Skip over navigation
COLLEGE STUDENTS WORK TO REDUCE YEAR END WASTE

COLLEGE STUDENTS PREFER NOT TO LEAVE TRASHED
By JOANNA DETZ/ecoRI News staff

For four years, EcoReps, a student-run group at Brown University, has partnered with the university’s facilities management staff to collect furniture, clothing, house wares and other items from students moving out.  The program, dubbed Clean Break, has collected 40 tons of goods during the past four springs. Last year, the group took in 17 tons of items, and donated much of the haul to the Rhode Island Donation Exchange Program.

Brown University sophomore Gretchen Gerlach (ENVS) was one of roughly 20 students who volunteered to coordinate collection efforts last year. She will do it again this month, as EcoReps plans to set up nine collection “corrals” around campus where students can drop off goods for donation.

Gerlach recalled being shocked by what she saw in the corrals last spring. “I was so overwhelmed at how many brand-new packaged items I saw — clothes with the tags still on them and food and electronics that hadn’t even been opened yet.”

READ MORE

" Watson, who is concentrating in Environmental Studies at Brown and Apparel Design at RISD, tries to use what she learns at Brown about the environmental impacts of apparel production and implement it into her designs at RISD, she wrote."

"I wanted to capture the power and drama of nature" - Watson.

Read Brown Daily Herald Article

Students updating Central Falls disaster plan

About 30 environmental studies students from Brown University are working with Central Falls to update and expand the city’s plan for managing natural disasters, including flooding from the Blackstone River.

READ MORE

Species
Management:
The Conference

Dov Sax, of Brown’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Bernd Blossey, professor of natural resources at Cornell University, organized a conference for the Ecological Society of America in West Virginia. Among the topics: What to do when climate change forces species out of their historical habitats.

READ MORE

Brown Installs Solar Panels on the New Aquatics Center

By Richard Lewis

The 168 rectangular panels on the roof of the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatic Center will generate enough power to keep the lights on and enough thermal energy to heat the million-gallon pool. The center, due to open April 13, will be Rhode Island’s first hybrid (heat and power) solar installation — also the largest in the nation and the first on a college campus.

READ MORE

Stormwater utility fee system explained

 

Article by CES Graduate Student Kate England

WESTERLY - The typical Westerly homeowner would pay $68 per year under a stormwater utility fee system included in a draft report produced by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Owners of a typical commercial property would pay $449.

READ MORE

CES Grad Student Goes Behind The Scenes at Durban

By Courtney Coelho 

When graduate student Brianna Craft volunteered to help the Least Developed Countries bloc at the United Nations climate change negotiations in Durban, she had no idea she'd been given an all-access pass to the closed-door climate talks. Here she talks about her experience, what she learned and why she's still optimistic about the possibility of international climate justice. 

READ MORE

CES Chair J. Timmons Roberts and Environmental Studies students travel to Durban South Africa for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations (Nov. 28-Dec 10, 2011)

The purpose of this group is to contribute timely, accessible and impactful content that informs more just and effective global policy making on climate change, particularly on the issues of climate finance and Latin America. The focus during the fall 2011 semester is to influence the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations in Durban, South Africa to produce more just and effective processes and outcomes concerning climate finance and other relevant climate policy.

FOLLOW THEIR PROGRESS AT THE FOLLOWING LINKS BELOW

Global Conversation: Follow Brown's Climate Change Team at the COP 17 Negotiations http://www.watsoninstitute.org/news_detail.cfm?id=1602

Climate & Development Lab – Twitter Feed http://climatedevlab.wordpress.com/

Intercambio Climático – Blog of the Latin American Platform on Climate http://www.intercambioclimatico.com/en/

Adaptation finance: How can Durban deliver on past promises? http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/opinion/47954

 

Past ES SEMINAR with Dr. Papa Samba DIOUF, Executive Director World Wildlife Fund West Africa Marine Programme

The West African Marine Eco-Region:
The World Wildlife Fund’s role in marine
conservation and sustainable fisheries

Watch video of talk

Local Occupy Protesters Join D.C.Rally

PROVIDENCE —The local Occupy movement traveled to Washington this weekend to join an estimated 10,000 protesters against the proposed transcontinental tar sands oil pipeline.

Two buses left the city early Saturday with about 40 protesters from the Occupy Providence and Occupy College Hill protest groups for the Sunday afternoon rally at the White House. The event was organized by activist and college professor Bill McKibben of 350.org and Tarsandsaction.org. Both groups urge President Obama to deny the permit for the pipeline.

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

READ MORE

The EPA Discusses Opportunities
for Brown Students

See video footage of their talk

View their PowerPoint presentation

Catch the Video of Speaker Sivan Kartha's Captivating Talk on

“Little Pledges and Big Loopholes: industrialized country efforts under the global climate regime”

With more trees, city looks to go greener

The Brown Daily Herald

Natalie Villacorta
Senior Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, September 28, 2011

In a report released last May, the spring 2010 class ENVS 1920: "Analysis and Resolution of Environmental Problems and Case Studies," found that areas of Providence with fewer trees are hotter than greener neighborhoods. Trees are crucial to human health and happiness in a variety of ways — they remove pollutants from the air, provide shade and add beauty to their surroundings.

READ MORE

TREES AND THE URBAN HEAT
ISLAND EFFECT:

A CASE STUDY FOR PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND

“One straightforward and cost-effective way for the city to buffer itself from heat waves stood out among all the rest: to plant and care for trees”

CLICK HERE TO READ REPORT

UNITING ART AND BIOLOGY TO CONSERVE CORAL REEFS

Outreach, education, and charity to inspire marine stewardship among policy makers and the public
By Courtney Mattison

PRESS:

Art and science are increasingly joining forces, more now than in the past, because of their shared creativity and the critical importance of conveying accurate messages to the public about the natural world. Mattison aims to discover how art and science can inform one another and combine to catalyze a public and political movement for coral reef conservation. To learn more about Courtney Mattison’s project Click Here.

Check out the latest in Rhode Island Environmental news

 

 

 

VIEW OLDER POSTS

CES Alums: Want to keep in touch?

Join our social networking sites for environmentally-minded alumni! Brown Alumni Staying Green, a facebook fan page, and the Green/Sustainability subgroup of the Brown Alumni Association LinkedIn page were recently created by the Center for Environmental Studies and the Brown Alumni Association. Join these pages for discussions, job postings, pictures, events, and more!

Brown Alumni Staying Green: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brown-Alumni-Staying-Green/144123438927

Green/Sustainability LinkedIn page: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2345867