Details on Ohio State’s partnership with the Blue Creek Wind Farm, which is Ohio’s biggest wind farm, are in a recent story by Scott Smith of the Big Ten Network. The Blue Creek operation, according to a quote in the story from Scott Potter of Ohio State’s Office of Energy and Environment, generates the equivalent of 20 percent of the Columbus campus’s power load, a number that led Ohio State to a No. 6 national ranking in the U.S. EPA’s Green Power Partnership program. (Certain, ahem, wolverine-based universities didn’t make the list.) (Photo: University Communications, Ohio State.)
campus sustainability
Buckeyes’ behind-the-scenes members of the team
Up to 95 percent of the garbage tossed, dumped but hopefully not thrown in Ohio Stadium during Ohio State football games is turned into compost or recycled. Which is fantastic. So who does the good, hard, Earth-helping work of all that recycling? WOSU’s Esther Honig says the answer may surprise you. (Also, see who makes the compost in this story.)
Buckeyes get green gold
Ohio State has achieved a Gold rating from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS). The rating places the university among the top tier of national and international colleges and universities, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Read the full story.
Toot our horn: Ohio State is No. 1 in Big Ten green power use
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Ohio State as an Individual Conference Champion in the 2015-16 College & University Green Power Challenge for using more green power than any other Big Ten school. Read more …
Story on clean energy, zero waste at Ohio State
Lew Blaustein of GreenSportsBlog wrote on “How Ohio State is tackling clean energy and zero waste” — including efforts by Ohio Stadium and by CFAES’s research arm, OARDC — yesterday in GreenBiz. Read the story.
Color these new Buckeyes green
CFAES has a new learning community for students, and its focus is sustainability. Called SUSTAINS, short for Students Understanding Sustainability and Taking Action to Improve Nature and Society, it’s for undergraduates who are studying or are otherwise interested in the environment. Read the story …
On the road (to sustainability) (and more)
CFAES welcomed Ohio State’s new president, Michael V. Drake, M.D., center, and the university’s Roads Scholar tour today to its Wooster campus. The annual two-day tour is a chance for faculty and administrators to see Ohio State’s locations and impacts around the state. Scientists such as Casey Hoy of CFAES’s Agroecosystems Management Program, right, talked about their work. “Speed meetings” also featured sustainability-related CFAES efforts in biofuels, local food systems (local farmers shared what they’d grown), environmental quality, and biobased products and energy.
First day on the job
We bid a big welcome to Ohio State’s new president, Michael V. Drake, M.D., who started today. Details on his sustainability achievements at UC-Irvine in a previous post. (Photo: University Communications.)
A recycling cycle that’s shaped like an O
Ohio State’s Office of Energy Services and Sustainability works to make the campus more sustainable, especially by encouraging recycling and composting. If you’re a student or staff or faculty member, you can see what you can recycle here and, for lab materials, here. You can follow the office at @OSUrecycles and are welcome to tweet them your questions. Fun fact: Ohio Stadium is the country’s largest stadium to achieve zero waste. That means at least 90 percent of the hot dog buns, soda bottles, etc., thrown out by fans on a football Saturday, instead of being landfilled, are recycled or composted and put back to use. (Photo: University Communications.)
‘He is exactly the right leader at the right moment’
Ohio State University last week named Michael V. Drake, M.D., chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, as its 15th president. Sustainability-wise, his bio notes an intriguing bit: that under his leadership, UC-Irvine’s “built environment has received nationwide acclaim for its environmental sustainability and is among the nation’s leaders with 11 buildings that have earned LEED Platinum status, the highest possible ranking.” (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) He takes the helm June 30. Welcome! (Photo: University Communications.)