Carbon neutral goals set; tactics implemented
The Evergreen campus Facilities Services is working toward campus energy conservation, as well as campus waste reduction. Irene Hinkle is our Resource Conservation Coordinator, a job funded by a grant from Puget Sound Energy. This power company supports its commercial customers to conserve energy in order to eliminate the need for increased infrastructure such as dams and power plants. However infrastructure does not have to be a bad thing, if it is conducted in an intelligently designed way. Infrastructure can be built on a locally useful level and reduce a facility’s dependence on “the grid” at large. Irene Hinkle believes it is important to explore the use of Microwatt energy production that can power dorms rather than investing only in the kind of Megawatt generation technology that powers cities. The same consideration of local, small scale technologies goes for waste conservation. This represents a concrete approach towards Evergreen’s sustainability work.
Evergreen has set goals to be carbon neutral and waste free by 2020, just eight years from now. Or to put it another way, enough time for two evergreen classes to start and finish their undergraduate degrees. Are there any freshmen, or any other class men, reading this that have ideas? If there are, don’t keep them to yourselves. The Facilities office wants to know. The Clean Energy Committee may even fund your project.
To be carbon neutral is to not produce more carbon than you remove from the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere. This does not mean that Evergreen will never produce another pound of carbon, but instead that it will reduce carbon production wherever practical and the carbon it produces will be offset by the carbon it prevents from being produced through carbon offsets. This would work by the same principle that if you spend fifty dollars and then make fifty dollars back, your total amount of money has not changed. A combination of energy conservation and non-greenhouse gas emitting energy production will help us reach this goal.
The campus’s zero waste goal works similarly to its carbon neutral goal, and the steps taken to reach one goal may help reach the other. Sustainability is a very large term that encompasses both of Evergreen’s goals and much more. I don’t believe any one part can be achieved without affecting others. This is demonstrated in some of the sustainability Projects that have been awarded money in the past, which can be found at the following web address: http://www.evergreen.edu/committee /cleanenergy/projects.htm. A further description of the “Mod compost heat recovery system” listed at the above web address, as well as other interesting compost related energy saving or producing projects, can be found in the campus life section of the CPJ—under the title of Campus Compost Not Just Food For Raccoons.
Electricity and space heating solutions are discussed in the above referenced materials. These necessities of life accounted for 69% of Evergreen’s 2006 greenhouse gas emissions according to slide sixteen of the PowerPoint presentation linked below, which also discusses emissions produced through various methods of transportation taken to campus: http://www.evergreen.edu/sustainability/docs/06greenhousegasinvtransportation.pdf.
We could see a significant step towards our campus carbon neutrality goals through student driven energy conservation and production projects. The PowerPoint presentation and sustainable compost and energy producing projects referenced above are some of the kinds of projects that the student initiative Clean Energy Fund has paid for, and would like to fund in the future. For more information or to apply for funding for your clean energy ideas, go to http://www.evergreen.edu/committee/cleanenergy/home.htm.
Waste conservation and tracking efforts are at the forefront of Evergreen’s waste free goal. Projects such as Ban-the-Bottle which is seeking to ban bottled water from being sold on campus, and waste monitoring efforts like Recyclemania which is a yearly event that tracks our campuses waste output, are among the most well known components of the solution. Student conservation, tracking, and production efforts can be undertaken in this area as they can be in the area of carbon neutrality. One previous student-produced project is a document that charts the distance between our campus and the facilities that handle our compost, recycling, landfill waste, and construction waste.
This chart shows the relation between the transportation sustainability, and therefore emissions sustainability, of choosing compostable and recyclable materials over what must become landfill waste. Our campus has very limited, research-based compost facilities on campus capable of processing food scraps, other compostable and recyclable materials travel to facilities 4-40 miles away—as opposed to 249 miles for landfill waste. This makes choosing compostable and recyclable materials, and making sure they get into the proper container, a waste and emissions reducing activity that can help Evergreen reach both of its goals. Any ideas on improving the rate of proper disposal on campus, or reducing waste by eliminating the amount of materials used, are welcomed.
The Evergreen Campus Facilities office would like to invite students and faculty to report whatever seems in need of improvement in the areas of campus waste and emissions, as well as doing their own part to conserve resources or create new solutions. Facilities and the Clean Energy Committee would love to hear your ideas, and you may even get them funded into a reality that could help the Evergreen community reach its goals. If you would like to find out more about Evergreen’s goals you can consult the links below.
http://www.evergreen.edu/news/archive/2009/07/landfillwaste.htm
http://www.evergreen.edu/sustainability/docs/CAP/CAP%20Final%20082809.pdf