Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability
campus, small signs are posted under each light with Uncle Sam pointing a finger and saying I
want you to turn off the lights. This catches students eyes and encourages students to flip the
light switch to off as they walk out of the room. The copy machines around campus are now
printing two-sided, reducing the amount of paper used by half. Academic course information is
transported to the faculty and students electronically now, saving up to at least 45,000 sheets of
paper for the year. There have also been flowers and shrub gardens that have been planted around
campus to reduce the watering during the summer. Around campus, Blackburn is now starting to
purchase paper that is manufactured using recycled paper and the Blackburn Bookstore now sells
paper to students that are made from recycled paper.
Blackburn College also helps with the Going Green project by saving energy. Blackburn
burns natural gas to heat campus buildings, which adds to global warming. The money that the
college saves by not buying as much heat for the campus goes towards the support for the
teaching and students programs. Not every building on campus is heated, thus saving more heat.
The campus also uses a computer-controlled Energy Management System that has a schedule of
when to turn on and off the cooling and heating. During the winter, some buildings tend to lose
some of the heat. In order to conserve more heat from going to waste, Blackburn has added
insulation to the attic of multiple buildings like Mahan, Demuzio Center, Visual Arts, Hudson,
and Lumpkin Library.
The Recycling program at Blackburn is the easiest action anyone can take to help protect
our environment. While recycling, students are helping save energy and helping with the
reduction of natural resources. On campus, cardboard, paper, catalogs, magazines, newspapers,
bottles, bottle caps, and aluminum cans are all being recycled in every building around campus.
Recently, Dr. Jim Bray, a Biology professor, was granted a total of $15,750.00 for a
composting grant and to help in the biodiesel fuel production here on campus. The composting
grant enables waste paper to be turned into compost with the production of biofuel along the
way. The used cooking oil from the dining area is saved and taken to a local recycler that allows
the oil to be able to go into its diesel truck. This will help reduce the amount of gasoline and will
also reduce the amount of cooking oil that goes to waste. Many students are involved with these
projects, including Nick Delong, Masey Blasa, Rob Hausmann, and Dan Long. Rob Hausmann,
a Biology major, says: We are in the early stages of our research at this time, but we are waiting
on the right weather to start our construction. What we are trying to do is to establish the fungal
growth on recycled paper products from the cafeteria and other places around campus. We want
to eventually extract the oily-by-products from the fungi and use them to create biodiesel. This
will help decrease the amount of oil that is wasted from the cafeteria.
In order to get the students to be more involved with the recycling program at Blackburn,
a contest takes place annually between the six residential halls. Each hall has recycling bins for
each item and the bins get dumped and weighed every day. A poster is shown in the Demuzio
Center that keeps track of which residential hall is in the lead at the end of each month.
Roger Fenton, the associate dean of the work program, comments on the Going Green
Project by saying: The Work Program is fully supportive of the program and has and will
continue to allocate work positions in support of the initiatives not only because they are
important to the college community and society for environmental reasons, but also because they
are excellent learning opportunities for students.