1963] http://www.cartoonbank.com/Assets/1/66286_s.gif
I found the contact for the green officer at Wolfson, Saman and sent him an email yesterday asking for an existing green project I can champion, and that I would like to help out in any way possible. He was extremely helpful as we met today to talk about ongoing green projects at Wolfson and my ideas for change. I told him that I am not trying to add to his workload, but that I would be happy to champion any of the existing projects on his list. Saman was very supportive of my ideas, and told me the personnel that I will need to get on-board are the bursar, housekeeping staff, and maintenance staff. This was extremely helpful information, and it also helped that he wanted to see these initiatives through.

I guess from this experience, I learned that if I was looking at the situation from the point of view of the people that I approached, I would have wanted the person approaching me to have looked into what green projects were already in place. I’d like to be approached by someone who came with a serving attitude, and was willing to learn about the system, instead of being the new guy with all the ideas and answers, who then leaves after 5 months. I think this also speaks loudly about the type of person you are, one that takes time to notice what good is already happening, and then add try to it by investing your time, ideas, and effort. This would be the kind of person I would want on my team.

From speaking with Saman, I discovered that I need to do a couple things to get these changes rolling. First, we agree that it would be better to have one person contact the bursar, housekeeping staff, and maintenance staff to get their buy-in before setting up a formal meeting. Saman has offered to do this as he has a working relationship with them. As for the paper recycling, there are several issues, the most important one to overcome is that it is a fire hazard. Currently, common recycling bins (glass, plastic, and cans) are placed in the kitchen or hallway. The argument against offering recycling bins in the kitchen is that paper in the kitchen would be a fire hazard. The second issue is that we might dramatically increase the workload of housekeeping if we place recycling bins in each dorm. Instead of reinventing the wheel, my first task will be to contact green officers in other colleges to find out how they overcome the fire hazard issue, and whether the housekeeping staff in other buildings are okay with collecting paper recycling from each dorm. Second, I will survey the entire Wolfson College campus to see if I can find at least one suitable location in each wing to place a central paper-recycling bin. As I mentioned before, there are only 3 places to recycle. I admit, during the past several months, I rarely made the trip out to these recycling bins myself.