We may have had a small turnout but we made a big impact! For 2 hours on Saturday, April 27 we picked up 3 pretty good size bags of trash from Crosby Elementary school.
Here’s some photos from the day. Thanks to the Crosby folks for allowing us to help them out!
The BCC Green Team has planned our annual community cleanup event! Local schools and parks will continue to be our focus, and our spring community cleanup event for 2024 has been all planned out. As usual trash bags and basic gloves will be provided, but bring any additional items you may want to use.
When: Saturday, April 27 at 11 a.m. (rain date 5/4)
Where: Crosby Elementary School (517 West St, Pittsfield)
What to bring: Weather appropriate clothing (jackets, hoodies, sunglasses, etc.)
We will be taking photos throughout the event so remember to bring your best smile! If anyone has any questions please feel free to reach out and let me know.
Last year’s community cleanup event was such a success that the BCC Green Team has decided to try and make this a yearly event. Local schools and parks will be our focus, and our spring community cleanup event for 2023 has been all planned out. We will be joining forces with the folks at the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC) so a big thanks for doing a majority of the planning and letting us join them.
When: Saturday, April 29 at 11 a.m. (rain or shine!)
Where: Durant Park and Riverside Park (John St, Pittsfield MA, 01201)
What to bring: Weather appropriate clothing (jackets, hoodies, sunglasses, etc.)
Also: There will be a demonstration tree planting at 11 a.m.
We will be taking photos throughout the event so remember to bring your best smile! If anyone has any questions please feel free to reach out and let me know.
Our Community Cleanup event at Stearns Elementary School was a huge success! Thanks for everyone who was able to come out and help! Overall we had a pretty good turn out and we were able to pick up a good amount of trash from Stearns Elementary, about 10 bags total!
We picked up all sorts of food wrappers, face masks, inflatable snow tubes, old baseballs, hair ties, bottles and cans, and many other discarded objects. Great work everyone!
Here’s a collection of photos from the event.
(click on any photo to see a larger version)
Greetings BCC Green Team members!
All of the details of our Community Cleanup event have been set, we hope you can come join us for part or all of the cleanup! Here’s everything you need to know below.
When: Saturday, April 23, 10am until around noon
Where: Stearns Elementary School (75 Lebanon Ave, Pittsfield, MA 01201)
What to bring: Weather appropriate clothing (jackets, hoodies, sunglasses, etc.)
Our BCC Facilities team was amazing and agreed to help out by providing gloves (the blue surgical type) for picking up trash along with trash bags for putting everything in. Thanks Chris and Tammy!
Rain Date: Wet trash is gross, not to mention it can be unsafe to handle. If we have to postpone due to rain our new date will be the following Saturday, April 30 at the same scheduled time. If it comes to that I will send an email to everyone to let them know by 8am the morning of the event.
We will be taking photos throughout the morning so please bring your smile. If anyone has any questions please let me know, thanks!
Green Team’s Green Up Your Workspace – Berkshire Community College – hopes to add its own kind of “new improvement” to renovations on campus. Every positive action with sustainability in mind, no matter how small it may seem, can make the air we all breathe -and our environment- that much healthier.
Adopt a plant for your work space!
Several B.C.C. community members both on campus and off campus are growing these plants now since 2019, and more are available. The next two plant species people have requested most often are Peace Lilies (Spathiphyllum cochlearispathum or Spathiphyllum montanum) and Spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum). If you have plants that need dividing and would like to trade or donate them to Green Team, please get in contact.
To sign up and receive your own plant cuttings and to learn more about future phases for “Green Up”, please e-mail: roberta_hayes@student.berkshirecc.edu.
All you need to provide is a clean glass jar, like a mason jar, for us to put the cutting into.
One of the many images in the full guide.
By: Roberta Hayes (BCC Student, Environmental Science; & Green Team work-study)
Introduction
Springside Park in Pittsfield Massachusetts is sort of a gem in the rough, and, like similar parks in our area it is well-used and well-appreciated, yet perhaps needing a few more volunteers or some city funding to spruce it up. Still, I find it to be a park I have a special affiliation with. It reminds me of other places around town like Pittsfield State Forest, which also is a little bit scruffy around the edges and certainly needs a good bit of maintenance here and there.
Another of the many images in the full guide.
Springside Park is a special place in its own right, yet to me more memorable since a good friend introduced me to the park years ago. Jennifer Coppola, who I am sad to say is no longer with us, lived across North Street from Springside. Our short walks there helped me get through challenges associated with cancer. Before Jennifer showed the park to me, I somehow had never noticed it before. It was encouraging to have a walking buddy to get me back out into nature. Although Jen has been gone since late 2015, amidst her own health issues she started me on a road I may not have found on my own.
Click here to download the entire 18 page guide!
Thank you to student and BGG Green Team work-study Roberta Hayes for her work on this amazing guide!
Raising the BCC Ecology Flag to Full Mast.
Earth Day 2021. Thursday, April 22 at 11 am.
A note to the BCC Community. Tom Tyning, Environmental Science
As the first Community College in Massachusetts, BCC was incorporated in the fall of 1960 and set up within an active High School in downtown Pittsfield. Ten years later the first global Earth Day (see: https://www.earthday.org/) was celebrated, and this event marked an impressive turn-around in the understanding and action to support a healthy environment that would benefit natural systems and people. BCC students and staff celebrated the initial Earth Day with exhibits, talks, a launch of a recycling program, and the formation of its Environmental Science Program*. The Mass Board of Regents of Higher Education required BCC to describe what this program would accomplish. Among other things these four learning outcomes for students were set: 1) a reverence for life in its many interrelated forms, 2) awareness of the ecological consequences of social and economic action, 3) responsible participation in positive conservation efforts, and 4) a commitment to the abundant health of all living creatures on Earth.
In 1972, BCC built a new campus at the base of the Taconic mountain range on 180-acres of forests, upland meadows, and wetlands. These ecological communities continue to serve as excellent field sites for Biology and Science Labs, for on-going Berkshire research, and for casual visitors on our John Lambert Nature Trail. Constructed bird houses for our bluebirds, wood ducks, and native falcons were installed almost immediately. Students still today maintain the boxes and staff lab supervisor Linda Merry is monitoring our colony of Cliff Swallows, a declining species in eastern North America. Ongoing bird records have been kept by faculty, starting in 1971 with Dick Ferren, an authority of New England birds. Numerous management plans for the natural areas on campus have been set out with ecological values foremost by early teaching scientists including John Lambert, John Anthony, George Hamilton, and more recently by Charlie Weinstein and Tim Flanagan, all in concert and support with the BCC Facilities staff and the Campus Administration.
When the West Street campus opened a series of Flagpoles were erected and on these the American, Massachusetts’ State, and Veteran’s flags flew high. The fourth banner raised was the Ecology Flag, purchased by our Student Activities office on the application ecologically concerned BCC students. The Flag highlights the schools’ continued commitment to the environment, reduced energy use, and continued support of community-based conservation programs. In recent years our attention to these goals was coalesced into the very successful BCC Green Team (https://www.berkshirecc.edu/about-bcc/campus-services/green-team/), organized by a number of faculty, staff, and administrators, especially Charlie Kaminski. click the link to understand the remarkable progress the school continues to make.
The Ecology Flag has flown continuously at BCC, despite the waxes and wanes of environmental progress locally, nationally, and world-wide. It has been a continuous reminder of hope and positive thinking that has gotten many students and citizens to understand more about how we are part of the environment and not separate. However, a really low point occurred during the Trump administration when he began an outright attack on the conservation of natural resources and energetically renounced science. He eliminated many previous programs set forth by Republican, Democrat, and Independent leaders, including pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement**. On March 28, 2017, Trump rescinded the Clean Power Initiative at 2 pm and on that day and time, with the support of President Ellen Kennedy, a small group of us at BCC watched as our Security team lowered the Ecology Flag to half- staff ***. We thought it would only last a short time, but it became clear that the assaults on the environment and science worsened. The flag has remained in its mourning/distress position for the past four years.
However, with the new Biden administration, running on a platform of renewed interest and hope for the environment, our rejoining the Paris Climate agreement, and the Green New Deal making headway under the leadership of Ed Markey, the time has come to return BCC’s Ecology Flag to full staff. In addition, Governor Baker’s March 26 commitment to dramatically reduce emission limits is a welcome and great first step in combating Climate Change. President Kennedy chose this year’s Earth Day as the right time to make a gesture. So, on Thursday, April 22 at 11 am staff, faculty, students, and interested community members are invited to a small ceremony at the flagpoles on campus. We have a small series of short talks, including students, community environmentalists, and current and former BCC staff and faculty (see attached). We will be broadcasting this live (thanks to Jonah and others) and PCTV will record the event and make the video available later.
*see: Berkshire Eagle: April 22 and April 23, 1970 coverage.
*** Berkshire Eagle Coverage for dropping Ecology Flag: https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/mourning-for-the-planet-bcc-lowers-ecology-flag-to-half-staff/article_9b47d7ab-b110-5edd-9f0c-3ed7d1314e4c.html
In the fall semester the BCC Green Team worked together to create a video to show the campus and the community what we are all about. Check out the results!
BCC is hosting and co-sponsoring a Recycling Rally and Sustainability Fair on Saturday, August 3 from 9am to 1pm!
The event is being run and organized by Guardian Life and offers all sorts of green activities and family fun! Here are some of the highlights:
Recycling details (City of Pittsfield website) – Please pre-register by July 26 by listing the items you are bringing on the form at the bottom of the linked site. This page also shows what is accepted and explains how to prepay for CRT TVs/monitors.
Live 95.9’s post about the event (Live 95.5 website)
I am also looking for any folks interested in volunteering to help direct people/traffic, assist people with their recycling items, and just generally show our guests how amazingly welcoming the BCC community can be! If you are available for part or all of that day and want to help please send me an email.
Thank you and I hope to see many of you there!