CSU Students Help Keep the Democratic National Convention Green
Who were those people going through the Democratic National Convention’s trash in Denver last August? Undercover spies? Politicos hatching dirty tricks? Not to worry. It was the Live-Green-Team Sorting Crew from Colorado State University, known as “The Green University.”
More than 400 volunteers from Colorado State worked in three shifts 20 hours a day to sort the convention’s rubbish and divert it to be recycled, reused or composted. The convention Aug. 25-28 was the largest such gathering in Denver’s history, with a recycling and composting effort to match. The DNC aimed to reroute as much as 85 percent of its waste away from landfills. The convention committee is still tallying results, but with the help of the CSU sorting crew, it looks like they met their goal.
The CSU team picked through as many as 180 to 240 bags of refuse an hour at the height of the convention. They worked to capture recyclable and compostable waste gathered from the entire 1.5 million square feet of the convention space, including the Denver Convention Center, the Pepsi Center, and Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium. Altogether, they sorted at least 217,625 pounds during the four-day convention, and diverted all but about 45,000 pounds from landfills.
CSU Live Green Team coordinator Tonie Miyamoto said, "It's not an easy job and it's not a clean job, but it's an important job and it helps green the DNC, the largest event Denver has ever hosted." Miyamoto is also director of communications for Housing and Dining Services.
The Live Green Team is a committee of CSU students, faculty and staff who encourage efforts to live green throughout the CSU campus community. Volunteers for the DNC sorting crew covered the spectrum from freshmen students to elderly alumni.
CSU comes by its reputation as “The Green University” honestly. It was one of the first universities in the country to give students living on campus the option of using green power. Named one of “the Nation’s Greenest Universities” by Newsweek magazine, CSU has pledged to become a carbon-neutral institution by 2020. Colorado State also placed second in RecycleMania, a national recycling competition, earlier this year in a field of more than 400 colleges and universities.
And CSU practices what it teaches. In addition to extensive environmental research and a multitude of programs to prepare students for future careers in biofuels, alternative energy and other eco-friendly fields, the University powers its own on-campus vehicles with alternative fuels. Most recently, Colorado State embarked on a plan to develop a wind farm near the Colorado-Wyoming border destined to exceed the University’s energy needs and return a substantial surplus to the grid.
Check out green.colostate.edu to find out more about how CSU students and faculty are impacting the drive for a greener world.