It’s dirty, stinky, often disgusting work. But everyone doing it knows how vital it is.
“It’s walking and walking, feet hurtin’, perseverin’, digging into bags of half-eaten food, the worst stuff in the world, but it’s essential we do it,” says Maya Hammond, a Zero Waste intern who spends her home football games sorting the waste at Ohio Stadium.
On Saturday, October 8, student volunteers joined Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) staff to clean and maintain the Jennings Hall rain gardens. Volunteers, including the Texnikoi Engineering Honorary and the Ecological Engineering Society, weeded, trimmed perennials and mulched 22 garden boxes during the annual fall event, which has taken place since 2013.
The expansion of the university composting program was recently spotlighted by Ohio State News. “Ohio State is leading the region on this,” said FOD’s Mary Leciejewski. More than 1,000 Buckeyes have signed up to participate in a new program that has already diverted more than 114 tons of food waste from landfills since July and sparked new ideas from students in the classroom.
A new collaboration between Ohio State and Rumpke Waste and Recycling will support advances in circular economy research, teaching and practices at a time when population growth in central Ohio is expected to bring new challenges to managing waste.
Summer is a busy time of year for Mike Koeritzer of Facilities Operations and Development (FOD). The FOD landscape superintendent says he and his team are beautifying Ohio State’s campus as students return to school this fall.
“We are cleaning up landscape beds, mulching, mowing, edging sidewalks to get the campus looking good,” Koeritzer said.
Aparna Dial approaches sustainability with a view through three lenses: She immigrated to the United States from India. She’s a woman in a male-dominated field. And she’s been an eyewitness to the ways environmental impacts do not affect everyone equally.
That perspective leads her to propel discussion and action when it comes to issues such as the inequities of environmental impacts and the barriers faced by women in STEM.
The Ohio State University adopted a new Sustainable Design and Construction policy (formerly Green Build and Energy policy), effective February 1, 2021.
