Sustainable Living

Sustainable Living Community 2011

The SLC gathered for the first time this semester on 10^th September in the Villas. The Community now has 10 females & 8 males all from various campuses in EC – WCMCQ, TAMUQ, CMUQ, VCUQ NUQ and GUQ. We had ice-breakers in the beginning and started off with a presentation given by Chris Silva from Office of Student Life, Sustainable Education.

A few fun facts and pointers from the presentation:

·         About 12-20% of food eaten in Qatar comes from Qatar.

·         About 10 -13,000 plastic water bottles are used in EC daily.

·         We have a Sustainable Library in the orange study room in the Student Center.

·         Christopher Silva is the Sustainable Education Coordinator in EC.

·         Something sustainable lasts for 7 generations.

We have a small garden behind the villas. We were planning to use compost for our garden to promote organic gardening. This is what we learned about composting:

·         You can use fruit peels, apple cores, rotten fruits and vegetables. Mix them all together & keep them as such in a tightly covered container for a week. You can then use it as manure for your garden.

·         You CANNOT use any sort of plastic or eggshells for your compost.

We then proceeded to plant seeds in the garden. It was my first time to garden & I found it to be a really fun learning experience. We planted pumpkin, carrot and cucumber seeds in the garden.

I look forward to other upcoming events in the SLC!

Written by Nabeeha Haque