Disposable To-Go Containers and Natural Gas Power: Balancing CC’s sustainability work and COVID-19 requirements
Plus, a new CC professor explains how he started his job remotely
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2017, the Forever Dangerous group was performing a tribute to Michael Jackson at the Colorado Springs City Auditorium. (The auditorium is currently serving as a shelter for people experiencing homelessness, and all events and activities are canceled until the end of the year.)
Today, we explain how the pandemic is impacting sustainability efforts at Colorado College and beyond. Also, one new professor describes his experience beginning his Colorado College career remotely.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained the connection between interferon response and COVID-19 infections.
✉️In Your Inbox: Some highlights from this week’s CC emails:
A Colorado College student living off-campus tested positive for COVID-19 after traveling out of state during Block Break. The student is in isolation, and their housemates are in quarantine. Since August, the college has reported positive COVID-19 cases in 11 students living on campus, two students living off campus, and one employee.
All Colorado College classes are canceled Nov. 3 to allow students to participate in the Election Day process.
Students who want to retain or gain campus access must take a COVID-19 test, complete a COVID-19 expectations course on Canvas, and fill out the Fall Living Survey by 3 p.m. on Oct. 5.
Bus service is available between the CC campus and The Lodges and West Edge complexes. The buses run Monday–Friday and operate at 50% capacity.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? CC’s sustainability efforts shift to accommodate pandemic protocols
In the Before Times, Colorado College students would go to the college’s cafeteria, grab reusable plates and silverware, and serve themselves from a spread of food. At the college’s coffee shop, students could bring their own mugs instead of using disposable to-go cups.
But then the pandemic hit, and guidelines for COVID-19 safety began encouraging everyone to embrace single-use containers. At CC, pandemic safety included serving food on disposable products in the dining halls and delivering packaged meals to quarantined students.
“The waste stream that’s coming off of that has been much larger and much more concentrated,” said Director of Sustainability Ian Johnson in a recent interview with The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “Even just hauling the waste has become an issue just because of the concentrated loads,” he added.
As college campuses across the country try to mitigate the spread of coronavirus by reinventing packed cafeterias as takeout locations, some worry waste may be piling up.
“Because of health reasons, everything has to be served in a to-go container. That’s just not something that can be negotiated,” said Westly Joseph ’21, the zero-waste programming and outreach intern for CC’s Office of Sustainability.
One strategy? Film a video for incoming students to watch during New Student Orientation that explains how to dispose of Bon Appétit’s most commonly-used containers. The video, called “Trash Talk,” demonstrates which containers go into compost, recycling, or trash. Joseph said the Office of Sustainability also suggested that Bon Appétit should only give students plastic silverware with their meal if they requested it.
Even still, waste overflow in the quarantined dorms proliferated. Originally, Sodexo — the hospitality company that works with CC — had employees going through the dorms to sanitize high-touch surfaces and take out trash, Joseph said, but there was so much waste they couldn’t stay on top of it.
“Then Sodexo suggested that students, when they go into their outside time, drop their trash off in the dumpsters,” Joseph told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “With the help of students, that was the best option.”
This winter, the college will participate in the “Campus Race to Zero Waste,” an annual competition during which institutional participants weigh everything in the trash, recycle, and compost bins to track how much waste they produce. When the competition occurs, the Office of Sustainability will have more data on the amount of waste on campus this semester, Joseph said.
In addition to disposable containers, pandemic guidelines encourage increased ventilation capacities in buildings, which is effectively measured by the number of air changes per hour in an area. Air changes are facilitated by heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, so a necessary increase in the number of air changes lead to HVAC systems using more energy.
Because of the pandemic, CC increased air changes in buildings from about two per hour to three. “So we’re looking at roughly about a 33% increase in heating and cooling loads,” Johnson said, though he added that some of the increase is being offset by a de-densified campus.
During the cooling season (summer), increased airflow means that more chilled air needs to enter a room. CC uses electrical chillers that run on renewable energy. “And so while we have an increased energy profile, we don’t have an increased carbon footprint associated with that,” Johnson said. “It just means that we’re consuming more solar power.”
Conversely, the heating season (winter) uses warm air from a central heating plant that is primarily fueled by natural gas. Though natural gas produces far fewer greenhouse gases than burning coal or oil, it is still a nonrenewable energy source that produces emissions, consequently increasing CC’s carbon footprint.
In January, CC fulfilled its goal of becoming 100% carbon neutral by 2020. That means the school has a net carbon footprint of zero — the output of emissions is equal to the amount the school sequesters, or takes out of, the atmosphere.
CC sequesters their emissions through carbon offsets, which are monetary investments into projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it elsewhere. The increase in emissions due to more frequent air changes will probably lead to further investment into carbon offset projects, Johnson said.
CC has also seen decreased emissions in some areas. For example, fleet vehicles are not traveling as often, and the pandemic has grounded most business travel.
“Some of the fundamental shifts that happen here may permanently alter our greenhouse gas profile and what those sources are, but only time will tell,” Johnson said.
Though the concerns surrounding pandemic waste and energy are nothing to sneeze at, for Johnson and Joseph, sustainability isn’t just about the environment — it’s about improving the welfare of society in a variety of ways.
“Sustainability is not just environmentalism,” Joseph said. “It’s racial justice. It’s gender equity. It’s sustainability of having work that you can be passionate about and that you can do for the foreseeable future rather than being burnt out. There’s many different aspects of sustainability, and our office acknowledges that.”
Johnson agreed, citing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as getting at a broader understanding of the word “sustainability.”
“We’re not just going to go back to business as usual,” Johnson said. “But what is a reasonable thing to start planning for, and how do we get around some of these hurdles and start doing this in a way that is more environmentally sustainable? …Sustainability is about meeting needs now and into the future.”
‘A Double Learning Curve’: One new CC professor details his experience working and teaching remotely
Teaching on the Block Plan for the first time can be challenging. But teaching on the Block Plan for the first time and doing it online is “a double learning curve.” Assistant Professor of History John Marquez started his career at Colorado College from home.
During Block 1, Marquez co-taught an online junior history seminar with Assistant Professor of History Purvi Mehta. They used a combination of synchronous and asynchronous elements during the course to prepare students for their senior papers or thesis research. In addition to assigned readings, Marquez and Mehta also asked their 11 students to listen to a podcast about some of the course topics.
“I’m really impressed that students have done such quality work, even under these circumstances,” Marquez told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Unlike some of the professors who ironed out some of the kinks of remote teaching during Blocks 7 and 8, Marquez said he’s still learning how to use Zoom. He calls the Office of Information Technology three or four times per week for support.
Other history faculty gave Marquez suggestions and shared teaching ideas with him, and Mehta guided and mentored him through their Block 1 course. Marquez said it was helpful to co-teach his first class because he wasn’t going through it alone. He also enjoyed meeting his Block 1 students, many of whom are either history majors or minors.
“Although it has been stressful as a first-year faculty member, I’ve just been so pleased to meet students,” Marquez said. “I think everyone is doing such amazing work and that really, totally cancels out all the stress and all of the other external things that happen.”
He’s teaching Blocks 3, 5, and 8, and he elected to teach them in the “flex” format. Initially, Marquez hoped to offer some small group or individual in-person meetings out on one of the quads. However, because in-person or hybrid lab classes are among the only types of classes CC invited students to campus for this semester, his students may not be on campus or in Colorado Springs during Block 3.
Marquez was looking forward to moving into his office in Palmer and informally meeting students in the department around the ever-present animal cracker jar. Instead, the History department started a Slack channel and is offering blockly conversations over Zoom.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to be here,” Marquez said. “The students have been wonderful and I feel very welcomed here. It’s not ideal to start a new job in a pandemic, but I do feel quite supported.”
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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