Wendall Berry is quoted as saying “The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding.  Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.”

This “planet-saving” work includes, in my opinion, telling the truth without compromise, liberating the faint hearted from fear, and loving the colleagues with whom you are working.

Please save the date for the 2011-12 Academic Year Sustainability Internship Symposium on Friday, April 13, 2012 from 11:30 AM to 2:00 PM.
The symposium will feature the academic year research projects of IU Bloomington’s sustainability interns. The agenda will include:

• Complimentary lunch featuring local food
• Project presentations by three interns
• A poster session illustrating project findings for each intern

We invite you to visit the webpage for the 2010-11 academic year symposium to get a better idea of the event’s structure. A full listing of this year’s interns and their projects can be found here.
We encourage you to register now to help us plan appropriately for the event. We hope you will join us in celebrating our students’ contribution to the campus sustainability initiative.

Sincerely,

Bill, Emilie, Elisabeth, and the IUOS Interns

There is nothing still. Life is never still. No plant, no animal no river. Can we think of Nature as a metaphor and keep ourselves constantly evolving? - Anil Gupta -

“As we all grow in our lives and careers, it’s normal to expect a raise every year. Why? Because it’s a signal of growth. Growing is good — not growing is downright un-American. You didn’t get a raise? You’re not growing? Well then you must be no good. But why only 1 way to measure growth? If I get a 10 percent raise next year but eat less healthy food, spend less time with close and extended community, or do more self-serving work, did I really grow? Just because the number is easy to measure, is that all that matters? What about growing in generosity, compassion, physical health, mental health, family/community, balance/wisdom, and in fun! What if, at the end of every year, we took stock of ALL of these measures, along with financial? Would that change behavior?”

Read the full story

Red-Tail Land Conservancy was founded in March of 1991 and has been striving to fulfill their mission from the beginning. Red-Tail Land Conservancy preserves, protects, and restores natural areas and farmland in east central Indiana while increasing awareness of their natural heritage. To accomplish their mission Red-Tail offers conservation options to land owners by public speaking, education, and stewardships.

In speaking with Founder and Executive Director of Red-Tail Land Conservancy, Barry Banks, he says that he believes passionately that he can make a difference, and is doing so one step at a time. Red-Tail currently holds 18 conservation agreements including the protection of eight different natural preserves.  They are currently protecting 1939 acres of natural areas and farmland.

Banks explained the different agreements that Red-Tail Land Conservancy holds with their customers. The first of these agreements is when a title is transferred to Red-Tail, this could be through purchased land, gifted land, or land that has been willed to them. The second type of agreement is a conservation agreement, in which the title never transfers, and they are not owners of the land; Red-Tail is there to conserve and protect that land.

Although there have been numerous measurable outcomes since Red-Tail Land Conservancy has been founded, in Bank’s eyes on of the most measurable would be the educational programs that Red-Tail provides, and their endowment accounts that help to secure their financial future, alongside all of the land that they have managed to protect over the past 21 years.

Banks says he is excited for what the future holds for Red-Tail and he looks forward to hiring more staff and possibly repositioning his office into a different facility. Currently Red-Tail has one salary-paid staff member and he is excited to hire more, but the funding right now won’t allow them to do that. Banks says that he accepts all types of volunteers from different students, scouts, school groups, and more. Red-Tail usually has a roughly estimated 300 volunteers, including board members, throughout the course of a regular year; and Banks is grateful for every single one of them.

Red-Tail Land Conservancy presently collaborates with Natural Preserves Division, Indiana Land Protection Alliance (ILPA), and land trusts in Indiana soil and water conservation district Delaware. Although all these organizations help one another and it is very beneficial to have these collaborators, Banks is most excited about the recently announced Bicentennial Nature Trust. The governor publicized the initiative in his State of the State Address. The trust is designed to designate $20 million to be set aside to buy and protect Indiana’s finest natural areas.

So what exactly makes it all worthwhile for Barry Banks and Red-Tail Land Conservancy? He sums it up perfectly by saying, “Land owners’ thanking me for giving them piece of mind, citizens thanking me for preserving natural areas for the future generations, and kids thanking me for letting them walk in a big woods. It’s about as gratifying as you can get.”

For more information contact Barry Banks  Email - redtail2@att.net,  Website - fortheland.org,
Phone – (765)288 – 2587

This story written by Brittany Weaver, Ball State student intern for Sustainable Indiana 2016.

The Food Bank of Northern Indiana has kindly created Unity Gardens an office space and classroom area at their facility at 702 S Chapin St. The collaboration fits the shared mission of both Unity Gardens and the Food Bank .

Winter classes for Unity Gardens will start this Saturday Jan 21st   All classes are FREE and open to the public! Gardening Classes will be held every Saturday at 10am and Thursdays at 6pm for 10 weeks until the end of March .

We will also be starting a series of Junior Master Gardener Classes every Saturday starting on Jan 21st at 12:30 . This 10 week series will go until the end of March . The junior Master Gardener class is geared towards 3rd through 6th grade .

For a complete list of classes you can check our blog www.theunitygardens.blogspot.com

or Call Sara Stewart at 574-315-4361

e-mail growunitygardens@yahoo.com

Classes will be held at the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, 702 South Chapin Street, South Bend, IN 46601.

After such a good turnout in 2011 for our Garden Series we decided to add a Thursday evening class  , and to add a kids Jr Master Gardeners Class . It will be geared toward 3rd to 6th graders , but all ages are welcome.

Sat Feb 18th 10am     –     Pest Management  Adult Class
Learn about the top 10 Garden Pest , and how to deal with them

Sat Feb 18th 12:30  to 2pm
Landscape Horticulture
Junior Master Gardener Class

Thurs Feb 23rd 6pm      -         Pest Management
Learn about the top 10 Garden Pest , and how to deal with them

Sat Feb 25th 10am         –      Indoor Seed Starting
Learn How and why to start seeds indoors
Presented by Mitch Yaciw / Purdue Master Gardener

Sat Feb 25th 10am  to 2pm
Fruits & Nuts
Junior Master Gardener Class

Thurs March 1st   6pm   –    Indoor Seed Starting
Learn how and why to start seeds indoors

Sat March 3rd 10am     –     Container Gardening
Containers , raised beds , strawbales , Grow in small spaces

Sat March 3rd 12:30 to 2pm
Vegetables & Herbs
Junior Master Gardener Program

Thurs March 8th 6pm    –   Container Gardening
Containers , raised beds , strawbales , Grow in small spaces

Sat March 10th  10am    –    Maintaining Your Garden
Tips on maintaining a healthy garden , harvesting tips

Sat March 10th  12:30  to 2pm
Veggie Tasting for Kids
Junior Master Gardening Class

Thurs March 15th 6pm   –    Maintaining Your Garden
Tips on maintaining a healthy garden

Sat March 17th 10am    –     All About Vegetables
Growing, and harvesting some of the most popular vegetables

Sat March 17th 12:30 to 2pm
Seed Starting for Kids Kids plan & start their home garden

Thurs March 22nd 6pm   –    All About Vegetables
Growing, and harvesting some of the most popular vegetables

Sat March 24th 10am     –     Herb Gardening
Growing Herbs , and what to do with them

Sat March 24th 12:30 to 2pm
Life Skills & Career Explore
Junior Master Gardener Program

Thurs March 29th 6pm    –    Herb Gardening
Growing Herbs and what to do with them

April 21st   9am-3pm        –       Unity Gardens Growing Summit
A Full Day of over a dozen classes:

• Vendor booths with product demos
• Cooking Demos
• Seed Exchange

5 entrepreneurs who said no to corporate jobs.

1. Former Meat Plant Goes Veggie

Photo by Rachel Swenie.

Alex Poltorak prepares a hydroponic food-growing system for the rooftop of “The Plant.” A former meatpacking facility in Chicago, The Plant is being deconstructed and transformed into a net-zero-energy vertical farm. Its roof is the site of Poltorak’s first gig; his business, Urban Canopy, turns city roofs into farms. Poltorak wants to shorten the distance food travels “from farm to fork,” he says, “in addition to utilizing idle rooftops, creating local jobs to manage these rooftop farms, and providing more sustainably grown produce for local communities.” —Lily Hicks

2. Real-Life Benefits for Women

photo by SCC Photo

Ana Sanchez has worked with Southwest Creations Collaborative in Albuquerque, N.M., for the past 12 years. The business offers living-wage jobs to immigrant women who do handwork, contract sewing, packing, and labeling. “Since we run a ‘communal shop,’ women who take side jobs that they find on their own or that SCC passes up because they are too small can use all of the organization’s machinery,” says Program Director Jessica Aranda. SCC provides on-site child care for working mothers; GED, English as a Second Language, computer literacy, and citizenship classes; and reproductive and preventive health care programs. Moms even get paid time off to visit with their children’s teachers and set academic and behavioral goals. southwestcreations.com —Laura Paskus

3. Pedaling Sustainability

As Jed Lazar pedals his bike and big, blue trailer around town, people often flag him down to ask about his business, SoupCycle. And it’s exactly what it sounds like—soup on bicycles. “That’s so Portland,” they sometimes say.

While the business credits some of its success to the city’s bicycle culture, it’s the tasty soup that keeps customers coming back. Lazar uses local and organic produce whenever possible and has a rotation of more than 50 traditional and exotic recipes. Each week, “soupscribers” sign up for the vegan, vegetarian, or meaty option. Lazar buys the necessary ingredients, and his team transforms them into soups. Then, Lazar’s bicyclists deliver to Portland, Ore., neighborhoods on scheduled days. “Biking is a wonderful way to connect to the community,” he said, “and to run your business.”

Three years ago, Lazar and his business partner Shauna Lambert planned SoupCycle as an MBA project at Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington state. They pooled enough of their savings to last six months. If the business didn’t have at least 100 weekly deliveries by then, they’d have to call it quits.

They first served the soup to friends and used their feedback to refine the recipes. They started out cooking in a borrowed church kitchen. Lazar did all the deliveries using an electric-assist bike and was putting in 60 to 80 hours a week. A year and a half in, they hired a professional chef, and the SoupCycle staff now comprises seven workers who put in 10 to 40 hours a week in Portland and nearby Corvallis. Lazar is down to a more manageable 50 hours a week and can comfortably take vacation time. Most of the staff do deliveries, but Lazar makes sure they have a hand in soup production and ordering, too. “I want them to be able to say, ‘I helped make that soup, and it’s incredible,’” he said. “Then the customer also feels more connected to the product.”

photo by Susan Seubert

It’s that customer connection that’s most fulfilling to Lazar. “We’re spreading hope for a more sustainable world and a thriving local economy,” he said. “We’re living that every day delivering soup.” —Krista Vogel

4. Urban Farmers for Hire

Donna Smith works with Patricia and Andrew Nimelman at their home in Portland, Ore., where they receive monthly installments of plant starts, seeds, and instructions. Working just 30 hours a week, Smith earns a living doing what she likes best—farming. Smith and her business partner, Robyn Streeter, run Your Backyard Farmer, which helps its clients plant, tend, and harvest organic gardens in their yards. Families design a menu of veggies to grow, then sit back and wait for their harvest. Smith and Streeter currently tend or consult with 57 farms and have helped farmers around the world start similar programs. —Krista Vogel

5. Re-Fashioning Your Clothes

photo by Paul Dunn

With the economy in tatters in 2009, it seemed a dubious moment for Christina Collins-Pezzner to quit her corporate job with Nordstrom in Seattle. But she had a dream and a hunch. “I just had this feeling that people were going to be thinking differently out of necessity: cutting back on spending, thinking about living within their means, and using existing resources.”

She began making one-of-a-kind children’s clothes from pieces of adult clothes from thrift stores and consignment shops. With her sewing machine tucked into her kitchen, she carefully deconstructs pounds of clothing that would otherwise end up in a landfill and reassembles them into unique kids’ clothes, artful and fun. Adult long sleeves become kids’ pant legs. A mock turtleneck collar becomes the waistband of a flared skirt. Using local suppliers—often the surplus clothing is donated to her—and selling to small shops, she’s built riciclikids.com into a solid local business. She’ll be hiring soon and expanding her operation out of her kitchen.

Another reason for leaving the corporate world behind was quality of life. “I wanted to be more ‘there’ for my family,” said Collins-Pezzner, who has a husband, 15-year-old son, and a merely-days-old baby girl. Although she admits she works full days, they’re hours spent at home where she can be flexible to the needs of her family. She even talked her husband into leaving his corporate job, too. “We’re both believers in doing our dream.”

More articles from New Livelihoods, the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine

We all get born.  We all will die.  Everything in between is detail.  Politics, economics, education, race, religion, sexual preference, ideology, gender, work, and class are all details.

Details are important but focusing on details tends to divide, whereas focusing on our origins and endings may create the basic unity, trust, and respect so vitally important to strong and sustainable communities.

I wonder if we approach race relations the wrong way.  Usually, we point out cultural and historical differences.  We try to understand each other better.  We strive for tolerance.  What if we focused on our overwhelming sameness?  We all get born.  We all die. We all try to find meaning in our life.  Color and culture are important details but do they deserve to rule us or define us?  They enrich the fabric of our mutual existence but actually, factually they are superficial when compared to the spiritual oneness every human shares.  Everyone starts out in a crib and ends up in a coffin.  In that sense we are all brothers and sisters no matter what our color or cultural heritage.

I wonder about the way we do economics.  Are humans simply a cost of doing business?  Does the economic system exist to serve people or do people exist to serve the system?  So, if the answer is so obvious why do employers hire cheap and fire at will to enhance their profit margin?  And why do consumers typically look for the ultimate bargain even if it’s made in Chinese, Indonesian, and Mexican sweatshops?  Prophets will rant but profits will continue to rule unless we reframe the game from a spiritual perspective.  Management, muscle, and mind all start out as babies, end up as corpses, and try to make sense out of being alive.  Can we not invent an economic system that reflects our common humanity?

I also wonder about the crisis in education.  Most politicians and pundits claim that education is the answer to all our social ills.  Translated, this means that if you pass the standardized test and get a diploma you will get a better job and be able to buy a better life.  Some students and teachers buy this line of thinking.  But, many do not and for good reason.  In the first place, it often is not true.  How many college graduates are driving taxi or waiting tables?  How many of us are really cut out for a high tech job?  Some of us are but for the rest of us, do we need to pass algebra and calculus to be artists, actors, and artisans?  Our souls rebel at this attempt to make education an instrument of getting ahead.  Better, I suggest that we revisit the very purpose of our humanity and create an educational system that supports that purpose.  When we align education with soul rather that salary I predict the crisis will disappear.

So what can we do?  Three things come to mind.  I’m sure you will think of others.

1. Each of us can get in touch with our personal spirituality.  We don’t have to invent it.  It’s standard equipment.  It comes with being human.  There are many ways to tune the soul.  For me, it’s spending time in quiet reflection, reading a good book, or watching squirrels at play.
2. We can be more open about our deepest values.  According to research scholars, Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, one in four Americans is interested in putting spirituality to work to transform society. They care about the environment, spiritual and psychological growth, human rights, holistic health, sustainable lifestyles, and caring communities. (See Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World.)  As we make our spiritual values known to each other a synergy toward rethinking and reinventing our cultural bottom lines will propel us forward.
3. We can increase our spiritual leadership capacity.  Reinvent every organization you belong to from a spiritual perspective.  Make it serve the interests of our common humanity.  Help it focus more on inclusive human solutions rather than exclusionary cultural and ideological agendas.  What the world needs now are leaders who see the bigger picture and have a longer view, leaders who lead rather than mirror the prevailing trends.

We all get born.  We all will die.  Everything in between is detail.

As part of the Muncie Sanitary District, Bureau of Water Quality (BWQ) has been monitoring and treating Muncie’s water since 1972. The BWQ was one of the first programs formed in the nation due to a former Ball State Student, John Craddock. Since the BWQ was formed, there have been numerous transformations; including a total of 34,000 pounds of toxins each year removed from the White River, and an 80% reduction in the bacterial counts.

In speaking with the director of BWQ, Rick Conrad, he says he is very excited about the coming years for the BWQ and the projects that lay ahead of them. Since Conrad has been involved with the BWQ he says that their biggest project was fixing the sewage overflows into the White River, which was a very measurable step, but nothing compared to what is ahead of them.

The districts next big project was officially launched last fall. It is a $200 million project to remove the combined sewer overflows (CSO) from the water. Conrad says, “this isn’t going to be a short project, it will most likely still be under way 20 years from now,” but he is looking forward to every bit of it. Another big project for the BWQ in the coming years is the elimination of pharmaceuticals from the White River, and other bodies of water.

The BWQ is very cautious about their water and take samples of the water on a daily basis. Along with sampling the water, they also sample the fish and wild life of the river to be sure that everything is healthy. By means of testing, the BWQ is very self-sufficient, with their own in-house labs. During the summer they hire interns to help with the testing and lab obligations.

“Having the interns around and seeing them learn and excel is very rewarding,” Conrad states. He says that having them around is very inspiring and makes it all worthwhile.

It is encouraging to know that there is someone out there really making a difference in the community, and truly enjoy what they are doing. The BWQ will continue to provide healthy water to the community and strive to improve the water quality.

One thing the BWQ wishes was better is the public awareness and support of the projects, he says they are always in need of more support and really appreciate encouragement.

Conrad says, “the water is in really great shape, and the community should be thankful for that.” He is proud of the work they have done and excited for the future.  Rick Conrad can be contacted at (765) 747-4896.  More info can be found at                             www.munciesanitary.org/bwq/<http://www.munciesanitary.org/bwq/