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Media Credit: Steven Valdez Members of the Sustainability Task Force, the Green Team and the AS show their support after PCC President Paulette Perfumo signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment on Tuesday.

A new platform for bringing sustainability to PCC was set by President Paulette Perfumo when she signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment on Tuesday.

"I'm proud to say that I'm happy to be on this journey with all of you … I am the president of this institution, I am the leader of this institution. I would be remiss in not having us be committed to this very important endeavor," Perfumo said.

The big turnout for the event had students, Pasadena residents and administrators talking freely about the kind of prospects PCC holds.

"There is this sense that we are, some people say, a green campus. I think we're a greening campus," said Hilary Bradbury-Huang, soon to be vice president of the Board of Trustees.

Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard made an appearance and described the signing as a "turning point" for PCC. The event seemed to fit well with Pasadena's own commitment to reaching sustainability, he said.

Duane Waliser, a senior research scientist at Caltech and adjunct professor at UCLA spoke about the effect climate change has on snow pack ice and how it could disappear, a take that would affect energy-generation and water storage.

Students should "become educated on the issues and become educated on the environment beyond that," Waliser said. He offered the prospects of "seeing research projects [to be] coordinated with places like JPL and other universities for student who really want to get engaged."

Many student projects were presented at Tuesday's event as final projects for a class taught by professor Ling O'Connor. Topics such as water scarcity, bioplastics, how to make paper, what is found in water and truths about corn syrup were presented.

Perfumo had placed PCC as the 606th college to have signed the commitment, though the President's Climate Commitment website has yet to add PCC to the list of signers.

The campus' Sustainability Taskforce decided to adopt two immediate actions mentioned in the commitment while a more comprehensive plan is made during their last meeting.

The first, encouraging the use of and providing access to public transportation, is something PCC is ahead in and currently involved in.

The second recommendation calls for PCC to participate in the "waste minimization" component of the national RecycleMania competition, and to adopt three or more associated measures to reduce waste (both recyclables and trash).

"That's something we can actually do without really putting out a lot of money," said O'Connor.

The competition will begin January 18 and will have nearly 200 school competing for a trophy and bragging rights, respectfully.

The RecycleMania project, in the past, has seen a noticeable increase in recycling collection during the competition.

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