Week Two Begins

The 2022 Sustainable Summer cohort is into our second week and we’ve made ourselves right at home at the Dartmouth Campus. What does that look like? Morning coffees at fo-co, study groups in the Rocky, and nighttime chats at the Bema illuminated by fireflies. During our free time students have taken the lead organizing everything from a book club at Still North to group movie dates, all while putting together startup pitches aimed at tackling the seemingly insurmountable environmental problems we people have created for ourselves.

To celebrate a successful and fast paced first week we spent the day at Storrs Pond! It was everything a summer day should be. Sunshine, splashing, a BBQ and we made friends with the locals over a robust game of volleyball.

On Sunday we hit the Appalachian trail and made our way through the magical Velvet Rocks day hike. Despite being right next to campus, something about the moss covered granite and sunshine peeking through the canopy took us to a place and time far away from our day-to-day. For a couple of us this was our first ever hike, and what a way to kick off what’s sure to be a new lifetime passion!

But after a weekend in the great outdoors it was back to work. Our future entrepreneurs pitched their sustainable solutions to the cohort. There was no shortage of eco ideas. We heard proposals for sunscreen with refillable biodegradable bottles, an app to aggregate and rate Thrift Stores, a tool to automatically delete emails with the specific goal of reducing email storage carbon emissions, atomized water sprinklers for agriculture and plenty more. After voting for their favorite proposals students formed teams and began the process of fleshing out these new ideas. Stay tuned for more!