KENNESAW, Ga. | Sep 15, 2023

As we come to an end of the 2022-2023 academic school year, the time to reflect on the Office of Sustainability and our efforts over the past months has arrived.

The Office of Sustainability has been hard at work, collaborating with students, faculty, and staff to promote sustainability on campus and reduce our carbon footprint. Here are some event highlights from the past year:

1. Ice Cream Social: Created opportunities for students across both campuses to share their understanding, concerns and ideas around sustainability on campus and changes that can be made to improve campus engagement and overall college life. 

2. Month of Sustainability: Our Office hosted a Friday at the Food Forest for Universities across Georgia to learn about some of our upcoming sustainability efforts at Kennesaw State University as well as tour their Campus to build connections and learn from each other. These tours were related to their student body engagement as well as their facilities operations. 

3. Coffee Ground Compost: The coffee grounds for some of your favorite shops on campus are now composting coffee grounds and leftover products to prevent them from being taken to the landfill. Due to the number of students and staff that order coffee on campus daily, the amount being redirected to composting is without a doubt making an impact even in its early stage. 

4. Pumpkin Launch: Helped engineering students implement sustainable designs as a required goal for the annual pumpkin launch. This interaction allows students to see the ethical side of their degree choices early on. After the competition materials were collected and re-used for our ASCE Competition team. The test pumpkins were donated to a local chicken farm to ensure nothing was wasted. 

5. Field Station Market: Our very own KSU Field Station provides food for our dining hall under a contract where they purchase what they want throughout the year. To allow students to purchase these items as well we developed the Field Station Market where we sold these items to students on campus every Thursday. In combination with providing fresh produce, we enlightened our campus body on the importance of closed loop consumerism and how much of an impact it can have on our economy and carbon emissions. 

 

 

6. Recycle Right Campaign: After Implementing our multi-stream recycling bins across campus we launched our own recycle right campaign to educate the community on the streams and what we are accepting on campus as well has how to ensure you are recycling properly no matter where you are. 

7. RE:LOOM Trip: We took a trip to Re:Loom to learn about their operation to keep all types of discarded fabrics away from the landfills to reuse the material. This in return conserves a lot of money and electrical energy during their production process while also creating a rehabilitation aid by providing jobs and experiences for women seeking more opportunities after having drastic change in their own lives.

 

8. SDG Action and Awareness Week: The Purpose and explanation of each goal was explained to help students, faculty, staff, and the community understand the importance of the goals and how they can contribute to them with small personal changes if they were not already doing so. 

9. Networking Night: In partnership with Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and University of Georgia we hosted a casual networking event for students to connect with collegiate professionals. Building these core connections in sustainability are pertinent to our success as an office but even more so for our students.   

10. Earth Week: The Office held its first official Observance of Earth Week, establishing our presence on both campuses with interactive fairs and events for the student body to enjoy. We hosted spaces for sustainable RSO’s and local businesses, some owned by Alumni, to interact with a larger audience and create influential discussions about the future of sustainability in consumerism and on campus.  

11. Swap Shop: We finished off the semester by collecting old clothing and unopened food you deemed admissible but no longer served you as you moved home for the summer. The Swap Shop initiative was to make moving out easier for students and prevent these items from going to the landfill as they usually do. 

 
Overall, this year has been a success for our college's sustainability efforts. We are proud of the progress we have made and look forward to continuing our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and promote sustainable practices in the coming years. We would like to thank everyone in the college community for their continued support and commitment to sustainability. Together, we can make a positive impact on our environment and create a more sustainable future.

 

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