Campus Sustainability reevaluated its goals to focus on reducing emissions, creating a resource for conservation and waste reduction and helping educate the community on sustainability.

The Undergraduate Student Government spoke with Nick Hennessey, Director of Campus Sustainability, about these goals and the new projects underway around campus.

Hennessey provided an updated mission statement from the university and applied it to Campus Sustainability’s goals. 

“The university came up with ‘furthering BGSU as a public university for the public good.’ That’s still a relatively new tagline but I was pleased to see that when it came out because sustainability [is about] keeping the environment good for the future. It is hard to argue that that’s not part of the public good,” Hennessey said.

Campus Sustainability is working on the Student Green Initiatives Fund. They are looking to fund an outdoor classroom, purchase three bikes to support a campus police bike patrol and expand the current compost program.

“We are sitting on some money and we want to spend it in a way that increases sustainability at BGSU,” Hennessey said. “We’ve been looking at the idea of an outdoor classroom for a while. We recently purchased three trek bikes for the campus police. Ever since the composting program started here at BGSU, we have been talking about trying to expand it.”

Other projects include changing all the lights west of Mercer Road to LED lights, have four solar arrays on the roof of the ice arena and the installation of the Sunbolt charging table last fall semester.

Campus Sustainability is struggling to make sure recycling is not contaminated. They have set up classes to help educate students on this problem, are seeking funding for more research and are working with the idea of aspirational recycling to battle this situation.

In order to encourage recycling around campus, this program has taken to creating sustainability leadership certificates within the Marvin Center of Leadership and allowing offices to become green office certified.

Hennessey said that to be green office certified is when “an office area can do different things to be greener or sustainable. [Once] green office certified with an actual certificate of accomplishment, a picture goes on our website.”

The sustainability leadership certificate is a six week class through the Marvin Center. 

In the upcoming months, Campus Sustainability will be hosting an eco-friendly fair on April 13 for Earth Day and hosting a campus-wide tree planting event as a service project.

USG’s new representative for the BGSU Green Fund is Carly Hitchcock, Director of Collaboration & Outreach.

Two new senators were sworn in:

• Halle Landin; Panhellenic Council 

• Sourab Shaik; At Large Senator