Exonians Develop Eco-Friendly Solutions to Campus Issues

From the community bikeshare implemented last spring to the expansion of campus composting this fall, the Green Umbrella Learning Lab (GULL) has provided Exonians with various opportunities to engage in large-scale sustainability efforts over the years.

In the fall-term course, uppers and seniors work closely with English Instructor and Sustainability Education Coordinator Jason BreMiller and the Green Umbrella Advisory Board to research, design and implement sustainability projects for the Academy community.

This year’s GULL initiatives are EXcycle, Team Compost and Team Grass. Respectively, these projects focus on reducing on-campus paper waste, organizing dorm composting and developing a greener turf treatment process.

After a few weeks of studying today’s climate crisis and performing team building exercises, the three student groups began their independent studies. Upon researching where materials go after being classified as “recyclable,” EXcycle realized that the majority of recyclable materials are “basically thrown into landfill,” senior Velen Wu said.

This inspired the idea for EXcycle, which creates a closed-loop paper cycle by transforming past issues of The Exonian into usable paper. After combining shredded newspaper with water and pouring the pulp into a tub filled halfway with water, project organizers use a paper-making screen to mold a substance that takes shape as brand new paper after a few days of drying.

The Exeter Bookstore plans to sell postcards and other paper products made from EXcycle’s recycled material, which Wu hopes will remind students and faculty to be mindful of their paper use. “This is a really big problem right now: how we’re using a lot of resources and not being aware of what’s happening to the waste we produce,” she said.

The Compost Project devoted the term to installing compost bins in dorms. “Right now, there is composting in Grill and in the dining halls, but we want to make it more accessible to the general Exeter community,” senior Harrison He said.

Manager of Sustainability and Natural Resources Warren Biggins emphasized that staff were proactive in addressing concerns about odor and other potential consequences of compost accumulation. “Before they were given permission to install the bins in the dorms, we spoke with custodial staff and devised a schedule so that the bins would be emptied at regular times during the week,” he said.

With the help of Biggins, the group has begun trial programs in three dorms so far. “I think the pilot program in McConnell… has been pretty successful,” upper Beatrice Burack said. “We are currently working on our budget and proposal to get bins for all dorms.”

Biggins also played a key role in helping Team Grass tackle excessive use of pesticides and insecticides on campus. “We have been looking at natural ways to control the tick population,” senior Shelagh Coombs said. “Our idea of building bat boxes gives a home to the bats, who eat a lot of ticks and insects at night. The more we can bring this endangered species back, the more we could cut down on the artificial solutions.”

Team Grass also hopes to install additional rain gardens on campus to lessen the effect of pesticides on the environment. Currently, there are two gardens on campus—one by the health center and the other past the athletic fields. “The rain garden collects the runoff if it rains. If there are toxins in the water it will go through the rain garden and filter it out a little bit,” Coombs explained. “We want to get [another rain garden] in the center of campus, so that people know about it and see it. It would be another spot the management team wouldn’t have to work as much on.”

In addition to this, Team Grass has devised a 20-year plan to reduce Exeter’s carbon use and ultimately develop a carbon-zero campus. The members hope to integrate some of their policies and ideas into the Climate Action Day agenda this spring. “We want to build some signage for the GULL program, so the community will see it and know what is going on,” senior Alta Magruder said.

BreMiller hopes to establish GULL as a portal through which students can become involved in the large-scale administrative aspects of climate action. “It would be very neat if students can scale their projects larger and pass projects off from one term to the next, and potentially even one year to the next,” he said. “This allows us to move closer towards being the green campus we want to be. That would be the vision of GULL.”

Biggins furthermore emphasized the importance of students understanding the gravity and urgency of these endeavors. “I would love to see students have a baseline level of environmental literacy or sustainability literacy. And I’d like to see sustainability incorporated more broadly into the curriculum,” he said.

For now, GULL remains a fall term-only course, but its positive impact will persist during the school year as long as students continue to engage. Senior Manager of Grounds and Athletics Ron Johnson said, “The Green Umbrella Learning Lab is a great program which introduces students to campus operations and provides opportunities to explore a service or function, that may be taken for granted, but through closer examination, is realized to have an important role in the overall operation of the Academy.”