Thanks to the College Corps Fellowship, the Cal Poly Green Campus team is expanding to tackle a variety of sustainability projects spanning across campus and the SLO community.
You may have heard of Green Campus during their annual Sustainability Month and Earth Week events, or you may have attended one of their sustainability planning summits. Green Campus is a team of student interns under the Energy, Utilities, and Sustainability team within the Facilities Management and Development unit.
Historically, Green Campus has focused on sustainability awareness and education through outreach and events. With the College Corps Fellowship, Green Campus will take on projects to address sustainability in dining, transportation, building efficiency and drought response. They will also explore programs for waste reduction and diversion, sustainability education and student involvement.
All these efforts will contribute towards reaching the most prestigious ranking in the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS). This comprehensive sustainability tracking system incorporates elements from across campus to determine a sustainability score. Cal Poly hopes to achieve the top rank of STARS Platinum in the coming years, and the Green Campus team in partnership with the College Corps Fellowship has a great role to play in this goal.
One of the top priorities for the team this year is water conservation. With increasing drought severity across California, water conservation is a pressing issue that the Green Campus College Corps fellows will seek to address at Cal Poly. Green Campus plans to release a campus-wide marketing campaign surrounding water savings and educate the campus community about Whale Rock Reservoir (our water source!). Further water conservation will take place through auditing of campus water facilities and propositions for innovative solutions to ensure water use efficiency across all areas of campus. First-year students will get involved in water conservation efforts through the Annual Conservation and Diversion Challenge (ACDC) in the residence halls, where the hall which reduces its energy and water use the most across the span of three weeks will win a prize! These efforts serve the purpose of water awareness and education to cultivate a drought-tolerant campus.
With the College Corps Fellows now a part of the Green Campus team, there is great potential for sustainability and climate action on campus! Connect with Green Campus and keep up with the work they are doing by following them on Instagram @cpgreencampus and subscribing to the sustainability newsletter at bit.ly/gogreenmustang