Practical Ideas, College Credit TELLURIDE - How about cooling beer in the tank of your toilet?

This would both help you consume less water with each flush and cool your refreshments … without resorting to the use of an energy consuming refrigerator.

This was an admittedly minor idea proposed ironically by Ian Laferty, a student in the Introduction to Sustainability course offered in Telluride this summer by the University Centers of the San Miguel. Laferty’s bigger project, the Confluence Media Collective, has actually been implemented in Grand Junction, publishing a small alternative newspaper, supporting itself and a portion of the city’s homeless community by means of a “guerilla” garden on vacant land, harvesting recyclables from a dumpster, composting waste, and providing free meals to those who can use them – all of this accomplished with virtually no money.

“Everything stems from the dumpster and everything goes to the compost,” Laferty explained.

Nine students in a course taught by Kris Holstrom of The New Community Coalition, presented their course work last week, describing their ideas for community sustainability, and earning college credit in the process. Students can earn a Certificate in Sustainability Studies, combining two courses in sustainability taught by The New Community Coalition and four electives.

Established in 2005, the UCSM brings college courses to the San Miguel watershed, working with regional colleges, including Northern Colorado Community College, Mesa State, Northern Arizona University, and Prescott College, to provide accreditation. Sustainability studies surely represents a Telluride twist on higher and continuing education.

Another suggestion presented by students in this summer’s Intro to Sustainability course was Angela Saunders’s idea, “From Laundry to Landscape,” to purify grey water from hotels in Mountain Village to irrigate the town’s summer landscaping, thus consuming less municipal water and reducing waste water processed by regional sewage system.

Parker Thompson thought about how to make Telluride’s Valley Floor a more sustainable ecosystem, noting that the prairie dogs there are “becoming a problem” and asking, as a thought experiment of sorts, what it would mean if the American bison were restored there as a cornerstone species. Can’t work, he allowed, since bison are dangerous to people and therefore incompatible with human recreation, which will clearly occur on the Valley Floor. The “winner” in a species reintroduction sweepstakes, Parker concluded, is the black footed ferret, “which we can and should have” on the Valley Floor. Ergo, his black footed ferret introduction scheme, to bring one of the world’s most endangered mammals – and one that wildlife biologists are working to re-establish – to an environment that might well benefit from some prairie dog control, since the prairie dog is the ferret’s sole source of food.

Other student ideas were to bring local food supplies and composting to school cafeterias; for a green roof, greenhouse and garden at the Telluride Middle/High School, producing educational opportunities and food, utilizing rainwater, and reducing heating and cooling costs; and the production of an artisanal “book” from litter picked up on the street, with the idea that teaching school students to make similar books would be educational, inspiring discussion on the subjects of waste and recycling, and would yield something of beauty, as well.

“Hopefully we’ll end up with a school ‘right-side-up’ in its decision making,” said Jennifer Morgan, the student who envisioned the last project.

All these ideas, the students recognized, present challenges to be overcome in order to be implemented, and may represent only small steps toward a more sustainable world.

But some of them may even happen.