Just had my ENV101 - Intro to Environmental Issues Class do the plastic bottle count. Two hundred sixty seven (267) bottles reclaimed, recycled and kept out the landfill!

Stephanie - THANKS for the photos!

A Great Day of Spreading Climate Awareness - and reducing the Hooch's carbon footprint!

At 3:33pm, a small group of rowing fans met to recycle discarded plastic bottles by the nearly 1,500 athletes from the Head of the Hooch regatta in Chattanooga, TN.

Beautiful weather, sunny and 65F. After just a couple of minutes, college and club rowers began to call us "the recycling crew," and started bringing their empty bottles to us! Young people get it - they got involved and they know the time for climate action is now.

It is AMAZING how many large public events do not recycle. Chattanooga and Head of the Hooch is one of the good guys; recycle bins in many places and a huge dumpster with multiple bins for different types of recyclables on site for the 1,500 rowers and 10,000 spectators. But...lots of plastic thrown out, not recycled. People wouldn't walk the extra 50 feet to recycle. Still lots of work to do.

B/c the manufacture of any plastic bottle uses precious energy - reducing plastic bottle use will help us get to to the "80 by '50" goal.

Watching athletes use human power to row boats; great weather; ice cream!...and helping to Step It Up...a great day for C'Nooga, the Hooch and the planet!

Breann - Sorry we missed you Saturday. We were there, check out the photos! Hope we can continue chatting about greening TN.
Mark O'G.
Yes, I'm trying to make a connection with the coordinators of the Chattanooga event. I don't have a copy of the email address or names. My children and I went to the address listed and found that the Head of the Hooch was still being held and did not see or know where to look for the Step it Up event. Sorry if we couldn't find you!

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/education/pdfs/toolkit/tools-m.pdf

The energy saved from recycling one plastic bottle will power a computer for 25 minutes.
25 * 267 = 6675 minutes/60 =
111 hours and 15 minutes of computer power recaptured/offset from the energy saved from 267 recycled plastic bottles

So....?
50 minutes/class * 3 classes/week * 14 weeks = 2100 minutes/60 = 35 hours of class.

We just recycled what we needed to offset the power from the computer in ENV101 for the fall semester - and all the computer classrooms I use this semester. Thanks!