Posted on: Monday,December,12th,2011 at 4:27 am
Transcript below…
Transcript:
The following transcript may contain errors. Please notify the webmaster at ibshafei@gmail.com of any such errors.
ZOOM OUT ON THE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING LOGO.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: We’ve got something like three hundred homes to certify their back yards.
TERRY USREY: Every one of those that goes online is a success story.
UNA WINTERMAN: Attendance at the farmer’s market was up forty-one percent in the last year. That’s… that’s huge!
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: That was influential, actually, that we able to publish that data and get the city to stop and reconsider.
KATHLEEN CLARK: That presented me with an opportunity to make some costumes that were in an actual play.
UNA WINTERMAN: They offer you a way to create a non-profit.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: The Center for Sustainable Living is an umbrella organization, it’s a 501(c)(3) which means it’s a non-profit organization.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: It’s mission is to promote sustainable living to educate the public about ways that they can live more sustainably.
KATHLEEN CLARK: The center for sustainable living makes it possible for other smaller organizations to achieve, non-profit status
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: I was actually motivated by this through my interest in sustainability. I’ve been interested in the idea of sustainability for a long time, and we started with small meetings in my house. They were actually meetings right here, and people would come here and talk about issues and say, “Well, how do we have to proceed? What do we have to do next?” And yeah I think we spent a good two years really mulling this question over, but when we finally became public, as I said the first project to come forward was the Community Bicycle Project and then it just took off.
ZOLLIE BARNES: It’s nice seeing people come in, like- a lot of especially individuals who aren’t regular students or go in for volunteer hours because it’s just like, “Oh I had this bike laying around!” And now we can get it fixed and, they get to like learn a little bit along the way.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: I first heard about Bloomington Transportation Options for People or BTOP, probably five- six years ago. It was just starting up at the time and Buff Brown who was the founder, called a bunch of people together and shared the kinds of things that he was working on. We were such a small group that it made sense to us to come under a broader umbrella organization.
UNA WINTERMAN: Local First Indiana came about when a friend of mine and I decided that we wanted to start this organization, sort of a buy-local alliance, create a support network for local independent businesses and we were looking for a non-profit that could partner with that would allow us to get nonprofit status. We had a little list and the Center for Sustainable Living was one there and they were one of the first people we talked to and we thought this was a perfect fit. They’re a really great group of ladies. They understood immediately what we were talking about – they probably knew more about it than we did at the time. [Laughs]
KATHLEEN CLARK: Discardia began, primarily by Jeanne and I coming together and having a similar love for refashioning and making things out of trash. Whether it be clothing or sculptures or art, what have you. So we decided to assemble a group of other people who were into the idea of creating a space that would function as a retail store for locally made items, from only recycled or reused materials. And also the space would function as a community sewing lab, where the community could come and sew things out of recycled materials, take workshop classes and collaborate with other community members.
TERRY USREY: Then in two-thousand and eight, my friends Alec Jarvis and Danielle Dayan and I started discussing the possibility of starting an energy group and we realized that there was a lot of, formalities that were required that weren’t particularly interested in following through on, but then we recognized that the possibility seemed very real that we might become a project under the CSL, who provides that status for all of their projects.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: We’re member-run, and we think that’s important because we want to do what the members want.
KATHLEEN CLARK: The funding for the Center for Sustainable Living I know comes from a lot of different places and fundraisers. I know that the Trashion Refashion Show was able to provide a decent amount of funding last year with the proceeds.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: People who come to us and who are interested in what we do are willing to support us. So we have a… oh about 150 members and they can pay whatever that they feel that they can afford. We don’t really need a lot of money to run. None of our volunteers are paid. Every single one of our projects are run by volunteers.
KATHLEEN CLARK: Being a volunteer of the CSL involves a lot of collaboration with other project members, and you know, because everything has the goal of sustainability in mind so we all can generally help each other in different areas.
ZOLLIE BARNES: A lot of our volunteers here are here to earn a bike, where they’ll do three hours of volunteer service, and then they’ll get to make their own bike.
UNA WINTERMAN: When I ride my bike through town now, I see people and see businesses that I feel a personal connection to because I’m working with them.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: Well, I think that everybody feels good when they volunteer. I think it’s a feel-good situation and if it’s something that you really feel passionate about, it makes you feel doubly good.
KATHLEEN CLARK: It can really enrich a person’s life to have a sense of community and a sense of importance.
UNA WINTERMAN: If you feel strongly about something – and a lot of people in this community do – they offer you a way to create a non-profit.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: They’re like a piece of a puzzle. The puzzle itself is sustainability, and each one of these little portions is a piece of that puzzle. Certifying Bloomington as a certified wildlife habitat was a really wonderful time for me because what happened: We started working on this in two-thousand one I think it was, and it took until 2008 to get sufficient numbers of gardens.
TERRY USREY: So we have helped people build solar energy systems and solar water-heating systems. Every one of those that goes online is a success story.
KATHLEEN CLARK: The CSL’s involvement with the Bloomington Playwright’s Project for their Awarefest, and Discardia was able to make two Trashion costumes to be featured in one of the plays that the BPP put on.
UNA WINTERMAN: Attendance at the farmer’s market was up forty-one percent in the last year. That’s… that’s huge! You know, we’re not the only ones talking about shopping locally.
ZOLLIE BARNES: They’re reusing bike parts, I mean, we’re not throwing things out and getting new things and adding to a stockpile. That’s like the entire principle of reusing things.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: All of these things actually show people what sustainability is, so it’s a very comprehensive, very holistic look at how we can sustain ourselves into the future.
TERRY USREY: Bloomington has a reputation as being a progressive community, a forward-looking community, and deservedly so in many ways. However studying the issue of energy consumption per capita and per business within our community- a different reality emerges. We as Hoosiers and as Bloomingtonians or Monroe County residents, are uniquely identified as extreme users of energy. We are per capita, heaviest energy consumers in the world.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: So we’re in the danger zone. And that’s climbing every day, every year, and so far there’s been really no significant action on the national or international level to deal with that.
TERRY USREY: In the long term, it’s the only future that we have. Without a sustainable future, we don’t have a future.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: If people prioritize other things over the planet and the environment that supports our life… that’s really what we’re doing, we’re sawing off the branch in order to save the nest that’s sitting on the branch. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: And what the Center for Sustainable Living would like to have everybody live as though there’s only one earth, because there really is only one.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Ways to get involved: 1. Join an existing project. 2. Create your own project. 3. Become a member of the CSL.
NEW TEXT ON SCREEN: Go to the website simplycsl.org or visit the office: 323 S. Walnut Street Bloomington, IN 47401.
NEW TEXT SCROLLING ON SCREEN: Center for Sustainable Living Projects: Bloomington Community Wildlife Habitat, Bloomington Organic Gardeners, Community Bicycle Project. Bloomington Transportation Options for People (BTOP), Composting Project, Declaration of Peace, Discardia, Ecomedia Center, Food Project, Green Dove Peace Network, Guest Lecture Series, Holistic Affordable Housing, Local First Indiana, NWEI Discussion Groups, Oasis Garden, Simply Living Fair, Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network (SIREN), Transition Bloomington.
NEW TEXT SCROLLING ON SCREEN: Produced, directed, shot, and edited by: Jon Elliot, Angela Sorury, and Thomas Frick. Executive producers: Ron Osgood and Mary Laventure. Thanks to the Indiana University Telecommunications Department.
Transcript below…
Transcript:
The following transcript may contain errors. Please notify the webmaster at ibshafei@gmail.com of any such errors.
ZOOM OUT ON THE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING LOGO.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: We’ve got something like three hundred homes to certify their back yards.
TERRY USREY: Every one of those that goes online is a success story.
UNA WINTERMAN: Attendance at the farmer’s market was up forty-one percent in the last year. That’s… that’s huge!
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: That was influential, actually, that we able to publish that data and get the city to stop and reconsider.
KATHLEEN CLARK: That presented me with an opportunity to make some costumes that were in an actual play.
UNA WINTERMAN: They offer you a way to create a non-profit.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: The Center for Sustainable Living is an umbrella organization, it’s a 501(c)(3) which means it’s a non-profit organization.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: It’s mission is to promote sustainable living to educate the public about ways that they can live more sustainably.
KATHLEEN CLARK: The center for sustainable living makes it possible for other smaller organizations to achieve, non-profit status
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: I was actually motivated by this through my interest in sustainability. I’ve been interested in the idea of sustainability for a long time, and we started with small meetings in my house. They were actually meetings right here, and people would come here and talk about issues and say, “Well, how do we have to proceed? What do we have to do next?” And yeah I think we spent a good two years really mulling this question over, but when we finally became public, as I said the first project to come forward was the Community Bicycle Project and then it just took off.
ZOLLIE BARNES: It’s nice seeing people come in, like- a lot of especially individuals who aren’t regular students or go in for volunteer hours because it’s just like, “Oh I had this bike laying around!” And now we can get it fixed and, they get to like learn a little bit along the way.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: I first heard about Bloomington Transportation Options for People or BTOP, probably five- six years ago. It was just starting up at the time and Buff Brown who was the founder, called a bunch of people together and shared the kinds of things that he was working on. We were such a small group that it made sense to us to come under a broader umbrella organization.
UNA WINTERMAN: Local First Indiana came about when a friend of mine and I decided that we wanted to start this organization, sort of a buy-local alliance, create a support network for local independent businesses and we were looking for a non-profit that could partner with that would allow us to get nonprofit status. We had a little list and the Center for Sustainable Living was one there and they were one of the first people we talked to and we thought this was a perfect fit. They’re a really great group of ladies. They understood immediately what we were talking about – they probably knew more about it than we did at the time. [Laughs]
KATHLEEN CLARK: Discardia began, primarily by Jeanne and I coming together and having a similar love for refashioning and making things out of trash. Whether it be clothing or sculptures or art, what have you. So we decided to assemble a group of other people who were into the idea of creating a space that would function as a retail store for locally made items, from only recycled or reused materials. And also the space would function as a community sewing lab, where the community could come and sew things out of recycled materials, take workshop classes and collaborate with other community members.
TERRY USREY: Then in two-thousand and eight, my friends Alec Jarvis and Danielle Dayan and I started discussing the possibility of starting an energy group and we realized that there was a lot of, formalities that were required that weren’t particularly interested in following through on, but then we recognized that the possibility seemed very real that we might become a project under the CSL, who provides that status for all of their projects.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: We’re member-run, and we think that’s important because we want to do what the members want.
KATHLEEN CLARK: The funding for the Center for Sustainable Living I know comes from a lot of different places and fundraisers. I know that the Trashion Refashion Show was able to provide a decent amount of funding last year with the proceeds.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: People who come to us and who are interested in what we do are willing to support us. So we have a… oh about 150 members and they can pay whatever that they feel that they can afford. We don’t really need a lot of money to run. None of our volunteers are paid. Every single one of our projects are run by volunteers.
KATHLEEN CLARK: Being a volunteer of the CSL involves a lot of collaboration with other project members, and you know, because everything has the goal of sustainability in mind so we all can generally help each other in different areas.
ZOLLIE BARNES: A lot of our volunteers here are here to earn a bike, where they’ll do three hours of volunteer service, and then they’ll get to make their own bike.
UNA WINTERMAN: When I ride my bike through town now, I see people and see businesses that I feel a personal connection to because I’m working with them.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: Well, I think that everybody feels good when they volunteer. I think it’s a feel-good situation and if it’s something that you really feel passionate about, it makes you feel doubly good.
KATHLEEN CLARK: It can really enrich a person’s life to have a sense of community and a sense of importance.
UNA WINTERMAN: If you feel strongly about something – and a lot of people in this community do – they offer you a way to create a non-profit.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: They’re like a piece of a puzzle. The puzzle itself is sustainability, and each one of these little portions is a piece of that puzzle. Certifying Bloomington as a certified wildlife habitat was a really wonderful time for me because what happened: We started working on this in two-thousand one I think it was, and it took until 2008 to get sufficient numbers of gardens.
TERRY USREY: So we have helped people build solar energy systems and solar water-heating systems. Every one of those that goes online is a success story.
KATHLEEN CLARK: The CSL’s involvement with the Bloomington Playwright’s Project for their Awarefest, and Discardia was able to make two Trashion costumes to be featured in one of the plays that the BPP put on.
UNA WINTERMAN: Attendance at the farmer’s market was up forty-one percent in the last year. That’s… that’s huge! You know, we’re not the only ones talking about shopping locally.
ZOLLIE BARNES: They’re reusing bike parts, I mean, we’re not throwing things out and getting new things and adding to a stockpile. That’s like the entire principle of reusing things.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: All of these things actually show people what sustainability is, so it’s a very comprehensive, very holistic look at how we can sustain ourselves into the future.
TERRY USREY: Bloomington has a reputation as being a progressive community, a forward-looking community, and deservedly so in many ways. However studying the issue of energy consumption per capita and per business within our community- a different reality emerges. We as Hoosiers and as Bloomingtonians or Monroe County residents, are uniquely identified as extreme users of energy. We are per capita, heaviest energy consumers in the world.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: So we’re in the danger zone. And that’s climbing every day, every year, and so far there’s been really no significant action on the national or international level to deal with that.
TERRY USREY: In the long term, it’s the only future that we have. Without a sustainable future, we don’t have a future.
ELIZABETH VENSTRA: If people prioritize other things over the planet and the environment that supports our life… that’s really what we’re doing, we’re sawing off the branch in order to save the nest that’s sitting on the branch. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
LUCILLE BERTUCCIO: And what the Center for Sustainable Living would like to have everybody live as though there’s only one earth, because there really is only one.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Ways to get involved: 1. Join an existing project. 2. Create your own project. 3. Become a member of the CSL.
NEW TEXT ON SCREEN: Go to the website simplycsl.org or visit the office: 323 S. Walnut Street Bloomington, IN 47401.
NEW TEXT SCROLLING ON SCREEN: Center for Sustainable Living Projects: Bloomington Community Wildlife Habitat, Bloomington Organic Gardeners, Community Bicycle Project. Bloomington Transportation Options for People (BTOP), Composting Project, Declaration of Peace, Discardia, Ecomedia Center, Food Project, Green Dove Peace Network, Guest Lecture Series, Holistic Affordable Housing, Local First Indiana, NWEI Discussion Groups, Oasis Garden, Simply Living Fair, Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network (SIREN), Transition Bloomington.
NEW TEXT SCROLLING ON SCREEN: Produced, directed, shot, and edited by: Jon Elliot, Angela Sorury, and Thomas Frick. Executive producers: Ron Osgood and Mary Laventure. Thanks to the Indiana University Telecommunications Department.
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