EvCC Sustainability

As people are staying inside at home more often these days, it’s the perfect time to do a home energy audit to help save money and conserve energy. The first step is to find areas and appliances in your house that may be causing energy loss. Good parts to check include house insulation, sealing, sources of ventilation, heating, cooling, electrical equipment, lighting, and checking for air leaks which can be found along baseboards, edge of flooring, junctures on walls/ceilings, windows, and more and then sealing them.

Knowing where a home is losing energy can aid in making changes to fix these issues and save energy and money. It may also be a good idea to get a professional energy audit done in the future. For more information on issues like air leaks, insulation, and other tips on how to do a home energy audit visit https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-energy-audits/do-it-yourself-home-energy-audits

During this difficult time, many of us have moved to ordering groceries online. You can still shop sustainably online and here’s how! Try to find what produce is in season because getting out of season fruits and vegetables encourages them to be shipped from far away countries. Also avoid buying prewashed produce as that wastes water. You should buy produce that you can wash at home. buying used, local, bulk items, organic, and items with fair trade labels are good tips to shop buy as well.

There are several apps that can help with sustainable shopping such as Good On which checks to see the impact a particular brand has on the planet and people and Depop which is an app where people sell old or thrifted clothes. Online stores that sell sustainable clothes include Lacausa, Everlane, and Kotn.

There are also websites that sell sustainable cleaning products. Visit https://www.diynatural.com/ to find homemade cleaning items like soaps. https://follain.com/ is an online shop that curates only clean beauty products and has multipurpose soap where you can send bottles back to be refilled. Other clean beauty shops are Kosas, RMS, Lush, and Ilia.

Check out https://goloadup.com/ways-shop-sustainably/ and http://www.fairtradeamerica.org/get%20involved/How-to-Shop-Sustainably for more sustainable and green shopping tips!

Crowd the Tap is an exciting citizen science project working to create a national inventory of water pipes. It’s important to know what kinds of materials make up our water infrastructure to keep water safe and this testing will help prioritize areas for tap water testing and infrastructure development. A magnet and a penny are all it takes to find out what kind of materials water pipes are made out of! To get started visit https://scistarter.org/form/crowd-the-tap.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is doing a citizen science activity that anyone can engage in from the comfort of your own backyard! They need your help to gather data about regional birds. It’s a great way to help scientists learn more about birds and how they are affected by environmental changes. If you would like to partake in this activity please visit https://celebrateurbanbirds.org/cub/instructions to get started!

EvCC Celebrates Earth Day 2020! Since the inception of the EvCC Sustainability Initiative in 2009, Everett Community College has been dedicated to sustainable practices, providing free sustainability information and events and partnering with the local community to create a more eco-friendly campus environment.   Sustainability at Everett Community College extends beyond recycling and campus resource management. It extends beyond the boundaries of the college campus. The college has a duty to help prepare students to be global citizens who are able to meet the needs of the present without compromising future generations to meet those needs.  Further, the college should strive to educate through outreach and modeling in all aspects of campus life, the way forward towards a sustainable future. For the past 10 years, the college sustainability office has hosted an Earth Week event series on campus, including a plant swap and sale, guest speakers and other interactive events. Earth Week at EvCC may not be physically possible this year, but the celebration continues with a host of virtual options:

Join the EvCC Eco Challenge here : https://earthday.ecochallenge.org/dashboards/teams/evcc-sustainability and partner virtually with other members of the campus community!

Learn about Xeriscape landscaping from the comfort of your couch and put the concepts into practice in your home landscape: https://nwpublicmedia.typepad.com/oursustainablenorthwest/xeriscaping/

In 2018, the EvCC Student Green Fee was enacted, allowing for funding of both the Office of Sustainability and student lead sustainability projects at EvCC.  https://www.everettcc.edu/administration/college-services/facilities/sustainability/evcc-green-fee

Get involved!  Join the EvCC Green Fee Committee or apply for a job in the EvCC Sustainability Office (students only please) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScGOPJ5kRgh9rJ0qd8o4Kx4OyAJV_659QeBkqjmEFSDmM0SnA/viewform

At this time of year hummingbirds are everywhere! These are some of the smallest birds in the world, and they can hover in place and even fly backwards! There are only two hummingbird species that can be found in Western Washington, the year around Anna’s hummingbird and the seasonal Rufous hummingbirds that arrive around April or May on their migration from Central and South America. So, this is the perfect time to try to attract some.

Hummingbirds prefer long tubular flowers such as fuchsias, bee balm, butterfly bushes, columbine, trumpet vine, beardtongue, hummingbird mint, snapdragon and more( https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/0625-in-the-garden/ , https://www.king5.com/article/news/special-reports/attracting-hummingbirds-to-your-garden/140227470 ). Hummingbirds also love nectar, which can be made at home and put into a hummingbird feeder. Check out this link to find a hummingbird nectar recipe: https://www.audubon.org/news/how-make-hummingbird-nectar

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Cafe Zippy is a lovely little cafe close to Everett Community College. They offer an assortment of delicious items now available for take out! Many of which are vegan, vegetarian, organic, and gluten free. Organic baked goods at Cafe Zippy are provided by the local Essential Baking Company ( https://essentialbaking.com/ ). Cafe Zippy serves local Tony’s Coffee’s ( https://www.tonyscoffee.com/ ) organic and fair-trade expresso. They also have collaborated with Take Back the Tap, a movement to stop using bottled water and to use more tap water ( https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/about ) . Cafe Zippy is also a pickup spot for Full Circle ( https://www.fullcircle.com/ ), a company that provides custom boxes of organic farm goods. If you would like to learn more about Cafe Zippy visit their website at http://www.cafezippy.com/

The Washington Trails Association (WTA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting trails in Washington State. WTA works year around to help maintain trails so they keep them open, sustainable, and accessible while teaching people about trail work. WTA also collaborates with other groups and does grassroots work on issues such as trail funding and wilderness protection. If you would like to learn more about WTA, support their work, find information about Washington State trails, or find opportunities to volunteer visit their website at: https://www.wta.org/

Cunios is a restaurant in Clearview that’s committed to following sustainable practices. They get they’re ingredients from organic local farms in our area such as Chinook farms and Bob’s Corn. Also, their fryer oil has been converted into bio diesel for ten years. While on site consumption is not allowed right now due to the emergency, Cunios does take out! If you would like to learn more about the restaurant visit their website at https://www.cunios.com/ 

Everett Community College (EvCC) is collaborating with WSU (Washington State University) to work on a revolutionary type of wind turbine called a variable pitch vertical axis wind turbine (also known as a cyclo turbine) and have formed a wind energy team. Tests are going well and these kinds of turbines can theoretically be more efficient and produce more energy than standard horizontal axis turbines. Cyclo turbines would also be much smaller than the standard horizontal axis ones and would be easier to construct and maintain. This would also allow them to be built in more urban areas and offshore floating wind farms. They can also handle more turbulent air.

The wind team are also working with JC Dream (https://jcdream.org/), a Washington organization working to find alternatives to harmful rare earth metals used in technology such as lithium.

In June, EvCC and WSU will be attending the Collegiate Wind Energy Competition (https://www.energy.gov/eere/collegiatewindcompetition/collegiate-wind-competition) in Denver to present their turbine and learn more about the wind and renewable energy industry. If you would like to learn more about this project contact STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) club advisor jgraber@everettcc.edu.