A century ago the world population numbered 1.6 billion. Today, the world population is 6.6 billion people. This rapid population growth has forced us to reassess our use of the earth's resources and to institute environmentally friendly services in campus operations.
"Sustainability is an economic state where the demands
placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the
capacity of the environment to provide for future generations."
- Paul Hawken, "The Ecology of Commerce", 1993
Efforts towards campus sustainability include recycling, purchasing environmentally sound products, energy and water conservation, alternative fuel vehicles and the greening of residence facilities.
The College has a recycling program with FUNDING FACTORY to recycle printer cartridges and cellphones. Funds generated through this recycling effort are used for Student Appreciation Day and the Marist Fun Day. Laser printer toner cartridges, ink jet printer cartridges and cellphones can be brought to the Help Desk in Donnelly Hall during normal business hours.
In 2003 the College replaced all of its campus laundry room washers and dryers with energy efficient machines. All machines are powered by natural gas and the washing machines require only 14.5 gallons of water per cycle.
During 2004/2005, there were approximately 82,620 wash cycles. With the "old" top load washers using on average 34 gallons of water, total water usage would have been approximately 3,013,080 gallons. With our new efficient machines, only 1,197,990 gallons were used for a water savings of 1,815,090 gallons per year!
The more efficient front load washing machines spin out about 90-95% of water used during the wash cycle. As a result, the gas usage for dryers is far less, resulting in less energy use.
All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to recycle their computer's energy and be part of the biggest philanthropic grid computing venture in the world. Marist signed on as the principal partner to IBM's World Community Grid in fall 2004. Since then, Marist has paved the way for schools and businesses alike to take the initiative and partner with this revolutionary program.
Here's how it works -World Community Grid is a global humanitarian effort that brings together the collective power of millions of individual PCs and business computers to address the world's most urgent challenges using grid computing technology. There are an estimated 650 million PCs in the world.
More information about the World Community Grid
Do you have a comment, question or suggestion? Please email us at Recycle@marist.edu and we'll get back to you as
soon as possible.
Do you have a recycling problem? Having a bad plastic day? Broken glass conundrum?
Cardboard or chipboard? Email us at Recycle@marist.edu and we'll help you through
it.
