{"id":16720,"date":"2021-01-29T16:38:17","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T23:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=16720"},"modified":"2021-01-26T16:42:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T23:42:04","slug":"reduce-reuse-recycle-ccs-sustainability-efforts-shift-to-accommodate-pandemic-protocols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2021\/01\/reduce-reuse-recycle-ccs-sustainability-efforts-shift-to-accommodate-pandemic-protocols\/","title":{"rendered":"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? CC\u2019s sustainability efforts shift to accommodate pandemic protocols"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Before Times, Colorado College students would go to the college\u2019s cafeteria, grab reusable plates and silverware, and serve themselves from a spread of food. At the college\u2019s coffee shop, students could bring their own mugs instead of using disposable to-go cups.<\/p>\n

But then the pandemic hit, and\u00a0guidelines\u00a0for COVID-19 safety began encouraging everyone to embrace single-use containers. At CC, pandemic safety included serving food on\u00a0disposable products\u00a0in the dining halls and delivering packaged meals to\u00a0quarantined students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe waste stream that\u2019s coming off of that has been much larger and much more concentrated,\u201d said Director of Sustainability Ian Johnson in a recent interview with The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. \u201cEven just hauling the waste has become an issue just because of the concentrated loads,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0college campuses\u00a0across the country try to mitigate the spread of Coronavirus by reinventing packed cafeterias as takeout locations, some worry waste may be\u00a0piling up.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of health reasons, everything has to be served in a to-go container. That\u2019s just not something that can be negotiated,\u201d said Westly Joseph \u201921<\/strong>, the zero-waste programming and outreach intern for CC\u2019s Office of Sustainability.<\/p>\n

One strategy? Film a video for incoming students to watch during New Student Orientation that explains how to dispose of Bon App\u00e9tit\u2019s most commonly used containers.\u00a0The video, called \u201cTrash Talk,\u201d demonstrates which containers go into compost, recycling, or trash. Joseph said the Office of Sustainability also suggested that Bon App\u00e9tit [the college\u2019s food service provider] should only give students plastic silverware with their meal if they requested it.<\/p>\n

Still, waste overflow in the quarantined dorms proliferated. Originally, Sodexo \u2014 the hospitality company that works with CC \u2014 had employees going through the dorms to sanitize high-touch surfaces and take out trash, Joseph said, but there was so much waste they couldn\u2019t stay on top of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen Sodexo suggested that students, when they go into their outside time, drop their trash off in the dumpsters,\u201d Joseph told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. \u201cWith the help of students, that was the best option.\u201d<\/p>\n

This winter, the college will participate in the \u201cCampus Race to Zero Waste,\u201d an annual competition during which institutional participants weigh everything in the trash, recycling, and compost bins to track how much waste they produce. When the competition occurs, the Office of Sustainability will have more data on the amount of waste on campus this semester, Joseph said.<\/p>\n

In addition to disposable containers, pandemic\u00a0guidelines\u00a0encourage increased ventilation capacities in buildings, which is effectively measured by the number of air changes per hour in an area. Air changes are facilitated by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, so a necessary increase in the number of air changes lead to HVAC systems using more energy.<\/p>\n

Because of the pandemic, CC increased air changes in buildings from about two per hour to three. \u201cSo we\u2019re looking at roughly about a 33% increase in heating and cooling loads,\u201d Johnson said, though he added that some of the increase is being offset by a \u201cde-densified\u201d campus.<\/p>\n

During the cooling season (summer), increased airflow means that more chilled air needs to enter a room. CC uses electrical chillers that run on renewable energy. \u201cAnd so while we have an increased energy profile, we don\u2019t have an increased carbon footprint associated with that,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt just means that we\u2019re consuming more solar power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conversely, the heating season (winter) uses warm air from a central heating plant that is primarily fueled by natural gas. Though natural gas produces far fewer greenhouse gases than burning coal or oil, it is still a nonrenewable energy source that produces emissions, consequently increasing CC\u2019s carbon footprint.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo by Ian Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

In\u00a0January, CC fulfilled its goal of becoming 100% carbon neutral by 2020. That means the school has a net carbon footprint of zero \u2014 the output of emissions is equal to the amount the school sequesters, or takes out of, the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

CC sequesters emissions through carbon offsets, which are monetary investments into projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it elsewhere. The increase in emissions due to more frequent air changes will probably lead to further investment into carbon offset projects, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

CC has also seen decreased emissions in some areas. For example, fleet vehicles are not traveling as often, and the pandemic has grounded most business travel.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the fundamental shifts that happen here may permanently alter our greenhouse gas profile and what those sources are, but only time will tell,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Though the concerns surrounding pandemic waste and energy are nothing to sneeze at, for Johnson and Joseph, sustainability isn\u2019t just about the environment \u2014 it\u2019s about improving the welfare of society in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cSustainability is not just environmentalism,\u201d Joseph said. \u201cIt\u2019s racial justice. It\u2019s gender equity. It\u2019s sustainability of having work that you can be passionate about and that you can do for the foreseeable future rather than being burnt out.There are many different aspects of sustainability, and our office acknowledges that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson agreed, citing the United Nations\u2019\u00a0Sustainable Development Goals\u00a0as getting at a broader understanding of the word \u201csustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not just going to go back to business as usual,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut what is a reasonable thing to start planning for, and how do we get around some of these hurdles and start doing this in a way that is more environmentally sustainable? \u2026 Sustainability is about meeting needs now and into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Original publication date: Sept. 30<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Before Times, Colorado College students would go to the college\u2019s cafeteria, grab reusable plates and silverware, and serve themselves from a spread of food. At the college\u2019s coffee shop, students could bring their own mugs instead of using disposable to-go cups. But then the pandemic hit, and\u00a0guidelines\u00a0for COVID-19 safety began encouraging everyone to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":16632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-16720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2020","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2021\/01\/Poster-Regular.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16720"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16847,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720\/revisions\/16847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}