In April 2013, Colby became one of the first colleges in the United States to achieve carbon neutrality. The College has now maintained carbon neutral status longer than any college or university in the country.
According to Maddio LoDico, the College’s director of sustainability, environmentalism and sustainability have “always been very near and dear to Colby’s heart.” Reaching the goal of carbon neutrality “was definitely a labor of love,” LoDico said. Strategies involving the use of renewable energy resources, minimization of waste, and offsetting of emissions have allowed the College to reach and preserve carbon neutrality.
Renewable energy makes up a large portion of the College’s sustainability efforts. Solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling, and a biomass plant are all in use on campus.
The College owns a nine-acre solar farm consisting of 5,300 solar panels about a mile from campus, and there are also solar panels installed atop the Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center that provide electricity for the building. The solar farm produces about 12% of the campus’s electricity needs.
Two buildings on campus, the Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center and the Davis Science Center, are heated and cooled using geothermal technologies. These buildings are the farthest from the College’s central heating system and rely completely on geothermal loop systems for temperature regulation.
Members of the facilities team often refer to the biomass plant as the central heating plant. The plant uses locally-sourced woodchips and puts them through an intricate process of conveyer belts, augers, magnets, and boilers that LoDico describes as “essentially a very complex tea kettle” to provide the College with heat and hot water.
Waste management and minimization also play important roles in the College’s constant working toward sustainability goals. This includes recycling, compost, and water efficiency.
Recycling at the College is single-stream which means that if the item has a recycling symbol on it, it’s accepted in any recycling bin on campus. “We are the ones that get to decide the fate of our waste,” LoDico said, “and whether or not we want to take that extra second” to consider which bin to put it in.
In all of the dining halls, food waste is composted. After students put their plates on the conveyor belts to be washed, the food scraps are scraped into compost bags which are picked up and taken by a company called Agri-Cycle to facilities in Exeter. The anaerobic digestion process that occurs at these facilities releases gas which is used to spin an energy-producing turbine that powers the entire facility, as well as about 2,500 homes in the greater Bangor area.
Reducing water waste has been a consistent effort for decades. In 2008, the College switched to trayless dining, saving about 79,000 gallons of water annually. Water fixtures such as sinks, showerheads, and toilets have all been updated to go above and beyond the energy efficiency standard for water waste reduction.
LoDico has also been working on reviving old initiatives that are no longer in effect. A major endeavor that she and the EcoReps, a student group centered around sustainability projects, have been working on is bringing back the bikeshare program. Another fun initiative that LoDico is resuscitating is the inter-dorm energy saving competition, in which dorms compete for which dorm can expend the least energy within a given time frame.
Students may have noticed the construction occurring on campus, and some may have noted that the College has major plans for much more construction in the coming years. But according to LoDico, “the crazy thing is…our carbon footprint’s still going down as we’re building these new buildings.” As the College continues to invest in new sustainable technologies and efficient building designs, it maintains its longstanding commitment to the environment.
And for members of the Colby community left with questions, ideas, or criticism, the Office of Sustainability embraces open communication. “If anyone’s ever interested in doing some type of project, if they have questions about things,” LoDico said, “I highly encourage them to reach out, because we’re here to talk.”
~ Anna Izquierdo `29
Be First to Comment