First of all, thank you to anyone who responded to my little survey from my last post! One of the most popular responses was for things to do around Bloomington. So you asked, and so you shall receive. Now, Bloomington is amazing. There are so many places to explore right here in town, such as the 4th street eateries, the plethora of antique shops or the various hidden walking trails around campus. However, only a small portion of IU students venture outside our city limits to see what our neighboring areas have to offer. That's where I come in. I can't believe there are so many neat places within a 30 minute drive of here! Here are some of the cool locations I've gotten the chance to explore: Zoom Floom Abandoned Water Slide Located right next to Lake Monroe are the Zoom Floom abandoned water park remnants. Only a few parts of the water park remain, including a large, concrete water slide, the shack at the top of it and the small pool at the bottom. Although exploring an area that families once flocked to as a popular summer destination can seem kind of eerie, graffiti artists have turned the slide into somewhat of a work of art. It's whereabouts can be a little tricky sometimes, so if you're looking to explore, just ask me and I can point you in the right direction! McCormick's Creek State Park This place rocks. Exploring McCormick's Creek never gets old. It's beautiful in every season and makes you feel right in sync with your inner adventurer. There are over 10 miles of unmarked trails to roam around on and the best part about this park is creating your own path and finding caves or hills to explore. One of my favorite visits took place at the end of winter last semester when it had finally warmed up a little bit but all the ice remained. McCormick's Creek is located in Spencer, which is about 25 minutes straight down Indiana 46. You will not be disappointed with a day spent here! Morgan-Monroe State Forest Morgan-Monroe is BEAUTIFUL in the fall so keep this one on your radar for the upcoming couple months. What's great about this forest, too, is the hidden Musgrave Orchard placed down a couple winding roads. The small store (pictured above) offers pumpkins, apple cider, caramels, and more. There's a seating area to overlook the orchard and even some horses in a nearby pasture, making it the perfect place to visit with friends and take in the beautiful autumn weather! Morgan-Monroe State Forest/Musgrave Orchard are located only 20 minutes north on Indiana 37. If you choose to spend your day off exploring any of these locations, you will not be disappointed. They bring out both your inner photographer (I took all these photos on my phone!), hiker and explorer. I encourage you to grab a car full of pals and get to know our local area! I've always wanted to bring together a crowd of Net Impacters to spend the day getting to know each other and adventuring together. What do you think?! Maybe we can get something together.
Happy Hump Day! Morgan
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For our general meeting on Monday September 21, we had the opportunity to hear from the University Director of Sustainability, Bill Brown. Mr. Brown began his presentation by giving us a little background on climate change and how the sooner we act, the lower the risk and cost will be. Then he talked about IU’s bicentennial strategic plan and all of the wonderful effects this initiative is having on campus. To start, IU leads the Big Ten in the number of LEED-certified green buildings with 14. They hope to have 20 buildings certified by 2016, with Hodge Hall in the works. One of the major benefits of green buildings is their air quality, as they are shown to lead to over 40% fewer allergy symptoms! Another initiative of the bicentennial strategic plan is to reduce emissions on campus by 30% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050. Also, the IU energy challenge helped saved over 28.6 million gallons of water over the last two years. That is more than the rest of the Big Ten combined!
Later on, Mr. Brown talked about the Hoosier to Hoosier Sale, which Net Impact has been involved with in the past. The sale has diverted over 60 tons of furniture from being thrown out and raised over $44,000 for charity! Mr. Brown concluded by talking about all of the great ways for us students to get involved in sustainability. Being involved in Net Impact is an awesome start, but there are also many sustainability internships through IU as well as other volunteering opportunities on campus. Also, coming soon there will be a real time campus energy and emissions online dashboard for students to play around with and see how much energy we are able to conserve. Overall, we had a great time listening to Mr. Brown’s presentation and if you missed the meeting or are interested in other sustainable opportunities you can visit sustain.indiana.edu to learn more. -- Trace On Saturday September 19, the Hoosier football team defeated the Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky while Net Impact members and other volunteers helped show fans how to properly sort their trash at zero waste stations on the concourse of Memorial Stadium. This was part of Net Impact’s continued partnership with Greening Cream & Crimson. As you can see in the pictures above, we had a great turnout for the game and everyone who volunteered seemed to have a lot of fun! Let’s keep this momentum going for what could be a packed house for the game against Ohio State on October 3 at 3:30 pm. We need all the help we can get and this is a great way for anyone interested in greening the environment (which I’m pretty sure is everyone reading this!) to get involved. We can’t wait to see you there and go Hoosiers!
-- Trace But seriously, this website rocks. We are so official now. We can say things like "Check us out on our website" - that's so legit. Is anyone else this pumped? Anyways, excitement aside, this is my first official post on our blog and I just wanted to use it as a way to get a feel for what you guys are interested in. Obviously, this being a sustainability club, I will be publishing a mix of business and environmental related posts, but I want to throw some more fun stuff in there! Do you want to learn about volunteer opportunities or cool hiking spots around Bloomington? Or maybe you're interested in learning about certain companies? Ways to incorporate sustainability in your every day lives? I want to know! I'd be super grateful if you took 30 seconds to fill out this little poll below: Thank you! I can't wait to pester you guys to read my blog posts all semester long! Just kidding, but I am looking forward to making this website even more awesome-er and a fun space to keep members engaged.
Morgan On Monday September 14, Net Impact held its second meeting of the year and first meeting since new members officially joined the organization! The theme of the meeting was to educate members about what sustainability is. Director of Internal Education Adam Reddigari took us on this journey by explaining the three different types of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social. Environmental sustainability is usually what everyone thinks of when they hear the word “sustainability” and deals with the phenomenon of climate change. Economic sustainability is what we consume that helps or harms the economy, and also how turn our economy from brown to green. Finally, social sustainability is the idea that the more people that are in poverty, the less sustainable our planet will be. Adam also talked about trade-offs and opportunity costs, which should be of interest for our many BEPP majors!
After our lesson on sustainability, my co-blog poster Morgan Pries came up with a really cool bonding game for us to play. We split up into groups, passed around a bag of candy, and each person in the group would take turns picking out a different-colored candy. Each color corresponded with a different question for you to answer. The questions ranged from somewhat serious (What’s your favorite part about IU?) to zany (If you could be any kind of animal what would you be and why?). The questions were really creative and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun (or at least I know I did!). After our bonding time, Vice President of External Relations Jacob Tehrani gave us some updates on the projects we’ll be working on this summer and Vice President of Marketing Melanie Lent hyped up our Snapchat account, which will be coming soon! We concluded the meeting by taking a club picture that you can view on our Facebook page and on our “Meet the Team” page. (I challenge you to find me!) -- Trace Net Impact continued its partnership with Greening Cream and Crimson to bring zero waste stations to Memorial Stadium for the second game of the year last Saturday versus Florida International. As you can see from the pictures above, the waste bins were lonely without Net Impacters to keep them company and, more importantly, to show fans where to put their waste! This is a great opportunity to promote sustainability and to earn community attendance points. The shifts last just two and a half hours so you only have to stay for half of the game. Hopefully we’ll see more of you out there for this Saturday’s game versus Western Kentucky at 4:00 pm. Let’s all work together to make IU athletics and IU as a whole a greener campus!
-- Trace Net Impact’s callout meeting was held on Monday September 7 and it couldn’t have gone better! We had a great turnout and we’re glad to see so many new faces in attendance! The meeting began with a showing of our “About Net Impact” video (wonderfully made by Vice President of Marketing Melanie Lent and Director of Social Media Brian Federle). Next, Co-President Brianna Conway gave a little background on Net Impact and discussed some of the many ways to get involved with Net Impact this year. Vice President of External Relations Jacob Tehrani talked about some of the projects we’ll be doing this summer, including the Greening Cream & Crimson zero waste stations. Later, Vice President of Membership Kinny Liu explained our new attendance points system. Members will need to earn four internal points (general meetings, guest speakers) and three community points (volunteer events, project events) this semester to remain active members of Net Impact. The callout concluded with some really inspiring stories from Brianna, Kinny, Melanie, Vice President of Finance Nikhil Dittakavi, and Vice President of Programming Megan Yoder about their experiences in Net Impact. After the meeting was over, we had every college student’s favorite food: pizza! (Okay, maybe it’s just my favorite.)
-- Trace Net Impact is partnering with Greening Cream & Crimson this fall to bring zero waste stations to Memorial Stadium for the home football games. The first game was on Saturday September 5 and while the team had its struggles on the field, the zero waste stations were mostly a success! There were 10 stations inside the stadium: 4 on the west concourse, 4 on the east concourse, and 2 on the upper level of the west concourse. Each station consisted of bins for compost, recycling, and landfill. Food scraps, cardboard, and unused napkins can be composted, plastic bottles, metal, paper, and more can be recycled, and most other waste must be sent to the landfill. Net Impact members and other volunteers were on hand to show fans which bins to put their waste in. While the first game is in the books, there are still six more home games on the schedule and volunteers are needed for each game to help fans sort their trash. This is a great opportunity to help green the environment plus free food and drinks are provided! We hope to see you there for game two Saturday night versus Florida International. Go Hoosiers!
-- Trace |