Sustainable Campus Initiatives at EMU
Sustainability and creation care are at the core of life at EMU, both in student groups like the Sustainable Food Initiative, Cycling Club or Earthkeepers and in academic studies of the social, economic and political aspects of environmental sustainability.
On-campus initiatives make immediate impact, from turning dining hall waste into compost, to campus gardens, meadows and an orchard, restoration in EMU’s urban forest Park Woods, to recycling with bicycles systems.
Campus gardens & edible landscaping
The initial garden stocked the dining hall's salad bar during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, and now the student organization Sustainable Food Initiative manages five campus gardens: Mt. Clinton Garden, Kitchen Garden by Northlawn, Dogwood Garden, East Side Garden near the arboretum and Gnagey Garden. Campus gardens provide fresh, organic produce and practical exercise in sustainability.
With help from grants and the Earthkeepers club, they bought and transplanted 1,000 plants for landscaping and food around campus. Edible landscaping had already been a staple at EMU, but this push helped to diversify and add to the plants, which include:
- asparagus hedges
- apple, pear and persimmon trees
- fig and grape vines
- juneberry and raspberry bushes.
Compost
Student workers and volunteers transport 300-500 pounds of dining hall scraps several times a week across campus via bicycle to the compost piles, which are located behind the Suter Science Center and monitored by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
This initiative reduces waste and supplies the campus gardens with rich compost.
EMU Dining Hall
- saves about 350,000 gallons of hot water per year by going tray-less
- recycles all paper and recyclables
- offers “greenware" containers instead of Styrofoam
- uses recycled paper products from a local distributor
