We’re crazy proud to announce that the Dalhousie Libraries Green Team (Sandy Dwyer, Michelle Paon, Jan Pelley, Janice Slauenwhite and Leigh Smith) has just won the Office of Sustainability’s ReThink Award—for the second time! Our 2009-2010 team won the inaugural award last year (see blog post).



The Libraries’ team has certainly done some award-winning things this year, to wit:

• held a staff awareness presentation on “The Story of Stuff” video, narrated by Annie Leonard, founder of the Story of Stuff Project
• participated in the bin exchange program for Killam Library staff. 23 people chose to participate, which represents approximately 1/3 of the staff
• completed a sustainability assessment of the Killam Library, working with students from the ENVS 3502 class (Campus as Living Lab). The students did a waste audit of the PROG bins to determine compliance throughout the building and will present a final report to the Green Team by mid-April
• promoted sustainable behavior on campus by:
removing garbage cans from almost all public areas in the Killam Library and replacing them with sets of PROG bins
running a poster campaign to make patrons aware of proper disposal of disposable coffee cups; also had posters educating patrons on what goes into each PROG bin
• to reduce paper consumption, 2GB flash drives are now for sale ($5 each) at the Killam Circulation Desk. Posters are placed near photocopiers and printers, encouraging patrons to use the large scanner and save to a flashdrive
• reusable cloth bookbags are now for sale ($1 each) at the Killam Circulation Desk

Not content to rest on their evergreen laurels, our Green Team is now investigating the automatic transfer of patron information directly from the University Banner system to the Libraries’ Circulation system. This will reduce the necessity for paper forms for library registration.

Did we say we’re proud yet?