Keep our Electricity demand down

Thank you to all the members of the campus community who have been making the effort to reduce our electricity load during this very hot week.  As I've walked through buildings on campus to escape the outdoor heat, I see lots of closed doors with friendly notes asking passers-by to come in.
Here's a picture of a door in Smith Hall (and it's not mine!)

On another matter, I visited the farm where organic waste from The Commons kitchen is taken earlier in the week.  Sodexo employees separate compostable, raw fruits and veggies which are then transported to Frasier Farms. There they are added to the compost pile where they decompose and are eventually used to build up the soil on the farm.  Rather than ending up in the landfill in Berlin, the waste helps local veggies grow.

Beat the Peak - Day 1

Is it HOT our there!?  On Tuesday, August 27, 2013 between 1 PM and 4 PM we will have our first opportunity this academic year to "Beat the Peak".  To beat the electricity peak we have at the start of each year, we need to make individual efforts to see a collective result.
Here's what you can do to help.

Students

• Turn off your lights, fans, and all electronics before you leave your room.  
• If you see electricity being used where it doesn't need to be, like lights on in a common area during the middle of the day, turn them off!

Faculty and Staff

• Close your office door so that air conditioning can work as effectively as possible.  (Perhaps post a sign "This door is closed to conserve energy, please knock".
• Turn off lights  when leaving any room on campus. 
• If you have good natural lighting, consider not using lights at all.

To get more information about the electricity peak, check out the Energy tab on this blog
or go to http://riponcollegesustainability.blogspot.com/p/energy.html

I will be sending out a Beat the Peak reminder about five more times during the first couple of weeks of classes, depending on the weather forecast.  I hope to be able to share good news of reduced Peak Electricity Use when we receive our campus utility bill in October.  Let's use less so that we have more!

More. Together.

Campus Sustainability has a new home

Campus Sustainability is off to a busy start.  On Thursday of this week I met with the new Sodexo intern for Sustainability, Kaitlyn Welzen (WelzenK@ripon.edu).  It was great hearing about the work she intends to be doing as the intern. I'm sure there will be at least one post dedicated solely to her.  However, for a preview, here's the focus of the work she'll be starting this semester:

• Initiating a Food Council in the residence halls. This will be a forum where dorm residents can meet with her to give her feedback on the food service on campus and get to comment or preview the upcoming menus.  Here's a great chance to get your voice heard!
• Currently organic waste is collected in some of the prep areas in The Commons kitchen. Kaitlyn, who also has worked for Sodexo, will work to educated those doing the prep work on what is compostable and set up clearly labeled compost bins and a bin storage area. During the growing season, the campus compost is taken to Frasier Farms right here in Ripon.  Even though you won't see composting in the dining rooms this semester, it is happening in the prep areas.  If you're interested in helping us quantify how much food is being composted, please get in touch with the Coordinator or Kaitlyn.
• Finally, Kaitlyn will be working on putting in place a process for donating unused and pre-made food to area food banks.

These are ambitious goals, but certainly attainable. This really is an exciting time to be working on food-related topics here on campus. (See pictures of the delicious food growing on campus)

After meeting with Kaitlyn I had the privilege of presenting the mission and activities of Campus Sustainability to this year's Orientation Committee (the talk I gave can be found here).  What a great group of students. There are now 34 additional students on campus who know about sustainability and who will help get out the message about reducing our carbon footprint using common sense actions.  I hope these students will stay in touch and keep bringing me their ideas.

Also on Thursday, Campus Sustainability found a home on campus.  The office of the Sustainability Coordinator is in 207 Smith Hall.

Finally, before leaving campus, I swung by the Facilities building to drop off some more Single-Stream recycling labels to be used on containers around campus. While there I took a look (and then a walk) around the campus garden.  It is bursting with tomatoes and cucumbers. The pumpkins are looking adorable. It will be so fun to harvest them come October. The garden is largely the work of Kaitlyn Welzen (yep, same one who is interning at Sodexo). The fruit trees planted  over the last few years by the fine folks at Facilities are starting to bear fruit. I can't wait to taste the different apple varieties.

Cute pumpkins... growing... growing

Apples starting to ripen

Cherry tomatoes by the dozen

Modest harvest of cucumbers and tomatoes that needed picking.  Gazpacho anyone?

Welcome Back to Campus

On Thursday, August 22, the campus sustainability coordinator is meeting with this year's residence hall RA's during their orientation.  I am really excited to have this opportunity to share with them what campus sustainability is all about and hope that they, in turn, will help engage their fellow students in reducing their carbon footprint on campus.  The talk I'll give can be found here.
This blog and the pages tabbed at the top give details on the efforts of sustainability across the Ripon College campus. Please email questions or stop by the sustainability office with any questions or ideas you may have. As you'll know from the presentation, there are very few disciplines which do not  relate to sustainability!

Meanwhile, practice some common sense actions to preserve our mutual natural resources:

• turn off lights, fans, computers, and other electronics when leaving a room, especially on hot afternoons
• turn off lights in unoccupied rooms you walk by - don't wait for someone else to do it
• take showers to bathe, not to empty the aquifer we all share
• walk or bike across campus
• get outside and enjoy our beautiful campus and prairie

See you all around.

Summer 2013 Campus Garden

While most of us are away from campus during the summer, some students who are on campus as interns have maintained and even expanded the Campus Garden.  Take a look and see what's growing!

The garden has been expanded this year.

Because it is sometimes challenging to find students who will be on campus to maintain the garden, there has been a shift towards planting perennials like raspberries. Yum!

Look at these rows of tomatoes. We're looking forward to sampling the varieties when we return to campus.

Check out more garden pictures at EGOR's Facebook group page; search "Environmental Group of Ripon ( EGOR ) "