Director's Corner
 The Sustainability Job Interview: It's Not About You Nothing we accomplish happens without the buy-in, partnerships, collaborations, leadership, and energy of many people. by Dave Newport
Probably because I have bombed a lot of interviews, people keep asking me for advice about their upcoming interview for sustainability-something at such-and-such company, government, or college.
Yes, I have a lot of experience; but remember, experience in your career means you have broken a lot of stuff.
The good news is that apparently there are more job opportunities for sustainability professionals lately. I hope that's true and keeps going.
Anyway, I have thought about the jobs I've been qualified for that I didn't get. A couple of themes emerged when I reflected on this "experience."
First, it's easy to feel a recruiter's love-or the search committee's love-and swell with pride and wax "all about me." Even if you try to keep that under wraps, it can leak through. Nothing puts an interview into the ditch faster than a candidate driving home how well he/she can do the job with even a hint of hubris showing.
The point of this may sound counter-intuitive, but hear me out: the sustainability job interview is not about you.
Case in point is my first job interview coming out of college back before Man discovered fire. There were three of us from my graduating class all applying for the same environmental research job with a national foundation. After making the rounds interviewing with the other staff, I ended up across the desk from the boss. His last question was a doozy: "Of the three of you applying for this job, what distinguishes you from the others?"
Ugh.
I was friends with both of them. We'd gone through school together. We partied together. We liked and respected each other. We were the top three in our class. The question was fair and tough-and a great test. He leaned forward to watch and listen to my response.
In a rare moment of humility informed by the reality of the situation, I told him I didn't see significant differences between us. I told him he could pick any of us at random and get a solid employee.
I got the job. The boss, the late Herb Berger, was the best boss I have ever had. He was a kind and loving human being. He modeled selfless leadership. When I think of him, I become-temporarily at least-a better person.
When I recall my more successful interviews, I recall talking more about the other great people I worked with and less about me.
This is especially important in the sustainability world. Nothing we accomplish happens without the buy-in, partnerships, collaborations, leadership, and energy of many people. Indeed, that is the critical element of sustainability: inclusion. I am powerless to unilaterally affect any sustainability outcome that would be durable. Even if I could, without others' ownership and support any achievements will be temporary.
I was once explaining sustainability to somebody who was just learning about it-and she taught me something. After I went through the above inclusion lecture she remarked, "OK, I get it: with sustainability the process is the product!" Indeed.
Bottom line: in your interview for sustainability-something at such-and-such company, government, or college, talk about everybody who you have worked with and learned from--and how effective they were at helping get things done. Your employer wants to know you will build coalitions and teams and all those words. You can't do it alone.
Sustainability: it's not about you.
Good luck!
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Zero Waste Totals from the 2012 Football Season
Zero-waste efforts yielded record-breaking totals from Ralphies Green Stampede
Sustainability efforts during the 2012 football season were a record-breaking success, thanks to the zero waste efforts of Ralphie's Green Stampede and Folsom Field.
Over the course of the entire season, a record 78.54 percent of the waste from all of the football games was diverted from landfills and recycled or composted.
That's just over 52,061 pounds of waste saved from the landfill last fall alone!
Over 30,000 pounds of that waste was composted-over 3,000 pounds more than has ever been diverted in the history of Ralphie's Green Stampede.
The fourth game of the season against the University of Southern California Trojan on Nov. 4 yielded the most impressive results. Zero-waste goalies and Stampede volunteer diverted over 10,000 pounds of waste out of a 11,766 total pounds. That's an 85.46 percent diversion rate!
The 2012 diversion rate represents a 6.3 percent increase from the 2011 season, during which 72.2 percent of all waste was diverted.
About Ralphie's Green Stampede
Ralphie's Green Stampede is the University of Colorado's ambitious effort to reuse, recycle, or compost valuable materials, thereby reducing the environmental impact of home games. A combination of CU's internal commitment, strong vendor involvement, and fan support are setting a new standard in "sustainable stadiums."
Since 2008, Folosm Stadium has been converted to a Zero Waste venue during all home football games, making it the first Zero Waste collegiate sporting venue in the nation of its size. Since the stadium capacity is close to 50,000 people, this has been no small task and took the partnership of Athletics, Centerplate, Facilities Management, White Wave Foods and the Environmental Center to make this program a success.
Here's how it works: CU Recycling replaced all trash bins in the stadium with recycling bins and compost bins lined with biodegradable bags.
Student volunteers act as "zero waste goalies," helping direct fans to place their waste products in the proper bins to avoid contaminating compostable and recyclable items. After the game, volunteers separate compostable material from other recyclables.
Learn more about Ralphie's Green Stampede and learn how to become a zero-waste goalie here!
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Upcoming Events
nLab Presents: Guerrilla Advertising
March 7
5:00 -6:00 pm
ATLAS 229 Executive Boardroom
Guerrilla Marketing
Marketing guru Jason Giles from Moxie Sozo will share his tips and tricks for using a limited marketing budget most effectively.
For more information, visit http://nlab.colorado.edu.
 Film Screening: Crude March 20 6:00-8:00 PM HUMN 135 Three years in the making, this cin�ma-v�rit� feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous "Amazon Chernobyl" case,Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus. Join us for a screening of this controversial film, followed by and update and inside story from Law Professor Doug Vilsack. Click here to visit their website.
For more information contact ecenter@colorado.edu
James Balog: The Art of Chasing Ice April 1 7:00 PM Macky Auditorium On April 1, we will be holding a conversation with James Balog, founder of the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) and producer of the recent film 'Chasing Ice'. James will be discussing his film, his ongoing work (providing new and never-seen-before footage) while talking with Inside the Greenhouse (ITG) founder Beth Osnes. EIS work is not only highly relevant to the ITG project, but is also at the forefront of considerations of climate change in the Boulder community. This event seeks to inspire members of the campus and area communities to engage with the challenges and opportunities associated with 21st century climate change. After this pilot show, we plan to hold similar ITG events for engaging the university and wider community one to two times a season (or semester). More information on the class-based parts of the project is available here and www.insidethegreenhouse.net. The pressing issue of 21st century climate change cuts across numerous disciplines within and outside of academia. Deep currents of ideologies, values, culture, and worldviews underlie and fuel climate change deliberations, debates and discussions surrounding how to respond to causes and consequences. This project steps in to complement ongoing research from the natural and social sciences as well as humanities in order to provide a creative communications platform for ongoing engagement.
As ITG co-founders Osnes, Safran and Boykoff have examined these issues now for over a decade, they recognize that present science, policy and public conditions provide great opportunities to effectively pursue this work that creatively expresses climate issues through video, theatre, dance, and writing, to connect to a broad audience. The chosen title of the project - Inside the Greenhouse - acknowledges that, to varying degrees, we are all implicated in, part of, and responsible for greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Through the development and experimentation with creative modes to communication, we treat this 'greenhouse' as a living laboratory, an intentional place for growing new ideas and evaluating possibilities to confront climate change through a range of mitigation and adaptation strategies. ITG also draws on the highly-successful James Lipton-led model called 'Inside the Actors Studio'. While some people continue to ask 'why don't people just get it?' and 'why can't people make the 'right' decision?', this project seeks to provide useful ways to acknowledge and embrace the complexity of these issues - meeting people 'where they are' while also encouraging people to re-consider their present contributions. For more information, visit www.insidethegreenhouse.net.
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Co mpost Pilot
CU Recycling is expanding its compost project to new locations across campus
CU Recycling has launched new Zero Waste efforts on campus through a new compost pilot that tests the efficacy of composting across campus. Keep an eye out for compost bins located across campus and be sure to dispose of your waste sustainably to help us achieve Zero Waste!
Compost History at CU
Since 2004, CU has been compost in the Dining Halls, capturing over 170 tons of organic materials each year. A large portion of this material is from the prep waste in the Kitchens and the rest is from the "uneaten" food that is sent back to the dish line. Since all this composting is happening behind the scenes, there is no public compost bins in the Dining/Residence Halls. In 2007, the University Memorial Center (UMC) started composting "behind the scenes" and started capturing over 20 tons of organic materials each year. After a few years, the UMC Grill converted all of the "to-go" ware that their food is served on to be compostable. With this conversion, we were able to set up compost bins to the public in the dining area. Compost bins were also added to the rest rooms to capture the used paper towels, as they can be composted. Now, the UMC composts over 35 tons of organic materials each year. Until now, there have not been any compost bins available to the public beyond the UMC. This Compost Pilot Study will show the potential for adding public composting to other buildings on campus! Compost Bin Locations
Compost bins will be set up in the rest rooms of the following buildings:
- Koebel Business - Education - EH&S Implementing the Compost Pilot
Public composting bins have been placed in the rest rooms of the above 3 buildings. These bins will be collected daily by custodians. Follow signs above the bin to put ONLY compostable material in the compost bin, or check out the "Acceptable Materials" image for more details. PAPER TOWELS ARE COMPOSTABLE, so make sure to put your used paper towels in the compost bin!
If you didn't get a Mini Bin and would like one, or would like to request another Mini Bin, please click here.
 Give us feedback! Since this is a pilot study and we would like to "work out the kinks" before we apply this campus wide, we would like your feedback. Please click the link below to leave your feedback. Thank You! Learn more about the Compost Pilot here! |
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Sustainability Spotlight
James Balog of Chasing Ice
James Balog's innovative work combines the aesthetics and science to make the scope of climate change accessible to a wider audience than ever before. A photographer, mountaineer and educator, Balog has dedicated his life and career to photographing, interpreting and raising awareness about the natural environment and climate change. Recently, the Oscar-nominated film Chasing Ice has brought worldwide attention to his life's work.
The University of Colorado Boulder alumnus began his graduate degree in geography and geomorphology in 1975, drawn by a fascination with the way the mountains and the geography of the area was sculpted by nature.
Balog was also interested in working with the university's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) to study climate change and its impact on the mountains and ice.
"I was stimulated and excited about being around people who were passionate about learning about the polar regions," Balog says.
In 2007, Balog founded the Extreme Ice Survey, an extensive photography project that combines art and science to demonstrate the ways and which climate change and human activity can impact the planet. The purpose of the project is to provide a "visual voice" to the planet's changing ecosystems.
The project was featured in the June 2007 and June 2010 issues of National Geographic, as well as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Chasing Ice.
Chasing Ice follows Balog's work on the Extreme Ice Survey as he travels across the Arctic deploying time-lapse cameras designed to capture and record changes in the world's glaciers over the course of several years.
Balog says that the project continues to grow. The Extreme Ice Survey still includes 28 cameras filming in Alaska, Canada, Montana, Greenland, Iceland and Nepal by Mount Everest, and Balog says he will soon be expanding the project to Antarctica and Patagonia.
Balog and his team also perform outreach, presenting at international film festivals and climate change exhibitions. They continue to focus outreach efforts on curriculum development for both high school and university students.
Ideally, Balog says he would like to integrate the climate change conversation with chemistry, physics, geology, ecology, biology, atmospheric sciences, ecology and other sciences. This, he says, would provide people with a holistic understanding of the way these aspects of climate change intersect and influence one another.
"When it comes to climate change and global sustainability, it's an interaction of a whole lot of complicated variables... and you can't escape that," Balog says.
Balog recommends that students and others in university communities focus in particular on altering transportation patterns by driving less or investing in vehicles that pollute less in order to reduce their impact on climate change.
He also hopes that people will recognize that sustainability is an issue that transcends politics because it influences everyone.
"Climate change is a universal human issue... It doesn't belong to the left wing or the right wing," Balog says. "It belongs to everyone, and it strikes me as terribly unfortunate that the issue has become political. The more we can disengage from the political side of the issue, the more impact we can make."
Balog will speak at the University of Colorado Boulder on April 1, 2013 in Macky Auditorium in a presentation entitled 'The Art of Chasing Ice.' He will discuss Chasing Ice and his ongoing work and will show new and never-before-seen footage while talking with Inside the Greenhouse co-founder Beth Osnes.
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EcoStar Challenge Update
Check out the progress and the leading residence halls in the EcoStar Challenge.
At the beginning of February, the CU Environmental Center announced the launch of the EcoStar Challenge, a residence hall competition presented by the new One Million Acts of Green sustainability platform.
One Million Acts of Green is a website for CU-Boulder students, faculty and staff to build individual sustainability plans, track and report progress, and see the impact of your commitments and measure carbon footprint reduction. There are over 100 sustainability actions to choose from.
Think about what eco-friendly actions you already do. As you undertake new actions, come back and select what you've done on the site. You can even choose to share your actions on Facebook and include photos.
From February 8 to April 12, halls compete for per capita participation in One Million Acts of Green. The top three leading hall's receive cash prizes.
The Challenge is under way, and so far, the residence hall Buffs are doing a great job of living green.
Since February 8, students in the residence halls have saved a total of...
- 2,365,857 pounds of greenhouse gases
- 899,127 kilowatt hours of electricity
- 109,627 gallons of water
Clearly, students in the residence halls have really embraced sustainability! Here are the top three halls competing in the EcoStar Challenge:
1st Place: Sewall Hall
Sewall Hall has completed 5,389 Acts of Green. They saved 1,071,284 pounds of greenhouse gases, 468,045 kilowatt hours of electricity, and 3,000 gallons of water. Some of their recent actions have included recycling, carrying a reusable water bottle or mug, and eating vegetarian once a week.
2nd Place: Arnett Hall
Arnett Hall has completed 5,672 Acts of Green. They saved 361,124 pounds of greenhouse gases, 133,556 kilowatt hours of electricity, and 25,368 gallons of water. Some of their recent actions have included walking and biking to work, turning off lights when not in use, and doing laundry in cold water.
3rd Place: Andrews Hall
Andrews Hall has completed 10,786 Acts of Green. They saved 336,364 pounds of greenhouse gases, 90,833 kilowatt hours of electricity, and 33,983 gallons of water. Some of their recent actions have included carpooling instead of driving, installing motion detectors on outdoor lights, and picking up litter and recycling it.
The other halls had better start logging more Acts of Green if they want to catch up to these three leaders! If you live in the residence halls, choose green acts to perform to compete for hall prizes and individual prizes.
Starting April 1st, the CU-Boulder One Million Acts of Green platform will be available for ALL UCB faculty, staff and students.
Click here to learn more about the EcoStar Challenge and One Million Acts of Green! |
CORE Sustainable Opportunites Summit
Tuesday, April 9th
History Colorado Center
1200 Broadway, Denver
The Annual CORE Sustainable Opportunities Summit is renowned in the Rocky Mountain Region for bringing together the top leaders and brightest thinkers in sustainability and corporate responsible practices, and this year is without exception!
Please join CORE and the collaborating partners on April 9, 2013. This year the summit will be celebrating successes - demonstrating why sustainability works and bringing full circle the history, current progress, and future of responsible corporate practices.
The Summit is being held at the beautiful new History Colorado Center (a LEED Gold building) in Denver, CO. The Agenda includes keynotes by national sustainability leaders, a special focus on leadership in regional colleges and universities through a collaboration with Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, and a discussion about international perspectives on best practices for sustainability practitioners from the International Society of Sustainability Professionals.
For those who are unable to attend the Summit in person but still want to benefit by hearing from many of the high quality speakers, CORE and Broadband, Inc. are proud to offer a live webstream of the Summit.
However, we highly encourage everyone to attend the Summit to gain first-hand knowledge, network with industry leaders from around the country, and visit with the numerous exhibitors
who will be on-site.
CORE is collaborating with the Environmental Center to provide an alternative program for the previously held Rocky Mountain Sustainability Summit.
For more information visit: http://www.corecolorado.org
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The Bike Stations Are Open! Both bike stations are open for the Spring 2013 season Be sure to stop by one of the two CU bike stations to get your bike tuned up for Spring. Both stations provide tools, equipment, mechanics and bike parking for CU students from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The new station was built to ease some of the traffic at the original station, provide students who don't pass the Euclid station with bike services, and to increase storage to maintain rental bikes, which will be available at both sites. Rental bikes at the new station are green. Students can also register bikes for $10 at the stations, which allows them access to the maintenance and equipment, as well as tracking for bikes if they turn up stolen. Bike station locations and hours 2013 UMC Bike Station Hours: Monday - Friday, 9:00 am - 5:00 PM. The original bike station is located by the Euclid parking garage on the east side of the University Memorial Center. The new CU Folsom Bike Station is located just southwest of the Engineering Center and northeast of the Leeds School of Business. About the bike stations The bike stations offers numerous ways to help keep our campus cyclists in the saddle and enjoying the campus and Boulder's great environment, including bike registration, repairs, tips for maintaining your bike, and bike rentals. We value the bicycle as an effective means of commute and recreation, improving its users' health, mobility and economic vitality. The first station was opened in 2007, and plans for the second station began about a year later after the Environmental Center saw students taking advantage of it. The bike station staff is here to help you with basic bicycle repairs. We are not a full service bike shop and therefore are limited by time, ability, staffing, and supplies. Our hope is that by teaching you how to keep your bike in working order we will help foster a strong campus cycling community. We encourage you to take what you learn from us about maintaining your bike and pass it on to other members of the campus community. Bicycle registration, while primarily anti-theft, helps pay for the bike station and other campus bike enhancements, and is thus requested of those who bicycle on campus. The bike stations' services help keep our campus cyclists in the saddle and enjoying CU and Boulder's great bicycling environment. Learn more about the bike stations here.
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SPP: Applied Sustainability Management Certificate course
Earn your Applied Sustainability Management Certificate during Maymester 2013 through the Sustainable Practices Program
The Applied Sustainability Management Certificate course offered over 10 days during Maymester is an opportunity for students to quickly learn applied environmental sustainability tools and skills from leading sustainability professionals who currently teach through the CU Boulder Sustainable Practices Program.
This is highly respected program delivers solid knowledge and value and includes a Professional Certificate in Sustainability Management (non-credit). In slightly just two weeks, students learn the latest and most relevant concepts, facts, tools and techniques related to the growing field of sustainability. This is a fast paced and exciting way to quickly advance into a professional role in one of the most important issue areas and careers of this generation, and those to come.
About SPP
The Sustainable Practices Program at CU Boulder offers personalized sustainability training from top industry professionals.
SPP features individual non-credit classes and a non-credit Professional Certificate for people who are interested in sustainability training. Whether seeking to test the waters, additional training to supplement your skills, or a professional certificate, the Sustainability Practices Program can help you gain the skills and knowledge you need to make a difference in your personal life, your organization or your community...
READY TO BEGIN?
To get started, please enroll in a non-credit course of your choosing through our on-line course enrollment process. It's that easy! To begin the Professional Certificate Program, you must submit a .pdf application and pay the $50 enrollment fee. To enroll, click here.
Sustainable Practices Program courses are 50 percent off for all CU students.
And if you are interested in seeking a graduate-credit certificate in renewable energy, take a look at CU Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute's (RASEI) Professional Certificate in Renewable Energy.
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