Current Projects:
Wartburg Vegetable and Herb Garden
Wartburg students in IS 101: Sustainability competed against others within their class to obtain $500 to implement a sustainability project on campus that they saw necessary. The funds came from the NWF Campus Ecology Fellows grant received by Wartburg students involved in the course Non-Profit Management in 2009. The students in the IS 101 course voted for their favorite project and the one that won proposed a vegetable garden that would be located on the corner of 5th Ave NW and 7th St NW. Having won, the group is planned the garden and secured additional funding to make it possible. On Earth Day, garden planners and volunteers got to work constructing a fence around the garden plot, measuring and marking rows, and planting the first seeds of the garden. By the end of the first week of May term, the radishes and peas had already made an appearance in the garden. Here are some interesting and quick facts about the garden:
- Produce from the garden will go to Dining Services to be incorporated into the meals they provide
- Excess produce will go to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank
- The creation of the garden led to the ability for partial composting to come back to Wartburg
- All seeds and start-up plants were purchased by Dining Services
- The garden will be volunteer run, and we need YOU to volunteer! If you are interested, email sustainability@wartburg.edu with “Garden” in the subject line.
Recycling Expansion
Student Senate, EESI, and the Physical Plant are joining forces to try to expand the availability of recycling across campus in both the academic buildings and the residence halls. Current project plans for the academic buildings foresee expansion in the Science Center and Fine Arts Building in the beginning and may include Neumann. In the residence halls, Senate held a survey to see how recycling could most effectively be expanded and has now collected boxes to give to rooms who asked for a recycling collection box. An informational sheet will go with the boxes detailing what can be recycled and how to recycle it. Questions? Email sustainability@wartburg.edu with “Recycling Expansion” in the subject line.
Photosensitive Lighting
In the areas where their installation is practical, maintenance staff are installing photosensitive lighting, or lighting that recognizes if it needs to be on or not by the amount of light that is already present in a space. So far, these lights are already installed in the walkway outside of the Mensa as well as a few other locations on campus.
Recent Projects:
2nd Annual Go Green Fair
Wartburg hosted its 2nd Annual Go Green Fair on Sunday, January 31st in the afternoon. More then 200 people showed up to see displays set up by more than 20 vendors about topics ranging from Radon detection to local foods. A complete list of vendors will be available shortly with more information about the event on this website. Stay posted!
February Greenathon (formerly the Wartburg-Luther Energy Challenge)
This year, instead of competing against archrival Luther College, the energy challenge was focused on the individual challenge to make the necessary changes in our own lives. A play off of a marathon, the February Greenathon offered weekly training regimens, stressing the notion that, like running a marathon, living a sustainable lifestyle takes training. Participants in the training were to follow the steps in the regimen and journal about how the action impacted them. At the end of each week, the journal responses were submitted for a weekly prize and a grand prize at the end of the month. Grand prize winner Susan Lenius had this to say about the month-long training experience: “After this month, I will definitely look at everything differently. But this month is only a good beginning…This has truly been an eye-opening month!” In conjunction with the training regimens, there were different events held throughout the month of February in an effort to reach a larger audience.
EESI Website!
This website is a recent development and is still in the works. Take a look around, be critical. This website is supposed to serve as a tool to help YOU so help us make sure we are doing a good job. Email sustainability@wartburg.edu with any comments (good or bad).
EESI Facebook Group Page
In an effort to get out to people through social media, we created a Facebook group page to serve as a forum for ideas and discussion regarding sustainability at Wartburg, in our community, and in our lives. The group is called “Going Green at Wartburg College”. Please join us and leave ideas or enter into the conversations you see there!
Opening Picnic
The Opening Picnic, which followed the Opening Convocation on Tuesday Sept. 8th, was BYOBC (Bring Your Own Beverage Container). As a part of an effort to encourage sustainable practices such as reducing waste, President Colson, Dining Services and the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative Task Force (EESI) asked people to bring their own beverage containers to the opening picnic.
Water Bottles
All incoming students for the fall of 2009 received a reusable water bottle as part of their orientation materials. Funding for the bottles came from Wartburg’s Student Senate through a collaborative effort with the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative Task Force. The bottles are aluminum and green in color—not just to reinforce that the project was about sustainability, but because green stands out better on an orange campus than orange or black would. In support of the initiative, Dining Services offered to give a "Free Refill" coupon to all the first-years to use in conjunction with the water bottles.
Maintenance/Grounds
Currently, all of the residence halls have low-flow appliances, including low-flow showerheads, toilets, and, in some instances, low-flow faucets. This initiative has been in the works for a while and was completed summer of 2009 after a delay due to the floods of the summer of 2008.
Dining Services
Wartburg’s Dining Services department has made great strides toward becoming more sustainable. A couple of the more major achievements have been going tray-less in the Mensa and purchasing front-loading washers. Going tray-less has led to savings in water, the energy needed to heat the water, the number of dishes that need to be done, and the amount of food and water waste generated. The front-loading washers, over the period of 48 days, saved 14,976 gallons of water and have decreased the number of loads that need to be done each day.
Education and Curriculum
Sustainability is increasingly woven throughout the curriculum at Wartburg and can be found in different educational arenas across campus and expanding beyond the classroom. The most obvious examples of this are in the Environmental Studies minor and the many courses that either focus or include in the teaching some sort of emphasis on sustainability, including the most recent addition of an IS 101 course focused solely on sustainability.
But education on sustainability is more than just what can be found in the classroom. Every year, more and more ways are found to become more sustainable as individuals, groups, or the community as a whole. Student Senate continues to work diligently toward environmental sustainability, student organizations continue to hold events that focus on sustainability, and community building activities within the residence halls occasionally revolves around topics of how students can become more sustainable.
