The Environmental Campus Community Council
                  Summer Campaign:
        We need Power NOT Pollution

     Shut Mirant Down if they wont make the renovations needed for safe opperation!

Old coal burning power plant has been kept at an operational state so that Mirant, the company that owns and opperates it can produce energy for cheeper and make more of a profit from the lack of strict environmental and public health regulations. The City of Alexandria has tried about everything through the "appropriate channels" and now there is only 2 back to back meeting left before the people are sold out for a corporations greed. Are you going to let your self and the next generation be sold out?

  The next action:

Community and Plant worker meeting

Time ? email a good time for you to Jessica at jam_rock@verizon.net

Date ? email a good time for you to Jessica at jam_rock@verizon.net

Place ? depends on how many intend to come     and if you want to help email Jessica at jam_rock@verizon.net

This meeting will be to consolidate and clarify some rough ideas on the grassroots process of positively shaping  the long term solution to gernerating reliable power without the current levels of pollution. 

There can of course be many things covered in this and other meetings focused on group consensus. It was a tragic reality that a rift and even isolation had grown between the community living around the plant and the workers inside the plant. In order to create a practical, sensible and innovative resolution that could also create a national model for the American Green Energy Revolution. This could be energy revolution that would embrace the most efficient technology embodying in the truest form a good neighbor and a necessary utility. We must work together in order to protect one another from the neglect and abuses of greedy or corrupt politicians and/or corporate heads. I am not implying that any particular persons involved in this affair is corrupt or greedy but I am recognizing greed and corruption as sizable obstacle in the way of improving society on a whole and each individuals well being. All are welcome and encouraged to take part. Facts need to be clarified about this situation so understanding can be better reached by all involved and impacted.

The result of this meeting was that Alexandria's proposed consent order has been accepted by the State Air Pollution Control Board members. 

May 22 from 4PM to 9PM in the Holiday Inn at 2460 Eisenhower Ave, Alexandria, VA. A public meeting will be held in front of the only regulatory agency that has any oversight on the Potomac River Generating Station's opperation. They are caller the Atate Air Quality control Board. They will be hearing public comments about the consent orders that will be issued to allow Mirant to continue its Plant's opperations. These permits/consent orders can be found at www.deq.virginia.gov/air/permitting/Mirant.html Once you've looked over them and writen down some questions feel free to join up with Alexandria's chapter of Food Not Bombs and come to the meetings to voice your thoughts. Email jam_rock@verizon.net or call (703) 909 6655. May 23 starting at 9:30AM there will be another meeting in front of the same board members about the same thing. Remember to bring as many friends that care as you can it is our last defense.

The mission of ECCC at Northern Virginia Community College, is to educate and raise awareness of the student body and faculty, as to our personal and collective impact on the environment. Environmental consciousness will be increased through direct out reach and education in the form of events and hands on programs. These actions will be designed to illustrate the simple and effectual ways we as individuals and as members of the NOVA campus community, can decrease our negative impact on the environment. 

Philosophy of ECCC 

The Environmental Campus Community Council is a pro-active body driven by students, open to any and every member of our college community: faculty, staff and administrators. Diversity is one of the strengths of NVCC. We have created a “council” in order to be able to take full advantage of the diverse creative and intellectual abilities THOSE present at our college.

In order to reach our diverse student body it is essential that ECCC remain:

·             Non-political: Protecting our resources and reducing the contamination of our environment is not a matter or “do” or “don’t”, liberal or conservative, but a matter of sustaining life now and in the future.

·             Broad Based: to ensure that our efforts reach the diverse campus community we need to avoid being stereotyped as the “tree-hugging, crazy, stinky, hippy” (not that we aren’t or don’t sympathize, but our goal is to gain the support and respect of those who would ordinarily roll their eyes at the “environmental hype”).

·             Campus Focused: Implementing positive, effective, and visual improvements will encourage a higher standard for how we (the campus community) behave while on campus. By encouraging these good habits on campus, they will naturally spread to the BIGGER community (the city of Alexandria) as people improve their habits at home.

·             Positive: We want to work with our administrators in a serious and respectful way. Not attack. In all that we do, it must be clear that we strive for the pro-active positive change of NVCC, to keep pace with the times in which we live.

 “YOUR CAMPUS, YOUR COMMUNITY, YOUR WORLD”

A note from a mentor
Dennis E May
"I spent two years doing full-time environmental organizing in the early 80’s and my wife is the founder of a national environmental group focused on consumption and the environment, the Center for a New American Dream in Takoma Park, Maryland – check out their website"

"In the mid 90’s, this campus looked like a desert:  few trees, little grass, almost no flowers.  I got some people together (faculty and staff) and got a grant to plant trees around the campus, and as a result we planted about 100 hardwood trees of various types.  All the trees you see in the two A parking lots, the Zelkovas that line Dawes Avenue along the main parking lot, and the grove of maples on your left as you head down to Tyler are all the result of that effort.  Things can happen here, but it takes energy and creativity, and it seems to me that you three have ample amounts of both."

Recycling: To improve and expand upon the recycling program here on the Alexandria Campus.

November 15th is National Recycling Day but recycling can be practiced every day. These are some ways how: Recycling the Acceptable Materials including;
Aluminum and steel Cans, which should be prepared by being rinsed and emptied out, crushed to conserve space, and there is no need to remove the labels.
Plastic Bottles and Jugs, which should be prepared by being rinsed and emptied, CAPS REMOVED, and flattened or crushed.
Glass Bottles and Jars, should be rinsed and emptied and caps removed.
Newspaper and Magazines, may be mixed together in brown paper bags but not plastic bags.
Office Paper, remove paper clips and staples.
Paperboard, Flatten and include with newspapers and magazines.
Cardboard, Flatten boxes, remove excess tape and packing materials such as styrofoam(which is NOT recyclable)
Household Batteries, Place in plastic bag.
 
The following are materials that should NOT be included in your recycling because they could contaminate the entire load causing it to be trashed instead of recycled.

NO plastic bags
NO aluminum foil or trays
NO plastic yogurt or dairy tubs
NO plastic food boxes or trays
NO foam take-out containers
NO styrofoam packaging
NO hardback books
NO light bulbs
NO pots and pans
NO lids, caps or tops (metal lids from cans ok)
NO paper plates or napkins
NO ceramics
Where are Alexandria's drop-off centers?
Here they are!
1.S. Whiting Street (@ tower Court)
2. 3540 Wheeler Ave.
3. 4251 Eisenhower Ave.
4. Jones Point Park( in parking lot under Woodrow Wilson Bridge)

ECCC Meeting Notes Dec. 5th

Becoming an Official Club:
•	We will try to draft our constitution and By-laws and have them ready to 
submit by the first day of school, Jan. 15th. We will meet at Jessica’s 
house Tues. Jan 9th around 4pm. If you plan on coming write Jessica for her 
address
•	We will put together a draft, send it out to our members for review and 
then have it ready to submit to Pat by Jan 15th.

Our Members:
•	We have an email account: eccc@list.riseup.net. This email hasn’t been set 
up yet, don’t pass it out! We will let you know as soon as it is ready. This 
can be used to consolidate all our email contacts. When we send an email we 
want the whole group to receive, we send it to this list and everyone signed 
up will get the email. They can in turn, respond to everyone, by simply 
responding to the list.
•	In order to get the list ready, we need to consolidate all our contacts. 
If you have any email contact please send them to Olivia 
ocosby8910@mail.vccs.edu. Ildiko and Olivia will set up the list then Olivia 
will be in charge of the list and the one who can edit it. All future 
contacts to be added to the list will go to Olivia.

Bin Painting:
•	Thank-you to everyone who helped paint yesterday!  Thanks Vivian for the 
paint. We got four bins painted. At this point one will be PTKs and one 
ECCCs, maybe we’ll each take two, unless we get another club that wants to 
design their bin now.
•	This Tuesday dec. 12th, we are working on setting up our painting of the 
logo on the bins in front of the Schlesinger Center for the post election 
conference. Olivia and Jessica are organizing the tableing for this event. 
Contact them if you want to help out.
•	Ildiko is working on getting permission to paint in front of Schlesinger.
•	Vivian will get paint, bright blue and green, black, white, brown, red, 
yellow, are the most important colors.
•	Does any one have more paintbrushes?

Bin Display:
•	We almost have permission to put a bin display in the library. We do have 
permission to put one in front of the Information Booth. Ildiko just sent an 
email to Pat to get permission to set one up in the dinning hall of the 
cafeteria. We can do this as soon as we get our bins painted.
•	Jessica is working on putting together some informational signs on the 
hows and whys of recycling to go with the display. We would like to have the 
signs in Spanish, Arabic, French etc. Who knows people who speaks these 
languages? (We got Spanish covered)
•	Chris will make little boxes to go on the side of the container bins to 
collect bottle caps for PTK

Bulletin Board:
•	Our board is currently on the 4th floor. Amara is talking to the 
International Club to be able to trade our space with theirs until the new 
school year. Ideally we would like a permanent spot that is more visible 
than the 4th floor.

Collection Strategy and AAA contract:
•	Ildiko will write out our current strategy for collection and maintained 
separation of recyclables from the consumer to the recycling bin to the 
school collection dock. Vivian will forward this to Ronn Davis and request a 
meeting to make sure recycling is written into the new AAA contract.

Plan date for Club wide bin painting meeting:
•	We had suggested Tuesday Jan 23rd for a club wide bin painting meeting. 
When are people available? We would like, if possible, to have this date set 
before the break so that we can promote the club wide bin painting ASAP, and 
over the break.

Meeting Minuets Nov. 28^th 4-6pm

Recycling and ECCC 4-5pm, Open Forum 5-6pm

The Mission of The Environmental Campus Community Council at Northern Virginia Community College, is to educate and raise awareness of the student body and faculty, as to our personal and collective impact on the environment. Environmental consciousness will be increased through direct out reach and education in the form of events and hands on programs. These actions will be designed to illustrate the simple and effective ways we as individuals and as members of the NOVA campus community, can decrease our negative impact on the environment.

La misión del Concilio Ecologista (Environmental Campus Community Council, ECCC) en Northern Virginia Community College es educar y concienciar a los estudiantes de nuestro impacto en el medio ambiente. Se pretende aumentar la conciencia del alumnado por medios directos de contacto como eventos y programas participativos diseñados para ilustrar costumbres simples y efectivas que nosotros como miembros de NOVA podemos adquirir para así disminuir nuestro impacto negativo al medio ambiente. 

Introduction

Olivia and Ildiko spoke about the need for an environmental campaign on campus and the formation of an environmental club as being the most accessible way to gain credibility of the issue with the college. The first project of ECCC is to implement an effective recycling program at the Alexandria Campus to spread college wide.

Recycling, Current Goal 

1. Mike Tedros, the grounds manager for NVCC, Alexandria, spoke about the attempts of recycling on campus. Some reasons they have failed in the past, is contamination of recycling bins with non-recyclables as well as insufficient volume of recyclables placed in the bins. This makes the pick-up not worthwhile and eventually phases out the program.
2. Vivian, from PTK, spoke about the bottle cap drive to collect bottle caps and create a memorial mosaic to the genocide in Darfur. Collecting the bottle caps not only takes the caps, which are not recyclable, out of the trash pile, but also practices the second “R” of reduce, re-use, recycle. PTK has been working on implementing recycling since September 2006 and is currently working with ECCC.
3. Some Facts about Recycling: AAA is our trash and recycling hauler. As of now only cardboard and big scrap metal is recycled. AAA has the capacity to recycle “mixed stream” wastes, which refers to collecting all glass, aluminum, steel cans and plastic bottles in one receptacle, and mixed paper in another. The schools contract is up for renewal in January. The opportunity is ripe to include recycling in the contract but needs to be coordinated with education of the campus populace as to the how and why of recycling. 
4. What still needs to be done:

a. Implementation through coordination of cleaning staff, grounds management and AAA

b. Education of the recycling program and the proper disposal of recyclables without contamination through outreach of campus population

c. Monitoring of effectiveness of program.

Adopt-a-Bin Make Over: Current Outreach Project

We will collect all bins from the Bisdorf building and assign them to different clubs. The clubs will paint the bin with their logo or any design they want as well as the appropriate recyclable the bin is collecting, as a way to not only promote their clubs, but also as a way to promote recycling.

·             Bin Painting is a means to build alliances with school clubs with the goal of a broader coalition.

·             The Bin Painting Event will most likely take place in the first weeks of the spring semester and will include music, refreshments and educational outreach in the form of leaflets and conversation to those passing by.

·             It will ideally occur outside in front of the cafeteria, weather permitting.

·             Suggestions were made to create a panel of judges to rank the most creative and informative bin and award the winning club with….?

·             A suggestion was made, as a measure to prevent bin contamination, to have clubs monitor their bins “baby-sit your bin”

·             A suggestion of a written tally people could mark off every time bin is used, most recyclables collected wins. As a way to prevent low volume.

·             ECCC will begin painting their bin and display it as an outreach, sneak-peek for the club-wide, Bisdorf building, Adopt-a-Bin, Make Over.

h     We have set a tentative date to work on priming and preparing three bins, for this Friday Dec. 15^th at Noon. Everyone is invited! Does this work for people? Is earlier or later better?  Come with ideas for ECCC’s bin. We will have paint, brushes and lots of inspiration!    h    

Forum

Given the current looming catastrophe of Global Warming, we, as consumers in this country make up 5% of the population and contribute to roughly 30% of total world green house gasses, do not have the luxury to be unaccountable to our effects on the environment. We would like to create a diverse council of students, faculty, administrators and staff that can work within the college community (thus effecting our municipal communities) to be increasingly environmentally responsible as a college and as individuals. The Council is a means to unite diverse creative energies to best achieve our goal of a more environmentally conscious campus.

            Here are some ideas for future projects (once recycling has successfully been achieved) that can lead to environmental sustainability on the Alexandria Campus:

1. Cafeteria Waste Reduction
2. Energy conservation and efficiency
3. Transportation: ride shares, bicycle education/promotion, low-cost student public transpo. (?) This student rate public transportation would need to come from coordination with NVCC and METRO, a lot of work. Shuttle connecting colleges that would run on vegetable oil.
4. All future NVCC buildings being “Green”
5. Establishment of an Environmental Studies Department
6. Campus edible garden, Jessica Miller is very interested in beginning this
7. Any other ideas?
   

Other possible programs:
-Eliminate styrofoam use at the cafeteria and transfer to reusable service items
-A campus wide policy that all new building or additions will be "green" or environmentally sound.
-Garden projects that set up "Edible class rooms" for the youth ranging from middle school, high school, and college.
(IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS CONTACT...
Olivia Cosby at (540) 683-8416 ocosby8910@email.vccs.edu
Ildiko Polony (415) 559-7482 ildikoilona@hotmail.com
Jessica Miller (703) 909-6655 jmiller7499@email.vccs.edu
COME ONE! COME ALL!

Sample Student Organization Constitution/By-Laws

Preamble 

(This should include a statement of the purpose, goals and objectives for the organization as well as those objectives that will benefit the campus and college community.)

Article I – Name

The name of this organization shall be:

Environmental Campus Community Council.

Article II – Membership 

Section 1.        All registered students, faculty, and staff at the college shall                             be eligible for voting membership in the                                                                 _____________________________________ at

                        the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College.

(additional qualifications such as paying dues or meeting GPA require-ments may be added at the discretion of the organization).

Section 3.        Honorary (non-voting) memberships can be given to                                           __________________________________

Article III – Officers 

Section 1.        The officers of the organization shall be  (include any specific

qualifications to hold each office):

a.                   A President

b.                  A Vice President

                        c.                   A Secretary-Treasurer (may be one or two positions)

(Titles for the above positions may differ from those described at the discretion of the organization.  Other positions may also be included as officer positions.

Section 2.        All student voting members of the organization in good                                        academic standing shall be eligible to hold office.

Section 3.        The term of office for the officers of                                                                        ______________________________ shall be              

from __________________ of the regular academic year to___________________________ of the following year.

Section 4.        The officers shall be elected by a majority of the voting                                         members of the _______________________________ at                             the annual elections held in_________________________.

Section 5.        Vacancies of offices shall be (appointed or elected by)                                        _____________________________________.  (If                                         vacancies are to be filled by succession, please specify                                     procedure.)

Article IV – Executive Board 

Section 1.        The Executive Board shall consist of the President, Vice                                     President,

                        Secretary-Treasurer, and Advisor.

Section 2.        All executive and legislative power granted herein shall be                                 vested in the Executive Board.

Section 3.        The Executive Board shall be empowered to recommend                                 priorities for various projects and to plan activities.

Article V – Meetings 

Section 1.        The regular meetings of the voting membership shall be held                            at least ___________ a month.

Section 2.        Special meetings of the organization may be called by the                                 President, or by the Executive Board, or upon the written                                 request of _________ members of the organization. 

Section 3.        A quorum shall be a __________ majority of the voting                                      membership.

                                            Article VI – Committees

Section 1.        Finance 

Section 2.        Publicity

Section 3.        Constitution and By-Laws 

Note:These are suggested standing committees.  No committees                           are required. 

                               Article VII – Impeachment and Removal

Section 1.        Officers may be impeached and, if convicted, removed from                               office by a two-thirds majority of the voting members on the                                basis of not fulfilling their duties as outlined in the                                 Constitution and By-Laws. 

Section 2.        Members may be impeached and, if convicted, may be expelled from membership by a two-thirds majority of the voting members on the basis of not fulfilling the purpose of the organization.

Section 3.        Advisors may be impeached and, if convicted, removed from their position by a two-thirds majority of the voting members on the basis of not fulfilling their duties as described in the NVCC Faculty Handbook and the By-Laws of this Constitution. 

Section 4.        Any individual who is impeached shall be given full notice of the allegations against him/her and shall have an opportunity to respond to them.

Section 5.        Any member of the organization may initiate impeachment proceedings.

                                        Article VIII – Amendments 

Section 1.        Amendments to this Constitution shall be proposed either by two-thirds of the Executive Board or by a petition submitted by ten percent of the voting members.

Section 2.        A _______________ majority of the voting members shall be necessary to approve amendments to this Constitution.

Section 3.        Amendments to this Constitution shall be recommended to the Dean of Academic and Student Services for approval following approval by the Dean of Student Development. 

Article IX – Active Status

In order to maintain active status, the organization agrees to abide by those rules and regulations, including financial procedures, of NVCC which pertain to all student organizations.