PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College is making a name for itself on the carbon footprint front two years after joining a higher-education-based nationwide program to reduce carbon emissions and integrate lessons on “sustainability” into the curriculum.
The college’s accomplishments in reducing greenhouse gases and educating students in achieving that goal are part of the “Going Green: Step by Step” program that administrators and students touted Thursday in a three-hour program at the Port Angeles campus’ Little Theater and the adjoining Pirate Union Building.
At 12.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide produced per 1,000 square feet of campus, the Port Angeles branch — with 1,771 full-time-equivalent students and about 10,000 actual bodies — ranks second among eight state community colleges in greenhouse gas output in 2008-2009.
The college sits behind Cascadia Community College’s 7.7 tons but is ahead of Everett Community College, Olympic College, Shoreline Community College, Edmonds Community College, and Bellevue and Centralia colleges, the last of which produces 63.3 metric tons per 1,000 square feet.
The program was presented as part of the college’s effort to fulfill the October 2008 American College & University Presidents Cimate Change Commitment, an agreement signed by Peninsula College president Tom Keegan and 684 other higher-education signatories, including 32 from Washington state.
The agreement calls for completing a greenhouse-gas emission inventory, setting a target date for becoming “climate neutral,” taking immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, making sustainability part of the educational experience and producing an action plan to combat climate change.
An hour-long presentation by Director of Auxiliary Services Patty McCray-Roberts, Vice President of Administrative Services Deborah Frazier, student Sustainability Club President Gavin McWhyte and college President Tom Keegan in the Little Theater was followed by the two-hour Green Fair featuring climate-change and recycling exhibits in the Pirate Union Building’s student commons.
Climate change data
Student researcher Bill Batson, who along with student researcher Jacqueline Potts compiled the college’s climate-change data, described climate change as the result of a set of greenhouse gas emissions — 85 percent of which is carbon dioxide but which also includes nitrous oxide and methane — that heats up the atmosphere.
It’s caused by buildings and by students and staff who commute to school, with commuters by far the college’s largest single source of greenhouse gases at 61 percent of the total, Batson and Potts discovered.
The United Nations’ defines sustainable development as development “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
“We recognize the scientific consensus that global warming is real,” Keegan said, adding it’s largely caused by human activity.
“We are deeply concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of global warming and its potential for effects. We have deep concerns about the pace and scope of that.”
Frazier discussed how the curriculum incorporates sustainable-living, such as a woodworking program that includes the students from the college’s Port Townsend branch.
They restore Victorian structures “rather than knock them down,” Frazier said.
Student proposals
There also are student proposals to purchase digital imaging machines to replace the environmentally unfriendly production of wastepaper and used ink cartridges — and a student-generated ballot initiative that students will vote on today.
The measure would impose a $5 quarterly fee on students to fund free, unlimited-use Clallam Transit bus passes for students that would replace passes that now cost $53 a quarter.
Daily, one-way ridership charges increase as of July 1, including the $1.25 one-way and $2.50 round trip fare for the Forks-Port Angeles run that is now paid by students Josh Fletcher, 22, and his girlfriend, Jessica Simons, 23, and which increases to $1.50 on July 1.
Fletcher and Simons were among the few students at the hour-long presentation in an audience of about 35.
Fletcher said he was disappointed more students weren’t there.
“It is our generation that’s coming up to the plate,” Fletcher said.
Hydroponic greenhouse
Though his brother makes fun of him, Fletcher said, he and Simons grow tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and other vegetables in a hydroponic greenhouse that grows better-tasting vegetables than those grown in pesticide-laden soil and which reduces their own impact on the environment.
Fletcher and Simons also are installing solar panels and use wind turbines to produce electricity for a utility shed.
“I’d like to see more sustainable classes,” Fletcher said, adding that “the college is doing an awesome job in passing its goals on sustainability.”
Maier Hall
The college presented the three-story, 67,750-square-foot Maier Hall now under construction as another “green” endeavor.
The $36 million project includes, in recycled form, most of the four buildings it replaces.
In addition, a portion of roof will be moss-covered to reduce heating and cooling requirements, and stormwater runoff will replenish long-suffering wetlands south of the college, Frazier said.
But McWhyte said there’s more the college can do, like going beyond simply being carbon neutral.
“With a little push from the Sustainability Club, let’s go a little further and make the college carbon negative,” he said.
“That’s when we go beyond saving the college and save the planet.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.