Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
- Time for a Turnaround
- Edgy Veggie
Happy 40th Birthday, Earth Day!
This is a somewhat creepy picture of a protester during Boulder's first Earth Day celebration in 1970.
Forty years ago today, people in the United States (and right here in Boulder) celebrated the first Earth Day, which makes the holiday solidly middle-aged. (But don’t worry Earth Day, 40 is the new 30, so I’m sure you’ll be around for decades to come.)
For the first Earth Day in Boulder, students and townies staged a massive “teach in” — how very 1970 of them. (You can read more about the inspiration behind Boulder’s Earth Day, and how far we’ve come, in a great article by Cindy Sutter.)
When the festivities were finished, one lasting vestige of Earth Day persevered — and is still around — thanks to one “long-haired, shawl-wearing, jeans-wearing hippie in sandals” named Sunni Eckhardt. That vestige is the University of Colorado Environmental Center — the oldest (and likely most bad-assest) of its kind in the country. You can read about its history of student activism at DailyCamera.com.
And, if you need some help celebrating this 41st Earth Day (yes, 40th anniversary, but 41st Earth Day) check out the listing of events right here on BGB.
CU’s Environmental Center offers free energy visits for students
Jimena Zamora, left, who is part of the University of Colorado Student and Community Outreach on Renter Energy (SCORE), checks the temperature of the hot water in a student house on Monday. Resident Mariko McMillan, right, watches. Photo by Marty Caivano, Camera.
In a city where there are tons of renters, it’s tough to motivate people to spend money on saving energy. That’s part of why the University of Colorado’s Environmental Center is helping students living off campus chip away at their energy bills by visiting their homes to show them how:
Hosted by CU’s Environmental Center, Student and Community Outreach for Renter Efficiency — or SCORE — teaches students living in certain Boulder neighborhoods how to lower their energy bills by making their homes more efficient through simple and inexpensive adjustments, such as using energy efficient light bulbs or setting thermostats to optimal temperatures. Read more
CU launches a new ride-share network
A screen shot of zimride.colorado.edu.
If you want to carpool to class at the University of Colorado, but fear the possible freak factor of calling a phone number left tacked to a bulletin board to find a ride, CU has the answer.
It’s called Zimride — and school officials wants to see 20 percent of the campus using it by next May.
From today’s Daily Camera:
The university this week launched a new carpooling network called Zimride that uses a private Web site, as well as Facebook, to hook up drivers and riders in a simple way that — thanks to the voyeurism of social networking — will ensure would-be carpoolers are never complete strangers.
“It adds a lot of humanity to it,” said Peter Roper, a program manager at CU’s Environmental Center who helped bring Zimride to campus. “It’s the whole social-networking aspect of it. You can chat with the person (you’ll be sharing a ride with). You can see if you have mutual friends.”
Zimride is also available to employees of NIST and NOAA as well as city and county employees, all of which are sharing the cost of the $10,000 program. As of Thursday afternoon, 410 people had signed up for Boulder’s Zimride and there were 2,800 trips posted.
Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.
Read more posts about CU on BigGreenBoulder:
 CU earns most “eco-enlightened” school, and gets the big green diss |
 Folsom Field doesn’t have trash cans |
