Sustainability is embedded throughout NC State’s campus with the design and construction of its buildings, clean food and water use, compost initiatives and clean modes of transportation. To further NC State’s goal of embracing sustainable, everyday operations, the university works to integrate knowledge of sustainability in education and research.

Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities and Sustainability Council Co-Chair Doug Morton takes into question the amount of energy being used to ensure a comfortable atmosphere.

“It is really about the occupant of a building being dry and comfortable; that is essential to what we do,” Morton said. “In that idea of sustainability, how do we as the caretakers of that infrastructure produce that at the lowest possible cost? How do we operate such an enormous energy at the lowest cost, but then treat our environment that is consistent with the values of the organization or our country?”

According to Morton, NC State demands roughly 33 megawatts of power a year between Main Campus, Centennial and the veterinarian school.

“We produce about 11 megawatts of that through co-generation,” Morton said. “We use natural gas to do that, but then we use the heat of that turbine to produce steam. We are being as efficient as we can be to produce our own power.”

NC State Dining is a major contributor to reducing the university’s carbon footprint and decreasing waste from landfills. In 2009, NC State Dining introduced Pack&Go, a program that allows students to take-out their dining hall food with a recyclable container.

According to NC State Dining, Pack&Go has diverted over 175,000 Styrofoam to-go containers since March 2009.

Morton spoke about another sustainability initiative within NC State Dining that seeks to minimize waste on campus.

“Campus enterprises has changed some of their packaging,” Morton said. “They partnered with Coca Cola, so the cups that you see in the atrium or other places are compostable. We will take [the compostable materials]… and we will put it back into the campus, which also saves us from buying other fertilizers that would have to be hauled to the campus wrapped in plastic or something else.”

NC State is currently implementing their second Sustainability Strategic Plan, in which all campus sustainability initiatives align to achieve various goals.

According to NC State Sustainability, the five-year plan is in effect from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2022 and has five major strategic goals: promote student leadership and service initiatives, integrate sustainability into education, model sustainability through campus facilities and operations, accelerate a campus culture of sustainability and spread awareness of sustainability beyond NC State’s campus.

Stephen Kelley, Reuben B. Robertson professor for the Department of Forest Biomaterials and Sustainability Council Co-Chair, stated that five years is a realistic time frame to measure progress and allows the university to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of past initiatives.

“After the first five years … we came up with a slightly different structure and a more expansive vision,” Kelley said. “Explicitly recognizing the community and culture part of this more, as well as trying to emphasize what we can do with our academics and class offerings to make it more obvious to students that there are opportunities to learn.”

A large program initiative at NC State created in 2002 is the NC State Stewards, a group of students who promote sustainable practices on campus through events, workshops and presentations.

According to Oppong Hemeng, a program coordinator specializing in student engagement at the University Sustainability Office, there are about 30 student stewards this semester, and they have been very successful in getting the student body more engaged in sustainability, largely due to their “for students by students” motto.

“[The Stewards] have different programs and initiatives in educational events that they host to promote sustainability from a peer-to-peer model when it comes to the outreach of sustainability on campus,” Hemeng said. “It is very easy to understand a comprehensive topic of sustainability when you hear it from a peer.”

Morton spoke about what he sees as one of NC State’s more important roles: producing graduates that are well-equipped to make thoughtful decisions about the planet. He believes it is necessary for students to understand how their life choices positively and negatively impact the environment in order for them to make informed choices.

“I think there is a lot of power in that,” Morton said. “And the reality is, you are going to be a better citizen … that is the endeavor.”

According to Hemeng, a challenging aspect of sustainability is its broad and sometimes vague definition. He argues that, by teaching an accurate, holistic definition of sustainability, one can turn a believer into a practitioner.

“Sustainability is still relatively new in the age of technology, and it is a buzzword that everybody has their own definition for,” Hemeng said. “It is important for us to incorporate sustainability from an academic standpoint to give them a holistic viewpoint of sustainability, but also see how it applies in their daily lives and more importantly, in their academics.”

According to Hemeng, many people’s view of sustainability is limited to just the environment and mitigating the amount of harmful pollutants in the atmosphere. However, sustainability extends much further than this surface-level idea.

Kelley believes that the Poole College of Management has done a good job of addressing this broader definition of sustainability, by looking at how major businesses can make money while also doing the right thing for the environment and society.

Unsustainable consumption patterns as a critical factor that dictates how sustainably one is living. Kelley encourages students to be aware of how much they consume, and to be thoughtful about ways to minimize their use.

Carla Davis, communications coordinator for the Sustainability Office, believes sustainability will continue to be a prominent issue that the world grapples with, and that students need to be knowledgeable on in order to make a difference.

“Sustainability can cover so many areas from waste reduction to energy savings to just all kinds of things, and we have made significant strides in all of those areas,” Davis said. “We want students to be aware of these challenges, even if they don’t do anything with it necessarily now, then they are equipped with the knowledge so that later on, if they encounter this in their personal lives or in their careers, they have the knowledge and the ability to do something about it.”