Day two of the Butte annual sustainability conference opened with a special keynote featuring Ken Grossman, Owner and President of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company – a very popular company with the Butte crowd! Grossman, an alumni of Butte, gave an impressive overview of all the sustainability practices in place at the Brewery, such as the recycling or reusing of almost all waste (99% of waste is diverted from the landfill), using motion sensor lights throughout the buildings, a 10,000 plus panel (solar) structure, and a cattle partnership with Chico State University where the cows are fed spent grain, spent yeast, and even spent beer from the brewing process. The Brewery also captures CO₂ emissions, compressing and cleaning them and using the carbon dioxide as fuel in the dispensing process. Sierra Nevada also has two sustainability coordinators to monitor practices and look for new opportunities.

A second presentation by Dr. Randal Beeman from Bakersfield College, a professor of history, talked about the role of the government in sustainability in history. Dr. Beeman highlighted a couple of ecological crises from the past – the dust bowl and the flooding of the Mississippi and Tennessee river valley in the 30’s. He says the U.S. has always reacted to crisis, instead of preparing for a crisis. The message? Let’s prepare for the warming climate by building a sustainable society –- sustainable homes, campuses and communities with sustainable practices. He emphasized that sustainability, specifically sustainable agriculture, needs to sustain both people and the land and support their regeneration.

Yvonne Christopher, faculty member for construction inspection at Butte College, shared her plans for a 12-building scenario village that will break ground this fall. This village will be built with green features and used for training purposes for local fireman and police, as well as Butte students interested in green building careers and construction.

Butte currently offers courses in energy efficiency and renewable energy, green building technologies and practices, and a green building and LEED certification course.

Kristy Jones is reporting from the 3rd Annual Butte College Sustainability Conference, in Oroville, California.

Every spring we see a rash of stories on end-of-the-semester cleanouts in dorms and student apartments. As students leave for the summer, dumpsters fill up with perfectly good lamps, textbooks, furniture and clothing. However, schools are trying to make the mass exodus from campus less like a dump and more like a treasure hunt by creating student reuse depots, rescuing items from landfills, and donating useful materials to shelters and thrift stores. Here are a few:

• Mills College, in Oakland, CA, set up a Reuse Depot in Reinhardt Hall, re-purposing concrete slabs and wooden shelves from the city landfill to hold all the stuff donated by students. "Shoppers" can choose from canned food, textbooks, clothing, binders, purses, gardening tools and more. Students from the school's environmental club run the Depot during the semester, and coordinate a  drop-off to local charities at the end of the semester. 
• Suffolk University makes it easy with a Dump-and-Run program, which saves the university money that it would otherwise spend on trash-hauling. Donated materials are given to local organizations for the homeless and the hungry. In the spring of 2008, the program diverted 5,500 lbs worth of items. 
• Arizona State makes an event out of ditching the dumpster, with games, de-stressing activities, music and prizes. Last year they collected more than 10,000 lbs worth of materials, and also accept items that are hard to recycle, such as electronics and toner cartridges. 
• Hamilton College has an annual Ham's Cram-and-Scram which takes back unopened food and other goods from students and donates most of them to local shelters and consignment stores. Paper and other materials are typically recycled, and reusable items like furniture are kept to be resold to students at the beginning of the next fall semester. 
• NYU's Sustainability Task Force runs Green Apple Move Out, which collects and donates discarded items from dorms and the law school, and hopes to encompass every dormitory on the campus in the next five years.

Tomorrow ASU celebrates the new home of its Global Institute of Sustainability, which was recently renovated with an eye towards purchasing as many recycled and recyclable materials as possible. Recycled milk-jugs and aluminum cans are incorporated into countertops, light and motion-sensor lamps respond to natural light to save energy, and conference room chairs are made from 95% recycled materials.

Six wind turbines, each expected to provide about 1,000 watts, have been installed on the roof and will be turned on as soon as roof renovations are complete. Room has also been left for future solar panels, and the building is currently pursuing LEED certification.

While some of these features are cool, we're more interested in what will be going on in the building: the 30-year-old Global Institute of Sustainability is dedicated to conducting research and education programs supporting ecologically-friendly cities and communities, often using nearby Phoenix as a living laboratory. GIOS has developed curricula for k-12 education as well as graduate and undergraduate degrees, and helps to support ASU's goals of sustainable campus development.

Image: ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability, via ASU News

Recyclemania, a light-hearted, friendly competition between campuses, aims to reduce waste and raise awareness. Over a 10-week period, colleges and universities compete in different contests to see which institution can collect the highest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest total amount of recyclables, the smallest amount of trash, and/or earn the highest recycling rate. There are also categories for individual waste products, such as paper, food products and cans. Four hundred schools participated this year across sixteen divisions, and results have just been announced.

Kalamazoo College of Michigan took first-place honors in both the Grand Champion (highest recycling rate) and Per-Capita categories, with a cumulative recycling rate of 58.93% and 75.22 lbs recycled per person over the length of the challenge. The Gorilla Prize, which awards the highest number of pounds, went to Stanford for recycling 1,231,012 lbs of waste in ten weeks. North Lake College of Irving, Texas, won the Waste Minimization prize for producing a scant 12.53 pounds of unrecycled waste per capita.

To see the rest of the awards, check Recyclemania's site here.  In total, these schools recycled 58.6 million pounds, which not only lessens the load on landfills, but also helps to minimize the impact that industry has on the environment. Many of these products, such as paper and cardboard, which would emit methane if left to degrade in a landfill, also lower carbon emissions when recycled. Congratulations to the schools involved! If you didn't participate this year, click around www.recyclemaniacs.org for ideas and consider competing next year.

Recycling is great for the environment, but what has it got to do with climate change?

Solid waste disposal is a huge generator of greenhouse gases. Trash has to be hauled away, and there are emissions released from the transportation. Carbon dioxide is emitted when waste is incinerated, and methane is released when waste is put into landfills. According to the EPA, landfills are the largest source of methane emissions (CH₄), producing 25% of all methane emissions in the United States.

When recycling, not only is there a decrease in the amount of solid waste but there is also a decrease in energy needed to make, distribute and dispose of these products. When energy use decreases, the burning of fossil fuels also decreases, therefore emitting fewer greenhouse gases. Less virgin materials are extracted, therefore protecting our natural resources. According to the EPA, in 1996 the United States recycled solid waste that prevented the release of 33 million tons of carbon—approximately the amount emitted by 25 million cars annually!!

Think about paper recycling—there is less of a need for virgin materials, in this case trees. By keeping more trees standing, carbon sequestration is increased, again reducing the carbon dioxide emitted. It is important as consumers to complete the cycle full circle, by not only recycling, but buying recycled products. Without a market for recycled products, recycling does not do anyone much good. The more consumers demand recycled products, the more they will become available!

According to an analysis of NWF Campus Ecology team members over that last five years, waste reduction, such as recycling and composting, ranked the most popular sustainability practice implemented on campus. The Berkshire School in Massachusetts doubled the tonnage of recycled products in one-year, with their student-led recycling program! Ashland University in Ohio actually went through bags of trash (talk about dedication!) to learn that 70% of the university’s trash was actually recyclable! Check out our Waste Reduction page to learn about MANY more schools that are involved in waste reduction projects on campus!