Through the Green Fund, a financial support program for sustainability projects, University of Wisconsin-Madison students have pushed for campus environmental projects including B-Cycles, tower gardens and preventive stickers on building windows for birds.
UW-Madison Office of Sustainability interns Lily Jenkins, Catie Stympft and Jordyn Czyzewski led an environmentally focused tour on Friday as a part of the weeklong “Sustain-A-Bash” campus celebration. They stopped at residence halls, dining halls and the Nicholas Recreation Center to highlight student Green Fund projects in action.
Getting campus to “go green” has been a work in progress for Green Fund contributors and Office of Sustainability interns. They pushed for dining hall waste programs, greater installation of solar panels and for the university to get an environmental grounds certification.
“It’s one step at a time,” Jenkins told The Daily Cardinal.
The Green Fund has made moving in and out of residence halls less wasteful, Stumpf said during a tour stop at Smith Residence Hall.
“Before move-in, [we] encourage residents to think about what they’re choosing to bring with them on campus and what’s necessary,” Stumpf said. “During move-out, we also have donation drives too, so at the end of the school year, we’ll have staff that set up big trucks, and then anything that students have that they won’t use next year can get donated or repurposed.”
Altogether, the sustainable move-out program diverts more than 150,000 pounds of discarded material from landfills annually, Stumpf told the tour.
At Ogg Residence Hall, Czyzewski told the Cardinal about a project to put sticker dots on windows to discourage birds from flying into them. After an organization that collects data on bird collisions reported troubling data, the Green Fund stepped in to diminish the problem.
“By putting up these vinyl stickers, it acts as a distortion or to mute reflections that birds can tend to see. They’re like, ‘oh, I see a juniper tree,’ but it’s really just a reflection in the window,” Czyzweski said.
Dining goes green
At the top of the Nicholas Recreation Center, the tour viewed solar panels on Gordon Dining Hall’s roof. Jenkins said the panels generate enough electricity to “power five Wisconsin homes.”
Campus bus stops now have solar panels that power the bus map and lights, and some campus buses are electric.
Stumpf said the roof and electrical systems of many older campus buildings can’t support solar panels, providing a barrier to additional clean energy installations. In the future, Stumpf said she hopes the university can integrate solar power into new construction builds as the need for cleaner energy becomes more prevalent.
Stumpf said Gordon’s has several other green initiatives including a Tower Garden, cardboard compactor and a living roof: a partially or completely covered waterproof membrane that supports plant life and helps pollinators, mitigates stormwater runoff and contributes to biodiversity.
A cardboard compactor efficiently compresses cardboard waste into bales for easier transportation and storage. Gordon Dining Hall has utilized this machine so much that the dining hall has its own recycling pick up.
Gordon’s also has a Green Fund sponsored waste reduction program. Czyzewski said the project analyzes “where food waste is coming from in the dining halls and how we can reduce it.”
Campus B-Cycle stations
At a B-Cycle station, Stumpf discussed how B-Cycles came to campus in 2011 as a Green Fund and Campus Leaders for Energy Action Now (CLEAN) project. B-Cycles are electric bikes students can rent around campus.
The goal of the B-Cycles is a “sustainable commuter system” that will hopefully rely less on services like Uber in the future, Stumpf said during the tour.
Future of sustainability on campus
“The university just realized a ton of new sustainability goals on campus, and every single project in different disciplines and intersectional environmental work plays its own role in advancing those interests,” Stumpf said.
The new campus sustainability goals include a project called Focus on Energy Higher Education Kit Challenge which helps UW-Madison students and staff save energy, launch of the Sustainability Research Hub and other goals Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced in February.
“Change takes a really long time to get instilled, but the fact that people are aware of sustainability issues and they’re able to relate to it in their own sense of place is a huge part of the movement,” Jenkins said. “Every project that the Green Fund, the Office and any other student organization does here makes a difference.”
