1. Please join President Hansen’s Year-End Teleconference Dec. 8
2. Climate-related Shetlands project receives $619,000 NSF grant
3. Med school plans for fall 2012? Contact Bates for help by Jan. 10
4. Nayder’s biography debunks popular notion of Charles Dickens’ wife
5. Audio: Duina talks about winning and happiness on ‘The Academic Minute’
6. Slide show: Trashion Show 2010
7. Support Bates today and earn tax benefits for 2010
8. Bates teams offer exciting outlook for winter athletics
9. Heating curtailment plan will save money, carbon emissions during break
10. Bates in the News

View the slide show by clicking the thumbnails.

Text by Kelly Cox ’11 | Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Students and staff strutted their stuff on the runway Nov. 17 as sustainability met fashion for the fifth annual Trashion Show. The Bates community devoured desserts in the Gray Cage while observing fashionable creations transformed from what would have been waste.

A major attraction at Bates’ Harvest Meal celebration, the show is a friendly competition stressing the College’s dedication to being a “green” institution.

“It builds awareness from an atypical angle, encouraging students to see that sustainability can be incorporated into everything we do,” said Julie Rosenbach, Bates’ sustainability coordinator.

As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, the fashion show stresses both individual responsibility and communal effort in reducing consumption. The Sustainable Bates program collaborates with Dining Services, known nationally for its green practices, to host the event.

“It has an impact on a portion of the population that might not otherwise be reached,” noted Christine Schwartz, director of Dining Services. “The mission and focus is to further sustainability initiatives on campus, which makes collaborative partnerships a natural.”

Participants produced garments in various styles from a range of materials including non-recyclable tea bag packets, coffee containers, rubber gloves, curtains and newspapers.

A panel of judges chose three designs out of a dozen as the winners.

Ellen Gawarkiewicz ’13 received the “Most Functional” award for a cocktail dress fashioned out of 500 aluminum yogurt lids, sewn together with plastic bags. An environmental studies major, Gawarkiewicz used her design to send a message about change and efficiency.

“I would like people to question why these lids, which take so much energy to produce, aren’t recyclable. I’m sure with some ambition and creativity there could be a more environmentally friendly way to cover a yogurt in the future.”

“Most Fashionable” went to Dana Lindauer ’11 for her papier-mâché outfit, covered with more than 100 origami flowers made from scrap paper from Commons, Pettengill and Ladd Library.

Seniors Sarah Dice-Goldberg and Elizabeth Lee won “Best Overall” for a late-1700s design composed of plastic bags, bubble wrap and pleated flower-bulb magazines. The gown represents the combined interests of Dice-Goldberg, a French and theater double major, and Lee, an interdisciplinary major, both of whom hope to pursue a future in theater.

The event was hosted by Bates EcoReps, a team of students who promote environmental awareness on campus. The team has coordinated educational programs on energy reduction, trash audits and a residential energy-conservation competition. The energy-competition winner, announced during the Trashion Show, was Mitchell House, whose residents won $150 for lowering their electricity usage by 32 percent.

In January, for the first time, Bates College joined more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States in RecycleMania, a 10-week recycling and waste minimization competition.

For more information, please contact Julie Rosenbach, Bates’ environmental coordinator, at this jrosenba@bates.edu.

RecycleMania at Bates started on Jan. 31 with a “Wheel of Fortune” environmental trivia game in the dining Commons. With designated recycling bins in every building, student volunteers are meeting twice a week to collect recyclables on campus and determine their weight on a per capita basis. A scoreboard in the college’s dining Commons displays Bates’ recycling rate vs. those of Colby and Bowdoin colleges.

Student outreach teams are using posters, banners, a recycling pledge drive and fun events to build support for recycling and the contest.

In mid-March, Commons hosts the first annual “Trashion Show,” in which students will make costumes from recyclables to show off their creativity and propensity for recycling. Later in March, a trash bin “dump and sort” event is scheduled to demonstrate how many recyclables are thrown away. Finally, RecycleMania is sponsoring an intramural indoor soccer team.

RecycleMania began in 2001 as a competition between Miami University in Ohio and Ohio University. The competition spread gradually until 2004, when the Environmental Protection Agency, National Recycling Coalition and National Wildlife Federation partnered with RecycleMania to expand the competition nationwide.

In 2006, 93 schools recycled more than 17 million pounds of paper, cans, plastics and cardboard.

This year the competition has taken off nationally. In Maine, other participating schools include the universities of Southern Maine, Maine at Farmington and the flagship UMaine campus in Orono.