February 2015 – Sustainability & Environment @ OWU

OWU Awarded $10k Grant to Fund May Move Out Effort

Wednesday February 11 2015: Ohio Wesleyan was awarded $10,000 from the Delaware, Knox, Marion, Morrow (DKMM) Joint Solid Waste District for our May Move Out effort for 2015 through the efforts of the Sustainability Task Force.

Wednesday February 11 2015: Ohio Wesleyan was awarded $10,000 from the Delaware, Knox, Marion, Morrow (DKMM) Joint Solid Waste District for our May Move Out effort for 2015 through the efforts of the Sustainability Task Force. The project, originally developed and implemented by student Sarah D’Alexander in 2012, diverts reusable and recyclable materials from the trash during the student move out at the end of the spring semester. Grant funds will offset costs to OWU for pod rental (for short term storage of reusable and recyclable materials, and transport to our partners at Goodwill Industries) as well as promotional and educational efforts. The Sustainability Task Force (STF) guided the grant proposal, and students in John Krygier’s Geography 360 course (Environmental Geography) as well as Green House SLU members will be working on the project with Goodwill Industries, OWU Buildings and Grounds and OWU Residential Life.

Project Description:

Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) looks to significantly enhance and expand recycling/reuse efforts on our campus among its nearly 1,750 students who bring furnishings, clothing, small appliances and other items to outfit their residence hall living spaces each year. Much of the materials they bring and accumulate over an academic year do not go with them when they leave campus for the summer.

In fact, at the end of each spring semester over a few days, OWU students dump in excess of 43 tons of materials, much of which could be recycled or reused, into garbage dumpsters as they prepare to depart campus. Furniture, lamps, flat screen TVs, clothes, computers – usually of high quality and relatively new – end up in landfills, particularly as students from outside the state and country find they do not have the resources to move and travel with these items.

Ohio Wesleyan seeks to develop a partnership with Goodwill Industries to divert as many student discards as possible away from the landfill. We seek to build a sustainable model for “May Move Out” (as students move out of campus at the end of spring semester in May) that includes, in addition to significant waste diversion, an educational component whereby OWU students come to understand the significance of the waste they generate and learn to anticipate, plan, and reduce their waste impact. Further, the May Move Out program will engage students from several campus environmental organizations in working with Goodwill, OWU’s Buildings and Grounds, Residential and Campus cleaning staff as well as faculty in the Environmental Studies Program. Therefore, we believe our proposed program will, in addition to significant waste diversion, serve as an important pedagogical and service learning opportunity for our students. The desire to partner with a respected community organization with a shared goal of the reuse of materials, the capacity to handle a sizable addition of inventory for their stores and other enterprises and the desire to work with our students made Goodwill Industries our first choice for an off-campus partner.

The project outlined in this proposal builds on earlier efforts which involved recycling boxes in the residence halls and OWU students and staff sorting through the donated materials to then deliver appropriate materials to community organizations. The current proposed initiative addresses challenges and inadequacies with such previous end of year move out attempts and incorporates a partnership with a community organization that can provide the staffing and expertise needed to most successfully make use of the materials generated.

Meetings and discussions with Goodwill Industries and OWU Buildings & Grounds staff, students and faculty, resulted in the May Move Out project concept. The project entails:

Placement of 9 storage containers aka pods at selected locations on the Residential side of campus, near garbage dumpsters to allow separation of recyclable and non-recyclable materials at each of the 9 sites.
OWU students and Goodwill staff posted at the pods as “Diversion Consultants” to answer questions about what items would be considered waste vs. recyclable/reuse over the 4 day move-out period. We propose to leave some pods open and unmonitored, and will compare contents in those pods to contents in monitored pods to assess the ability of students to self-sort waste from recyclable/reusable materials.
Relocation of the pods after the 6 (or are we saying 4 – pods open on the weekend?) day student move out period to the Goodwill Industries facility in Delaware, Ohio where contents will be sorted and processed by Goodwill staff. OWU student “Diversion Consultants” may be involved at this stage of the process to assess the collected materials.An educational campaign is required for the proposed project to work. OWU will build on an existing campaign called “Pack it in, Pack it up, Pack it out” to include the option to recycle/reuse. Components of this campaign include:

Training of Residential Advisors on Residence Hall floors to understand the May Move Out and resources available to them and students on their floors.
Creation of basic recycle/reuse or waste guidelines, on postcards distributed to students with email access to “Consultants” as well as social media messaging. Similar information on posters will be placed near waste areas in residential buildings.
Events in the spring semester to raise awareness of the May Move Out campaign to include informational tables in the Campus Center, in Residential Food Service areas, and other locations.

Ohio Wesleyan’s project best fits the Non-Residential Recycling/Waste Reduction Project as defined in the Delaware Knox Marion Morrow Solid Waste Management District (DKMM SWD) 2015 Recycling & Market Development Project Application Handbook. OWU’s request is part of the institution’s larger plan to foster a culture of sustainability on campus as further outlined in item #5 below. Specifically, OWU seeks $10,000 to address priorities of DKMM SWD to foster and encourage collection and reuse of recyclable materials from the campus community.

With the campus drawing students from 46 states (with over 50% from Ohio) and 43 countries, this initiative provides a unique opportunity to reach a broad audience in our recycling educational efforts and hopes to inspire recycling practices in students that will continue after they graduate.

OWU’s Vogel Lecture 2015: “Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland”

In the 60s, Cleveland suffered through violence, spiking crime rates, and a shrinking tax base, as the city lost jobs and population. When the Cuyahoga River caught fire in the summer of 1969, the city was at tis nadir, polluted, and impoverished, struggling to set a new course. Carl Stokes, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city and his administration set new policies to combat pollution, improve housing and spark downtown development.

The Cuyahoga River in the 1960s (above, source)

1952 Cuyahoga River fire (above, source)

Mayor Carl Stokes and Ben Stefanski, city utilities director, meet with reporters on the banks of the Cuyahoga, the day after the fire (above, source)

The 31st Annual Joseph and Edith Vogel Lecture

Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland.

Monday March 2, 2015 @ 7:30pm
Benes Rooms A & B, Hamilton-Williams Campus Center

“The Real Utopias of Argentina” Visiting Worker Cooperatives and Sustainable Farms on an OWU Travel Learning Course

Poverty, Equity, Social Justice Course Connect Spring Lecture

“The Real Utopias of Argentina” Visiting Worker Cooperatives and Sustainable Farms on a Travel Learning Course.

Paul S. Dean, Assistant Professor of Sociology / Anthropology. Wednesday, March 18 at noon, Corns 312

Poverty, Equity, Social Justice Course Connect Spring Lecture

“The Real Utopias of Argentina” Visiting Worker Cooperatives and Sustainable Farms on a Travel Learning Course.

Paul S. Dean, Assistant Professor of Sociology / Anthropology. Wednesday, March 18 at noon, Corns 312

The purpose of PESJ is sharing information, analysis about the impact of poverty, (in)equity & social justice, locally, nationally & globally. A sense of what social remedies and activism may reduce these disparities. Free and open to the public. OWU Sponsoring Organization/Office: PESJ Course Connection. Contact: Pam Laucher at jcdurst@owu.edu.

Neighbors Object to Proposed Denison University Solar Panels

One of the often unanticipated challenges of sustainability is the aesthetic. Solar or wind generated energy may be well supported in the abstract, but in practice even people with strong pro-green beliefs may object to having to see solar panels or wind turbines. Denison University is dealing with this issue as they move to install a series of solar panels in the campus’s biological reserve.

One of the often unanticipated challenges of sustainability is the aesthetic. Solar or wind generated energy may be well supported in the abstract, but in practice even people with strong pro-green beliefs may object to having to see solar panels or wind turbines. Denison University is confronting this issue as they move to install a series of solar panels in the campus’s biological reserve. Neighbors, some who seem to support solar energy, don’t support it when they have to look at the panels.

An interesting question is how to anticipate and diffuse this type of aesthetic objection to green technologies. A similar issue comes into play when considering more eco-friendly practices on campus, which may interfere with the expected campus grounds aesthetic (green, weed free lawns, for example).

There have been discussions about a potential solar panel installation on City of Delaware property, south-east of OWU’s campus. The project would involve a collaboration between campus and the City of Delaware. That project is on hold for the time being, until the project becomes more financially feasible.

The full Denison story is below. Article and image reproduced from the Columbus Dispatch, Monday February 2, 2015.

By Eric Lyttle

GRANVILLE, Ohio — Denison University’s Biological Reserve is 350 acres of woods, walking paths and wildlife.

Lately, it has also become a battlefield of sorts, pitting property owners on its perimeter against the university that owns and maintains the reserve.

Gill Wright Miller enjoys sitting on her two-tiered deck and soaking in the serenity of the view. She said she bought her home eight years ago, and also built the back deck, because of the location. Many of her Welsh Hills Road neighbors bought their homes for the same reason. Their properties abut the Biological Reserve.

But since Denison announced in October that it hoped to cover about 8 reserve acres of trees and undergrowth behind Miller’s house with 5,000 or so solar panels, she and a number of her neighbors have been on a mission to stop the project.

Although she graduated from Denison in 1974 and is chairwoman of the university’s dance program, she has accused the school of moral trickery, a lack of transparency and class warfare in its effort to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel.

“I have nothing against solar power,” said Miller. “I have geothermal. My house is ecologically friendly. I’m all for reducing your carbon footprint. I just think Denison has mismanaged its commitment to the people of this community and that it’s chosen to reduce its carbon footprint at the expense of its modest neighbors.”

Granville’s Board of Zoning and Building Appeals unanimously granted Denison’s application for a permit on Jan. 8, despite protests by residents, including Miller.

Nine neighbors filed an appeal of that decision on Jan. 20. Granville’s Village Council is to hear the appeal at its meeting on either Feb. 18 or March 4.

The first time most people heard of Denison’s solar plan was in October, when the university announced its intent to work with American Electric Power Energy to install solar panels in the Biological Reserve, plus 1,000 panels to be installed near the university’s physical plant on Rt. 661.

AEP Energy would provide the panels and sell the solar-generated electricity to the university. As designed, the solar array would provide about 2 megawatts of electricity, or about 15 percent of the university’s annual electrical use. The installation would reduce the university’s reliance on fossil fuels by 8 to 10 percent.

Jeremy King, Denison’s sustainability coordinator, said it was a big step toward meeting the university’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, a goal that Denison pledged when it signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment in 2010.

When word trickled out that the intended site was the southeastern edge of the Biological Reserve, within 100 yards of houses along Welsh Hills Road, neighbors were quick to respond.

An informational meeting with the community was held on Oct. 8, and residents peppered university officials with questions about the impact on the reserve and how it would affect their lives and property values.

“The Bio Reserve has been deemed a reserve for the community’s use for almost 50 years. The university has promoted it as such. Realtors use it as a pitch for nearby properties,” said Miller. “Then suddenly, we’re told that they’re going to mow down acres of trees and that we’ll be living next to what amounts to a power plant.”

King, who also lives on Welsh Hills Road, said the university attempted to address all of the residents’ concerns, providing research and documents and talking to anyone who asked. It promised to keep a buffer of vegetation between the panels and nearby homes.

“It’s a challenging position to put Jeremy in with his neighbors,” said Seth Patton, the university’s vice president of finance and management. “From my perspective, he’s gone above and beyond.”

Miller is unhappy that the university announced its plans without first talking to neighbors.

She said Denison could find another site or pay for more-expensive but more-efficient solar panels.

“They say they’re not saving any money on electricity with this proposal. They say it’s a financial wash,” Miller said. “But what’s the problem with Denison investing into reducing its carbon footprint to avoid cutting trees, reducing green space, diminishing the Bio Reserve and diminishing our property values?”

Miller and her neighbors based their appeal of the zoning change on their assertion that the project does not meet all of the five criteria mandated for a conditional-use permit. One of those criteria requires that the array will not diminish surrounding property values.

Zoning-board member Neil Zimmers said there is no historical evidence to suggest that a solar array has had any effect, positive or negative, on neighboring properties. Without such evidence, he and his fellow board members voted to approve.

Both sides will have the opportunity to address Granville’s village council during the appeal. Following that, the council can either affirm or reverse the zoning board’s decision. It also can send the case back to the board to reconsider, or modify the board’s decision.

Either party can then appeal the council’s decision to Licking County Common Pleas Court.

elyttle@dispatch.com