Middlebury achieves carbon neutrality

News in brief: Immigration attorneys to answer questions Monday

Attorneys Mike Murray and Sara Fleming of FordMurray Law in Portland will visit the College on Monday to discuss policies and address student concerns in light of immigration policy decisions recently made by the Trump administration. Both Fleming and Murray work in immigration law and have experience with clients in higher education and student visas.
The event will be held at 4 p.m. in Main Lounge in Moulton Union and is open to the community.
Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster announced the event in an email to all students and employees on January 17. Individuals were able to submit anonymous questions for the attorneys via an online survey until January 27.

News in brief: Sustainable Bowdoin to encourage green living

On Tuesday, Sustainable Bowdoin will launch the Green Living Commitment, a program designed to help students create healthy habits and reduce their carbon footprints.
The program is a revamped version of a previous Sustainable Bowdoin initiative, Green Dorm Room Certification. Bethany Taylor, the sustainability outreach coordinator, said that the new program is designed to be more individualized.
“If you really want to recycle, but your roommate is not at all interested, you are no longer responsible for their inaction,” Taylor said.
Through a survey, students can pledge to different actions and habits for three different levels of certification: Bronze, Silver and Green. An online checklist outlines a point system, where students earn points based on their habits. Low commitment activities, such as buying a plant, earn fewer points, while higher commitment activities, like carpooling to campus, earn more points.
Additionally, participants will be entered in a raffle each month to win prizes for their dorm depending on their certification level. The higher the certification, the better the prize.
“The competition should reinforce people’s participation,” Taylor said. “It’s ongoing [and] you are encouraged to go back if you want to raise yourself up a level.”
The Green Living Commitment will run this semester in conjunction with another campus-wide energy-saving competition that will begin on February 27, International Polar Bear Day, and run through April 22, Earth Day.
Taylor hopes that the Green Living Commitment will become a permanent part of Sustainable Bowdoin’s programming.
“This semester will be focused on taking in student feedback and coming up with a better version of it to start in the fall,” she said.
To promote the Green Living Commitment, Sustainable Bowdoin will host a “Love Your Planet Valentine” event where students can write notes to each other in the spirit of the holiday.

News in brief

Middlebury achieves carbon neutrality

February 3, 2017

This December, Middlebury College declared itself carbon neutral. It is the fifth college in the United States to do so, following the footsteps of the College of the Atlantic, Green Mountain College, the University of Minnesota at Morris and Colby College.

“I am thrilled to announce this significant moment in Middlebury’s history of environmental leadership,” Laurie Patton, president of Middlebury, wrote in a statement.

In 2007, trustees from Middlebury resolved to make the college carbon neutral by the end of 2016. To complete the process, the college spent $1.5 billion on improving energy efficiency, built a heating facility that relied on wood biomass instead of fuel and invested in solar energy projects. Additionally, Middlebury is using carbon credits it earned from the nearby Bread Loaf Mountain campus, which is made a pact to conserve in 2014.

Bowdoin, like Middlebury, pledged in 2007 to go carbon neutral. In 2009, a group of students, staff, energy consultants and trustees came up with the Climate Neutrality Implementation Plan, which calls for Bowdoin to become carbon neutral by 2020. Between 2009 and 2014, the College purchased renewable energy credits to offset emissions, a policy that may pick back up as the 2020 deadline nears. The College has also worked on improving energy efficiency, switched from heating oil to natural gas for certain buildings and installed solar panels on the roof of the Sidney J. Watson Arena.

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