A walk through an increasingly sustainable campus

I took a break this weekend from developing this blog to see what I could capture as some real time visual examples to bring to light some of the things we are doing every day to be sustainable. Here is what I found.

First, we can see that students are no longer using trays. This saves enormously on the amount of water we need to use in the dining hall. Additionally, like shopping carts, sometimes trays were an invitation to pick things up that we could not really eat, producing more food waste and increasing our costs.

And here is a little reminder that it is better to err on the side of frugality ’cause you can always come back for more if you didn’t get the portion right. But if you take too much it turns into more garbage.

In the dining hall, we sort all our waste into two bins – items that can be composted or items than cannot be put into the composted (but might be recycled). We also weigh the total waste collected each meal – the waste bins are each on a scale – with an aim to reducing this over time.

We now have a tiny little Suzuki pick-up truck, which us mainly used around campus. This has dramatically reduced the need to use our heavy diesel-drinking Ford 350 Pick-up truck, which you can can see in white next to its diminutive new brother.

And I come across the construction of our new kayak dock. What does this have to do with sustainability? The wood is locally sourced and is milled at the William Head Institution, sometimes referred to as Club Fed, just a few kilometers along the shore from the College. Maya looks at the work as her father, Erik Schauff, our Seafront Manager, maneuvers our boat, Second Nature, preparing to pull the dock into the water.

Next stop in our recycling shed, where everything is looking tidy and ready to take on a weekend’s worth of recycling.

And on to our “Earth Tub”, Canada’s first use of the tub. Here is where we compost our food waste. Faculty member, Raphael Jenks, and his team of students in our “Growing Opportunities” activity have become masters of using the Earth Tub and we think we will need another one to keep up with the demand.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to look inside. Looks like a new load was recently added. Yes, it’s time for a second Earth Tub.

Now this is where things get tasty. The work of our wonderful composter turns into great compost, which the students then use to grow, at this time of year, our salad greens. A good looking crop given it is almost December and we are at 48 degrees North Latitude.

I see the bike shed door open and drop in to say hello to Amit, PC Year 38, from Fiji who is getting ready to take one of our bicycles out for a ride. We purchased a fleet of twenty bicycles six years ago from a generous donation from the parents of an alum. We are now ready to start rebuilding the fleet as we need about ten new bicycles.

Finally, on my way back to the main part of campus, I can see Erik about to pull the new kayaking dock into the water.