Author: Admin

The Students for Environmental Action (SEA) Club is sponsoring a letter-writing event to email Washington State legislators about important environmental issues. Topics legislators are voting on this year include a state-wide plastic bag ban, clean fuel standards, climate pollution limits, and protecting and restoring habitat for endangered orca whales. Club adviser Nancy Vandenberg will explain the issues and walk you through the process of writing short but powerful emails. SEA Club will be meeting on Wednesday January 29th from 1:30-2:30 in MC 111. Snacks provided, and also environmentally-friendly prizes for participation!

At Thoronton Sullivan Park on Martin Luther King Day, SEA club members helped Green Everett and Forterra remove invasive species from the park. Find out when the next Green Everett event will take place by visiting https://everettwa.gov/796/Green-Everett-Partnership

One of the core tenants of sustainability on this campus is sustainability in curriculum. We have a website for sustainability focused classes at the college. Link to the website: https://www.everettcc.edu/administration/college-services/facilities/sustainability/sustainability-curriculum

Everett Community College is recycling Christmas trees for free Jan. 2-31. 

Trees can be dropped off between 7:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays.  Trees must be free of decorations, tinsel and other non-biodegradable materials. No flocked trees will be accepted. 

EvCC is located at 2000 Tower St. in Everett. Drop off trees in the marked area in parking lot F. To see the location of parking lot F, visit EverettCC.edu/Maps and click Campus Map. 

EvCC has been recycling holiday trees since 2009. Last year, EvCC collected more than 250 trees that were turned into woodchips on site and used for campus flower beds and mulch. 

For more information, call 425-388-9512

One of the most interesting clubs on campus is the Community Kitchen club. The premise of Community Kitchen is anyone can come to work together with others to prepare a wide variety of dishes in themed cooking and baking events.

Very often; several of the ingredients used in community kitchen events are grown right here at the college. These include red onions, garlic, herbs, and much more! The next event will be held on January 30th 5:00 pm in Monte Cristo 111. The theme is Italian comfort food! Cost of attendance is $5 at the door. For more information contact Laura Wild at lwild@everettcc.edu

Ever noticed the dead tree by where Index Hall used to be, and wondered why something like that has been put there? Birds of prey, woodpeckers, and other kinds of birds love dead trees (called snags) and you will often see them making use of it for perching. This is where the EvCC Bird Garden is located!

This garden has been carefully designed to appeal to birds and their needs with native Washington state plants and water features for them to cool off in! Take a peek the next time your walking to class, you may just spot a cool avian friend!

Last Saturday, EvCC’s SEA club took a trip to the Beacon Hill Food Forest in Seattle to see what kinds of environmental action other people are taking in the community! This was a really fun place to visit and they had a great variety of plants, fruits, and vegetables. From fig trees, to squashes, native blackberries, gooseberries, blueberries, tomatoes, flowers, peas, nuts, and much more. There are places for people to rent private garden space as well and they are working on expanding the size of the food forest at Beacon Hill.

But what is a food forest? A food forest is a gardening technique/land management system that features creating a more natural forest-like environment with different types of plants including fruit and nut trees, edible perennials, berry shrubs, and other edible plants. Opposed to industrial agriculture which focuses more on harvesting a single kind of crop repeatedly on plots of land. Beacon Hill Food Forest is driven by volunteer action to create change at the grassroots level. If you would like to find out more about the Beacon Hill Food Forest visit their website at: https://beaconfoodforest.org/.

• 

Did you know that last Saturday was Green Everett Day? Over the weekend the Students for Environmental Action(SEA) Club participated in a tree planting event hosted in Silver Lake, Everett at Thornton Sullivan Park. Volunteers from all over Everett and beyond came out to plant over a hundred trees and shrubs to promote clean air and to provide shelter for some of the local fauna. A greener future starts with a seed and a dream! If you would like to partake in future Green Everett events; visit their website via the following link: https://everettwa.gov/796/Green-Everett-Partnership

The Snohomish Mycological Society held the Wild Mushroom Show at Forest Park in Everett on Sunday. There were so many different kinds of mushrooms and fungi there! There was a great wild mushroom/fungi identification class at this event and I learned a lot about identifying mushrooms, which ones were edible, how they grew, and more! I learned that some mushrooms can even be used to absorb and biodegrade oil and other pollutants that might end up in water! If you’d like to find out more about the Snohomish Mycological Society, learn more about fungi in the Pacific Northwest, or become a member please visit their website at http://www.scmsfungi.org.

I had the opportunity to tour both Cedar Grove, in Everett, and Sound Sustainable Farms, in Redmond.

While at Cedar Grove, I was able to watch the composting process in action. The most notable aspect of the visit was how much plastic makes its way into composting bins and then how much effort must be used to successfully remove it.

On my trip to Sound Sustainable Farms, I was able to see the results of using Cedar Grove’s compost to grow produce. By using the compost from Cedar Grove, Sound Sustainable Farms is able to grow nutritious food, while also making sure they leave the soil in better condition than they found it. As we toured the farm, I was able to stop and pick tomatoes, carrots, beets, and a pumpkin! I loved seeing how Cedar Grove and Sound Sustainable Farms overlapped with one another and how they worked at incorporating sustainable practices.

To learn more about Cedar Grove and Sound Sustainable Farms, visit their websites: https://www.soundsfarms.com/about  and https://cedar-grove.com/about-us

On October 10^th EvCC held a incredible taiko drum show! These performers are part of a taiko drum group called Okinawa Wakati-da Chinjinshuu that came all the way from the japanese prefecture of Okinawa! The performances were beautiful and fun to watch. One of my favorite things there was the performance using the Okinawan lion costumes otherwise called Shishimai. If these creatures bite you traditions tell that you’ll have good luck for the rest of your life! And the cups they were using for the tea were compostable!  Big thanks to Okinawan Kenjin Kai Chijinshuu for hosting them in Washington State!