Students of Green Campus Enterprise (GCE) work closely with our campus administrators to reduce our energy and food waste, track our carbon emissions each year, and engage the community in reducing our footprint on-campus. Tracking our carbon footprint on-campus is necessary for students and staff to mitigate the impacts they have.
The Faculty Advisor for GCE, Robert Handler, said, “That was what sort of started the Green Campus Enterprise, was this interest in measuring and hopefully managing our campus carbon footprint.” Handler added, “Measuring all those inputs and outputs of our campus operations, and tallying up their impacts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, is one way we can get a handle on where we’re at, and it helps us think about actions we can take or technologies we could invest in that would give us the most bang for our buck.”
GCE allows students to gain valuable career skills. Handler noted, “Many companies hire sustainability professionals who can do carbon footprinting and sustainability auditing.” Handler added, “The people that join Green Campus Enterprise, to do this carbon footprinting, don’t need any special training… We can take anyone with a love for spreadsheets and an interest in sustainability, teach them, and get them involved.”
Students and staff can help GCE by providing data. Handler mentioned, “One of the main impacts that students have is their commuting behavior… Every year in the springtime we send out a campus commuting survey to faculty, staff, and students to try and get a handle on how much people are driving, where they’re driving from, maybe they take alternative forms of transportation, like walking or biking, or public transit.”
There’s more ways students can get involved by measuring food waste. Handler said, “The Office of Sustainability on-campus hosts several ‘Weigh the Waste’ events at our dining halls on-campus to get a sense of how much food waste is actually being generated.”
Outside of GCE, faculty are also working to reduce our carbon footprint. Handler noted, “Our facilities staff does a really good job keeping an eye on what they can do to improve efficiency slowly over time, but they are faced with a lot of legacy infrastructure.” Handler described the thousands of fluorescent lightbulbs which are being replaced with LED bulbs, and the possibility of retrofitting old buildings with modern HVAC technology to reduce heating costs in winter.
The university using renewable energy sources has also helped reduce our carbon footprint. Handler said, “By far the biggest thing that the university has chosen to do is to purchase half of our electricity from carbon free sources, like wind power… We have a contract with Wolverine Power, who operates a wind farm in lower Michigan, to sell us renewable energy credits.” Utilizing renewable energy, reducing wasted energy, and tracking where resources are going all help track and reduce carbon emissions on-campus.
For more information about GCE visit greencampus.enterprise.mtu.edu. To contact GCE, email greencampus@mtu.edu.
