The Green Campus Enterprise is a student organization that resulted from the Carbon Neutral Academic Quality Improvement Program, a project meant to integrate Michigan Tech’s sustainability goals into the university’s education and research efforts. Created in 2008, the Green Campus Enterprise’s job is to estimate Michigan Tech’s carbon footprint and suggest ways to reduce it.
The student organization works with the executive team and provides progress reports each term in order to help select projects that will reduce the university’s environmental impact and save money. Green Campus Enterprise currently has eight teams comprised of students from varying majors, with each team working on different projects.
Each team’s project targets various types of energy usage on campus and on reducing Michigan Tech’s carbon footprint when it comes to these types of energy use.
The wind energy team is currently working on installing a wind turbine on top of Mont Ripley, while the buildings team is assessing the feasibility of a solar thermal collector near Michigan Tech’s central heating plant.
The compressed natural gas Powered vehicle team is working to reduce the gas emissions of Michigan Tech’s vehicles and evaluating the feasibility of switching from gasoline to dual fuel compressed natural gas vehicles.
The tiny house project by the campus culture team is currently one of the Green Campus Enterprise’s primary focuses, and the student organization has put out a survey (surveymonkey. com/r/tinyhousemtu) to evaluate the feasibility of a tiny house community as a housing option at Michigan Tech.
With the current shortage of housing, the Campus Culture team has suggested that a tiny house community would be more environmentally friendly and have less of an impact on the local landscape than a traditional apartment building. However, current zoning law and ordinances prevent tiny houses from being used in Houghton. “The survey is being used to gauge student interest in a tiny house community and we’ll take the results to the executive team, so we need a large number of students to participate in order to get a good sample of the student population and allow the project to continue,” said one member of the Campus Culture team.
Green Campus Enterprise is active off campus as well. Throughout the fall of 2016 members attended the Keweenaw Climate Community’s Climate Cafe events, and at the last event worked with breakout groups to facilitate discussion about the community’s response to climate change and to help plans move forward. Members also spoke at the end of a Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist service to help inform the community of what Green Campus Enterprise does and how to look at the bigger picture when it comes to sustainability.
Green Campus Enterprise also has plans for this coming spring, which include hosting a GreenTalks seminar with guest speakers discussing their own green projects and research, and a series of presentations at Houghton’s elementary school focusing on sustainability and leading up to a larger school-wide event on Earth Day
