Local Effort, Global Impact

This past week, students at Kalamazoo College joined their peers around the world to celebrate Worldwide Climate Justice and Education Week! Worldwide Climate and Justice Education Week is a coordinated global initiative designed to cultivate interdisciplinary learning and action on matters of climate and justice. This event aims to unite thousands of institutions and tens of thousands of people in a shared commitment to creating a more equitable and sustainable world (Climate Week NYC, 2024).

Here at K, roughly 30 faculty members took time last week to teach about climate change and justice issues in their courses; they helped highlight how climate justice is an issue that needs hands-on action from all disciplines. They were joined by students and staff from across campus, who created and participated in environmental events all week! Read the highlights below:

Climate Week Recap

On Monday, all breakfast and lunch options served at the dining hall were plant-based! Meatless Monday was a great way to show it’s possible to fuel our Hornets in a more sustainable, planet-friendly way.

Wednesday brought a celebration of campus green spaces! During common time students explored the green spaces on the main campus, like the Hoop House, Jolly Gardens, and The Grove – some even won beautiful cloth napkins as a prize! Later that afternoon, a group headed out to Lillian Anderson arboretum to take a break from the bustle of first week and explore miles of beautiful wooded trails.

Interested in campus green spaces? Click to learn more about our growing spaces, composting, or the arboretum.

Thursday evening, our environmental student orgs gathered in Dewing commons for KlimateFest! They spoke to passersby about their vision for a more sustainable campus, and invited everyone to join in their efforts! After tabling, students enjoyed popcorn and watched a screening of Inhabitants: Indigenous Perspectives on Restoring our World.

Missed out on KlimateFest, but still want to get involved with campus sustainability? Click here to learn about environmental action on campus.

During Friday’s community reflection at Stetson Chapel, several students gave moving speeches about the state of environmentalism on campus, and their hopes and dreams for K’s future climate action efforts. It was a great way to gather, reflect on what it means to work towards equitable environmentalism, and appreciate those speaking up for a greener future!

Finally, on Saturday, students traveled to KVCC for the Kalamazoo Foodways Symposium! They learned about African food, music, and culture through hands-on workshops, talks, and more! At the symposium, current K students got the chance to talk about their work in the Hoop House, which last summer was home to an abundant African diaspora food garden. Mingling with alumni and community members, the symposium was a phenomenal reminder of the important role K College green spaces play in the larger Kalamazoo Community.

Looking Forward

Thank you to all of the students, faculty, and staff who participated in Worldwide Climate Justice and Education Week! We may have a long way to go towards global sustainability, but the efforts that happened on campus this week – the passion of student orgs, the celebration of student projects, and the joy of gathering together outside – are some of the most important ways we can contribute to that goal. Stay tuned for more environmental events to come during Earth month!

Hello from the Hoop House! During our warmer-than-usual winter, we’ve grown kale, lettuces, carrots, radishes, and more. Other plots are getting all the soil benefits of cover cropping with rye grass and clover, while our perennials, like the herb garden and strawberry patch, have remained healthy and dormant. We are so excited to start planting in the spring and look forward to more growing seasons to come!

New Faces

We are happy to share with students and community members that Lee Arbogast, a neighbor to the campus and community education instructor at KVCC, is joining our Hoop House team! He brings extensive technical and agricultural knowledge, a passion for connecting with people, and is excited to work with anyone who visits the Hoop House. You can come garden, work with the interns, and meet Lee during Spring Term open hours: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 4:30p-6:00p.

Spring, and Beyond!

This fall, the Hoop House celebrated its fifth year as a campus learning, growing, and community space. During the 2023 Homecoming weekend, we looked back on the years of stories, challenges, and wins since its construction in the fall of 2018. We noted that the group of students who originally came up with the vision for the Hoop House had almost all graduated by the time of its construction, and some have never seen the completed structure! As difficult as it may have been to reckon with the reality of leaving K in the middle of a project, those students showed that they trusted the processes in place and believed in the important groundwork they had laid for its future success. As we have carried with us their hopes and dreams for the Hoop House, we also carry with us their patience and trust that the space will continue to morph and provide for the College and community in years to come. Now, we have the chance to share some exciting news: thanks to the generosity of members of our K community, the Hoop House has been supported to continue nurturing our growing cycles and communities of future students!

Stop on by!

The best way to acknowledge this support, as well as the hopes and hard work of K students past and present, is simply to show up (and invite your friends)! Come down to the Hoop House, get your hands working in the garden, and enjoy the fresh food and good company that grows there.

Spring term open hours for the Hoop House are: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 4:30-6:00pm.

Earlier in the academic year, did your route along campus change? Were you walking towards Harmon, Hoben, or Olds Upton, and find yourself taking an unexpected detour thanks to a construction project? You were noticing the recent storm water management project at the northeast corner of the quad, right outside Olds Upton!

Stormwater runoff is rain or melting snow that accumulates and flows over the landscape.  Ideally this flow is reabsorbed into the earth, but human changes to the landscape, like sidewalks and roads, can prevent reabsorption.  This flow can become contaminated when it is not properly managed, and that contamination can enter our waterways.  This simple act of flowing over a street can pick up lubricants, coolants, detergents and other chemicals from automobiles.

Unmanaged stormwater can cause flooding, erosion, sedimentation in waterways, loss of habitat for wildlife, and sewer system overflows.  Storm water retention and detention are ways of dealing with run off that can prevent the storm sewer system from becoming overwhelmed.  There are examples of both on our campus.  Joel’s Pond at the Athletic Complex is a retention pond, it absorbs fluctuations in precipitation and has the added benefit of providing a habitat for wildlife.  Have you ever seen the heron that stops by for a drink? 

In more densely developed areas, underground detention structures are used to absorb these fluctuations by releasing water more slowly to the stormwater infrastructure.  This can also an opportunity for solids in the water to settle out before entering the system.  Stormwater management systems are engineered specifically for each situation, considering nearby buildings, infrastructure, topography and local climate. 

 Flooding in that Olds Upton has been an intermittent problem for decades.  Climate change exacerbated the problem, with heavy rains causing several flooding events a year over the past five years.  A storm water management system was engineered to address the issue.  The solution involved reshaping the earth, removing and relaying the sidewalk to direct the water to a series of detention structures that eventually outflow directly to the city’s storm sewer.  The area was re-landscaped with native plantings.  As an added bonus, the accessible parking space was re graded to make a less severe slope for ease of use.  Given the campus’ eastern border is a creek that feeds directly into the Kalamazoo river, it is even more important that we think sustainability about how we develop.  This is why on-going stormwater management is an important goal in our Climate Action Plan.  

Written by Susan Lindemann, edited by Emerson Wesselhoff

The next time you’re at Markin Tennis Stadium, you might want to look up. Thanks to the efforts of Andy Perigo, Susan Lindemann, and the rest of the Facilities Management team, the lights of Markin Stadium have become a literal shining example of sustainability at work on the Kalamazoo College Campus.

The lamps at Markin have just been retrofitted – that is, they’ve been improved past their original manufactured state. The power of a lamp is measured using watts, which is the measure of the energy consumed to produce light (contrary to popular belief, a watt is not a measure of a light’s brightness). The old lights at Markin were 54-watt high-output fluorescent tubes; under the retrofit, we’ve replaced them with 25-watt LEDs. While that might not seem like a big difference at first, the math says otherwise!

There are 528 lamps at Markin, which use 54 watts each. Ultimately, that means that Markin was using 28, 512 watts per hour. According to the athletics department, Markin lights are on for 90 hours a week – 28,512 watts/hr multiplied by those 90 hours (and then divided by 1000 in order to convert the number to kilowatts/hour, the standard used by power companies to bill the college) is 2,566.08 kw/hrs per week!

When the same math is done with the new lamps, which use 25 watts, Markin only uses 1188 kw/hrs per week (over a 50% reduction!). When both numbers are multiplied by the 36 weeks Markin is used per year, the end result is stark. By retrofitting Markin lights, we save 42,768 kw/hrs per year! That’s saving nearly as much energy as would be necessary to power ten 1500sqft houses for a year!

The new lights will shine just as bright, meaning that most of the campus community might never know that any changes occurred! Even so, this retrofit was an incredibly important one. There are also significant economic savings, but what’s more vital is the fact that the decision to switch out the lamps is a step towards a greener campus. Not only does this action support the resource conservation goal of the College’s Climate Action Plan, but it also represents how sustainable changes are made on this campus. Technology drives so much of what we do here, but new tech is only as good as the people who advocate for and implement it. The people who seize those opportunities – like campus electrician Andy Perigo, who is responsible for the amazing progress with the Markin lights – are absolutely essential to making this campus as environmentally friendly as possible, and deserve all of our gratitude.

We are excited to announce that composting will continue throughout the summer! This means that fresh food waste can be sustainably disposed of, and the Grove community can continue to thrive.

Students living on campus and faculty/staff working on campus this summer can continue to compost! Pick up an empty green bucket in the Grove at any time, take it back to your room/office, and fill it up with your compost as the summer goes on!

Whenever the bucket is full, take it back to the Grove and grab a new one. You can exchange buckets all throughout the summer.

The Grove is located behind Trowbridge and the living learning houses between Monroe and Lovell St. The entrance is near the entrance to the DeWaters’ basement on the Lovell St. side. Follow the path back, and there will be clearly labeled bucket pick-ups and drop-offs!

For more information, feel free to email composting@kzoo.edu.

Kalamazoo College’s carbon emissions data has been published for the fiscal year (FY) 2022. The College utilizes SIMAP to report our carbon data, which is the Sustainability Indicator Management and Analysis Program run through the University of New Hampshire.

The SIMAP data shows the total carbon footprint of our campus, through a variety of measures. Some of those measures are called scopes.

• Scope 1 = Fuels and other “direct” fossil fuels, like refrigerants and natural gas
• Scope 2 = Indirect fossil fuels, such as electricity and renewable energy
• Scope 3 = Energy usage that’s harder to connect to fossil fuels, including business travel, commuting, and waste

Other measures include “sinks” which sequester carbon, like our compost; other factors to account for are the number of people on campus, and our total square footage.

One initial result that seems apparent in our SIMAP data is that our carbon emissions actually increased across this reporting year – and while it’s a good thing to be concerned about this pattern, it’s also worth taking a deep dive into. Several things happened across FY 2022 that could account for that increase:

• Our new natatorium went online – that’s 500,000 gallons of water that needs to be heated, and air that needs to be dehumidified; overall, the natatorium was a 6% increase in square footage! That’s a lot of energy!

• The pandemic conditions required increased airflow in buildings, and for filters to protect against viruses; these things made the airflow motors work harder, exerting more energy.

• The measure of our carbon footprint is based on a standard set in 2008 – but since then, we’ve started to increase our reporting in an effort to be more honest and thorough regarding energy use on campus. No wonder we’re seeing more energy use, if we’re documenting more in the first place!

Even taking into account all of these energy-intensive changes, the college still made a 20% reduction in total carbon footprint from our original standard. Normalizing the data for square feet (and accounting for the 30,000sqft energy-intensive natatorium going online) reveals that we made a footprint reduction by 25%.

As campus life goes on, and as we continue to measure our carbon emissions thoroughly, we can look forward to a growing understanding of our campus’s carbon footprint. In FY 2023, when the pandemic has slowed, we can most likely look forward to a decrease in emissions, and a continued path towards sustainable living.

Special thanks to Susan Lindemann (Chief Sustainability Officer, VP of Facilities Management) for her work with SIMAP and her time spent explaining the nuances of this year’s report.

On Friday, April 28th, members of the student group ECO (Environmental Conservation Organization) led a Fridays for Future talk in partnership with the Kalamazoo Climate Crisis Coalition (KC3).

In collaboration with the international movement inspired by Greta Thunberg, KC3 has been organizing Fridays for Future meetings to inform and network the local community for action on the climate crisis. On specific Fridays at noon, there is a high quality and engaging session from a range of experts and advocacy groups on the causes, consequences and actions for a carbon neutral future.

Kalamazoo Climate Crisis Coalition

The K students’ talk was called “The Generation of Exception,” and explored the youth perspective on climate activism. The talk addressed the intersectionality of the environmental movement, the role of politics and technology, and Gen Z’s ongoing push to combat climate apathy with empathy.

Over 30 community members from KC3, K College, and the greater Kalamazoo Community all took part in the event.

To watch a replay of the Fridays for Future talk, click here or on the video to the right.

On Tuesday, May 16th, Kalamazoo College is implementing “A Better Way to K,” a day in which we encourage all students, faculty, and staff to find transportation to K that does not include a car. This “no-drive” day hopes to have a large impact on our campus! For one, it decreases our campus’s overall carbon emissions, moving us one step closer to becoming carbon neutral. It also promotes a healthy lifestyle of walking, running, and biking. Most importantly, finding “A Better Way to K” shows that a sustainable lifestyle is not only possible, but valued and encouraged in our community.

To learn more about the day, hear from the community about why they may or may not be participating, and to share your experience with us, please check out “A Better Way to K’s” official website here!

A Better Way to K