Green Team Presents Heart of Leadership Environmental Service Award

On Tuesday, February 14, Green Team Southwestern students, Sydnee Nelson (Clay Center), Stephen Strecker (Tonkawa, OK), and Elle Nguyen (Wichita) traveled to Central Plains High School in Claflin, KS to award the Go Green Oiler Team with a $500 Heart of Leadership Environmental Service Award.  The Heart of Leadership Environmental Service Award is given to a high school group for excellence in a community service project which is beneficial to the environment.  

Elle Nguyen and Sydnee Nelson present the Heart of Leadership Award (on Valentine's Day) to the Go Green Oiler Team of Central Plains High School

The Go Green Oiler Team is organizing an Alternative Activities to Save Energy Day in their community. They are inviting members of the Claflin community to come down to the park to participate in fun games for all ages. Along with the games, they will inform the community members about energy usage and ways to increase efficiency or decease usage. They are asking the people that are coming to shut off all electricity in their homes to see how much we can save during the three hour time period. The games and information session will bring together students, teachers, and community members of all ages. The purpose of this project is to make people aware of our current and future environmental issues. People of all ages should be concerned with this issue, therefore they will have a common interest, bringing all ages together.

“The Heart of Leadership Award Environmental Service Award is an excellent way to recognize eco-friendly servant leadership taking place at the high school level.  We were excited to present this award to the students of Central Plains High School and discuss the impact this award will have in their school and community.” – Jason Speegle, Director of Green Team Southwestern.  

We will be accepting submissions for next year's Heart of Leadership Award Environmental Service Award during the Fall 2012 semester.

"Waste"ing Away...

This semester, the Green Team at Southwestern has been learning a lot about what happens to trashed items when they get thrown into the garbage can or recycling bin. "Our society really takes trash for granted. Many people assume that items just magically disappear once we throw them into the nearest dumpster. I am trying to educate myself and our students that that is not the case," says Jason Speegle, Green Team Director.

So far this semester, Green Team students have toured the local Cowley County landfill and transfer station, the Winfield Recycling and Composting facilities and recently took part in a campus waste audit. At the transfer station, the group learned that most of stuff that we throw in the dumpster is hauled to a landfill in Harper County, 50 miles to the west of Winfield. Tons and tons of residential waste from homes and businesses in Cowley County is transferred to the Harper County landfill and buried in the ground. Unfortunately, very few of the items decompose in current landfill structures, due to the way they are designed. According to one of the workers at the Cowley County Landfill, even though the residential landfill closed 30 years ago, if someone took a shovel to the place where the trash was buried, you could "still read the newspapers" after all this time.

The group had the opportunity to witness a load of "trash" from a local retailer. As the truck was dumped, the students noticed never worn coats and never been used products mixed in with the other trash, much of which could have been recycled, composted or donated to charity. "I hope it was an eye-opener for the students. I certainly was for me," says Speegle.

Winfield is fortunate to have local composting and recycling programs. According to the EPA, only around 9,000 communities in the nation have local recycling programs and only 3,000 communities have composting programs. Winfield is blessed to have both. The Winfield composting program is free, both to dispose of compostable materials and residents can receive the compost and wood chips free of charge. The recycling program does have a cost to residents of Winfield, but it is a minimal $3 per month added on to monthly trash service fees. Kevin Neighbors, Sanitation Supervisor for the City of Winfield came and taught SC students about the programs offered by the City of Winfield and he then led a group of students on a tour of the compost and recycling facilities.

On February 27, several members of the Frito-Lay Green Team from the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka came to Southwestern and led the Green Team students through a campus waste audit. "If we are to minimize the amount of waste that our campus generates, then it is important to know what is being thrown away," says Speegle. The results of the waste audit are not yet calculated, but a large percentage of the garbage that was sifted through was materials that can already be recycled at Southwestern. "We need to do a better job of educating our campus community about what we can recycle and why it is important." Frito-Lay in Topeka has been able to achieve over 99% landfill diversion.

Teaching about Wind Energy

One of the missions of the Southwestern College Green Team is to teach others on campus and in the community the importance of living a sustainable way of life. One of the areas that Green Team students have learned about and desire to teach others is the growing importance of renewable energy sources. The installation of the college's first wind turbine is leading to opportunities to do just that.

On March 15th, the Green Team hosted 52 students from Mrs. Camille Richert's chemistry class from Winfield High School. The students are learning about alternative energy sources and they wanted to come to the college and see the turbine and learn about it. Green Team director, Jason Speegle taught the high school students about wind energy, some specifics about the Skystream turbine as well as the importance of sustainable living. Green Team students, Stephen Strecker and Daniel Van Sickle led the group through a presentation about solar energy and highlighted some of the things that the Green Team participates in on the Southwestern campus.

Also, on February 9th, the Green Team hosted a group of 13 students from Mr. Greg Carver's agriculture class from Winfield High School. The students in the class were learning about solar and wind energy and came over to the wind turbine site on the college campus. Green Team student, Stephen Strecker and director, Jason Speegle presented the students with information regarding wind and solar energy as well as information about how Southwestern installed its wind turbine in the summer of 2011. Some of the applications that were planned for the group were postponed due to the cold, rainy, cloudy nature of the Thursday afternoon.

According to Carver, some of the students in his class are "determined to build a [wind] generator" so the opportunity for them to see one up close was very valuable.

Green Teamers Teach Elementary Students about Composting

On Friday, February 10, several Green Team students spent the afternoon teaching about composting to the students at Country View Elementary School in Winfield. The principal of Country View invited the Green Team to come and present as part of a rotation of hands on activities for the students in grade Kindergarden through 4^th grade.

Green Team students Sydnee Nelson and Tendai Kwaramba developed a presentation focused on composting. They taught about the importance of recycling and that organic materials can be turned into compost which is good for gardens. Nelson and Kwaramba borrowed some compost from Alex Gottlob, local landscaping businessman and allowed the students to dig around in it and see what materials they could find.

The same 20 minute presentation was made to seven different groups of students throughout the afternoon. Green Team students Shea Wilson and Daniel Van Sickle also participated.

City of Winfield Aids Southwestern Recycling Program

Last week, the Green Team had to scramble to find somewhere to recycle all of the recyclable materials collected at Southwestern College. The college has a “contract” with a recycling company out of Wichita. The company is supposed to pick up the recycling from the college once every two weeks. For some reason, the company has failed to continue with its regularly scheduled pickups.  According to Jason Speegle, Green Team Director, “they have not collected the recycling from the college since January 2. Our campus produces and collects a lot of recycling each week, so our recycling shed was certainly overflowing.” 

Southwestern made the decision to contract with this particular recycling company because they offered free pickup and single stream recycling, meaning the recycling did not need to be sorted. “The City of Winfield has a great recycling program and we were very happy with the recycling service that they have provided to the college over the years. However, as our recycling volumes have grown, the sorting of the recycling became overwhelming,” said Speegle.

The City of Winfield stepped in to help the college with its overflow of recycling. Green Team students and plant operations employees, in 6 pickups and a U-haul truck hauled the nearly 1,620 cubic feet of recyclables from the college out the Winfield fairgrounds. A crew from the correctional facility sorted some of the items into a large container that was eventually transported up to Waste Connections in Wichita for recycling. “We feel so fortunate to have city employees who are willing to work with the college and our students. The City of Winfield really bailed us out. I cannot thank them enough,” says Speegle.

Southwestern is currently looking for a recycling system. Protecting the single stream system is important to Speegle. “We would really like to avoid returning to the sorting method of collecting recycling, especially during the school year. My hope is to figure out a temporary solution to get us through May and then reevaluate during the summer.”

Southwestern to Install Second Wind Turbine

Southwestern College is one of four sites to have been selected to receive Wind for Schools grants this year. Last November, Green Team Director, Jason Speegle applied for the grant which is arranged by Kansas State University and funded in part by Westar. “I felt that we [Southwestern] had a very strong application. We had letters of support from the City of Winfield, USD 465, and Cates Supply (local wind turbine installers). I also received unwavering support from the administration of the college as well as the plant operations director,” according to Speegle.  Speegle says that he and the administration of the college learned a lot during the installation of the wind turbine in the summer of 2011 and that knowledge will certainly aid them in the process of installing this next turbine.

The details of the installation are not yet fully known. According to Speegle, “the announcement that Southwestern had been selected as a site was made a couple of weeks ago. We will receive more details in the near future.” Due to zoning, the site of the wind turbine installation will be near the new plant operations building in the corner of Warren St. and Viking Blvd. Southwestern will choose the type of turbine that is to be installed. The turbine will either be a Skystream 2.4, identical to the turbine installed at Southwestern in August of 2011 or a Raum 3.5, a slightly more powerful turbine.

Circle High School, Otis-Bison Junior/Senior High School, and Western Plains High School were the other three sites selected to receive wind turbine grants this year.

Green Team Collects Food and Clothing for Community

Sustainability is more than simply caring for the environment. The definition of a sustainable society ensures that all people of the community have their basic needs met. The students of Green Team Southwestern do not ignore this social justice component of sustainability. They organize projects that attempt to meet some of the basic needs that go lacking for some in the Winfield community.

The latest project put on by the members of the Green Team's social justice committee provided clothes and food for people in the community, all the while keeping those same items out of the local landfill. At the end of each semester, students pack up their things and move home for break or they move away from Southwestern to embark on a new adventure. Regardless of where they go, many students are simply unable or unwilling to cram everything they have accumulated at SC into their vehicles. Normally, the stuff the students deem unnecessary winds up in the dumpsters and later in the landfill.

The Green Team is giving students another alternative to throwing away unwanted, but perfectly useful stuff by organizing a "Move-Out Collection". Green Team students placed large boxes all over campus in hopes of collecting some unwanted clothing or food this past December, as the fall semester was winding down. Students as they moved out of the dorms could place unwanted items in the boxes and the Green Team donated the items to local non-profit organizations The items were then distributed to those who neededthem.

This December, the Green Team collected and donated around 50 large bags of clothing to Central Baptist Church in Winfield. "I was honestly shocked by the amount that was donated. I was sure that some people would donate, since some people graduated in December and left, but the sheer amount of support we received was amazing and humbling," said Kelcie Parrish, Green Team senior and coordinator of the Social Justice Committee. The Green Team also collected some canned food items and some money which was donated to the Winfield Food Pantry.

"The turnout was very surprising. It was cool to see how much the campus and community gave. I am excited for the spring drive," said Jess Ratzlaff, Green Team junior. The Green Team will spend time this spring semester gearing up for a larger "Move Out Collection" as graduation approaches.

Exterior Campus Lighting Audit

Last week, Alan Dykes, the Energy Manager for the cities of Winfield, Wellington, and Ark City took a tour of the SC campus night-time lighting to determine the current lighting’s effectiveness in safely illuminating the campus and to make recommendations on making the lighting more energy efficient. Accompanied by SGA Student Concerns committee representative Jessica McIver and Green Team members Sarah Rommelfanger, Ashley Bruno, and Stephen Strecker, Alan was able to evaluate the lumens (units of light intensity) and the placement of light fixtures around campus. The good news is that Alan felt that the light fixtures already present around the campus would provide sufficient light to make the campus a safe environment at night, if equipped with bulbs of appropriate wattage. This means that the only shortfalls in making SC properly lit at night is to replace burnt-out bulbs in existing fixtures. 

This is an exciting opportunity for the Green Team because Alan was also able to recommend types of bulbs that would be a great deal more energy efficient than the ones previously used in the unlit fixtures. The types of bulbs he recommended would be mostly energy efficient LED retrofitted bulbs. The new bulbs can go right into the existing fixtures, which helps cut costs. These LED bulbs are expensive, but they are also estimated to last 18-22 years, and use a fraction of the electricity that the normal bulbs use. They would also provide a white light which provides greater color definition than the yellowish high-pressure sodium bulbs at a lower lumen output so that the campus is safely visible without using excessive wattage.

The Green Team and the SGA Student Concerns committee plan to work together and compose a proposal using Alan’s expert advice to get the burnt out lights on campus replaced with these more energy efficient bulbs.

Changes toward sustainability don’t have to be a complete overhaul of the system, right down to ground level. One small step at a time can end up making a big difference.

Author: Sarah Rommelfanger

SC Hosts America Recycles Day Competition

The Southwestern College Green Team celebrated America Recycles Day and began a new tradition. America Recycles Day is an annual event hosted by the College & University Recycling Coalition and takes place every November 15. To celebrate America Recycles Day 2011, Green Team Southwestern hosted a recycling competition pitting campus organizations against one another in attempts to collect the most recycling over a 2-week period.

This year, four Southwestern organizations participated in America Recycles Day including Leadership, Tri-Beta, Phi Delta Theta, and Phi Beta Lambda. Large boxes were setup on the campus lawn and the organizations filled them with recycling throughout the day on November 15. The organization producing the most recycling (volume) was declared the winner. Tri-Beta was crowned SC Recycling Champion for 2011 and over 600 pounds of recycling was collected. Tri-Beta will receive a plaque made from recycled sunflowers to display until the 2012 America Recycles Day competition.