Tower Green Team
Composting in the Workplace Provide colorful signage, and have at least two enthusiastic people willing to monitor and empty each compost container. Our UWEO pilot project ran smoothly enough to warrant getting larger compost receptacles for each of our floors. We now have large containers for food waste and other biodegradables on nearly every floor in each building of the UW Tower complex. Tower Green Team
On-Site Organic Produce Delivery Have an introductory meeting with a representative from a farm doing a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, such as Full Circle Farm, and a few experienced subscribers to explain the benefits and how it all works. With creative assistance from the Tower Café, our building facilities staff and the subscribers to Full Circle Farm, we had enough immediate interest to have UW Tower approved as a new weekly drop off site. Over 35 households in the tower now benefit from having produce delivered to the worksite, which means less time driving and shopping, and we enjoy supporting a local and organic business. Tower Green Team
Switch to Organic Coffee We investigated what options were available from nearby coffee suppliers, including the vendor who supplied our coffee makers. For a few more pennies per brewing, we were able to keep our equipment and supplier for tea, coffee, and filters but have both our regular and decaffeinated coffee change from a standard brand to an organic, fair-trade, shade grown line of coffee. Plus we changed a couple of our tea choices to organic also. Mmm-mmm! Tastes good; feels good. Tower Green Team
Demonstration Garden of Local and Edible Plants A key lesson we learned and would recommend to others initiating a similar project: Feed people freely with the results of your project. Make everything as fun as possible. A stat or sign of success: 200 happy people attended our free strawberry frozen custard cone event in Summer 2010! Tower Green Team
Reducing Paper Use Work with people to raise awareness. Do you really need to print or copy something? If you print, can you print double-sided? The biggest successes come from embracing technology that doesn’t rely on printed material. UWEO was able to save several million pages of paper by discontinuing the distribution of written catalogs and instead doing a smaller mailing that steered interested people towards our website. Several classes no longer rely on paper handouts, and instead use Moodle to distribute materials to students electronically. Tower Green Team
Bottle Caps and Plastic Film Put your receptacles in high-traffic, highly visible spaces. One ideal place for the bottle cap bin is near a soda machine! The UW Tower has recycled more than 100 pounds (9 kg) of bottle caps! Tower Green Team