Learn about the Berks Sustainability Team’s student-initiated compost collection route on campus. Student Rob Yanos filmed and edited a video that features two students who volunteer to collect compost, David Ahakinian, and Rocio Vega. Dr. Mahsa Kazempour narrates the video in which Ahakinian and Vega share details about how and where compost is collected on campus.
Reducing Food Waste
The Penn State Berks Sustainability Team is working to educate the campus and community about how to reduce food waste. Along with educating the campus community about initiatives already taking place on campus, we seek to make individuals aware of the impact of their own decisions. During 2018, student Dakota Schoppe, a member of the Students for Sustainability Club and the campus Sustainability Team, created a video to highlight this topic.
PepsiCo Dream Machine
In 2014, Penn State Berks advanced its recycling efforts by teaming up with PepsiCo Recycling to bring a PepsiCo Dream Machine kiosk to campus. As part of the collaboration, for the past two years, Penn State Berks completed PepsiCo’s nationwide college recycling challenge, which pits participating colleges and universities against one another in a competition that tracks recycling progress online at PepsiCoRecycling.com. Penn State Berks placed third and received prize money in 2015, and placed eighth this year. [Read more…]
Nissan Leaf®
No longer the stuff of science fiction movies, electric vehicles are a reality, and they have arrived at Penn State Berks in the form of a donation of a Nissan Leaf from Eisenhauer Nissan.
The acquisition of the Nissan Leaf allows Penn State Berks to realize its goal of operating a solar-powered electric vehicle as part of its sustainability initiatives. [Read more…]
Rain Barrels
Rain barrels a nonpoint source pollution reduction strategy: In the Fall semester of 2015 a group of Penn State Berks students painted rain barrels for their service learning project in Dr. Kazempour’s BiSC3 course. The greater purpose of the rain barrel is to conserve water and bring an awareness to water conservation. These 55 gallon rain barrels are a mini rainwater collection systems that stores rooftop runoff that can be used for irrigating gardens and lawns. [Read more…]
Bat Boxes
In the fall of 2015 a total of 10 bat boxes were installed on the western side of the campus following the Tulpehocken Creek to provide a habitat for the Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus). This small bat is the most common bat found here in Pennsylvania. A single little brown bat can eat up to 1000 mosquitoes in a single hour, and is one of the world’s longest-lived mammals for its size, with life spans of almost 40 years. The females gather in these boxes as summer nursery colonies to raise their young while the males are solitary roosting in hollow trees, under loose bark, and behind shutters.
Since 2006 a devastating fungal infection, white nose syndrome, has killed millions of bats to date, mostly in the eastern United States. [Read more…]
Bringing Back Bees
Here at Berks Campus we are undertaking a task to improve the global situation of bee populations declining. The native bee species are being affected by some of the same factors affecting the honeybees such as habitat loss and fragmentation as well as the increased use of pesticides. As a group, these and other pollinators maintain healthy and productive plant communities that support additional wildlife in our communities.
Students and staff here on campus are doing their part assisting and helping the pollinator community by providing wildflower-rich habitats, protecting and providing bee nests, reducing the use of insecticides, and most importantly- spreading the word. [Read more…]
Paper Waste Reduction
Mission: The mission of the Paper Reduction Committee, a sub-committee of the Sustainability Committee, is to help the Berks campus community lower the amount of paper going into the trash by promoting awareness and educating the community on reducing paper use and recycling paper and paper-based products. Membership Membership on this committee is open to all students, faculty and staff.
During the 2015-2016 academic year, as a result of targeted efforts to reduce paper usage on campus, students used 44% less paper than the previous year. Faculty and staff used 10% less paper. [Read more…]
Recycling (Single-Stream)
Penn State Berks participates in Single-Stream Recycling. During the spring of 2017, new möbius recycling signage and collection containers were installed across the campus. Students, faculty and staff will find three containers at each station: a container for trash (which goes to a landfill), mixed paper products, and vessels made of glass /metals/ plastics. The signage provides clarification about what types of materials can be include in each container.
What to Recycle
Metal Cans:
Include steel, tin & aluminum soda, vegetable, fruit or tuna cans. [Read more…]
Center for the Agricultural Sciences and a Sustainable Environment
The Center for the Agricultural Sciences and a Sustainable Environment at Penn State Berks is involved in a number of sustainability initiatives. Our campus greenhouse provides an active learning environment for horticulture students to grow a variety of plants and shrubs. John Rost, research technician for horticulture and turfgrass, is an active member of our campus Sustainability Team and coordinates projects which include composting, bat houses, honeybee gardens and natural bee structures, rain barrels, native plants. [Read more…]