The University of Western Ontario is paying tribute to Mother Earth with a number of initiatives and an Earth Day Colloquium.
Earth Day is Thursday, April 22 and the campus community is invited to pitch in and clean up the university grounds. The grounds crew will supply gloves and garbage bags to those who need them to pick up litter left behind after the snow melted. Contact Marc Vanden Heuvel (mvande73@uwo.ca) to get equipped.
As the academic year wraps up, students are encouraged to drop off their eWaste, or unused and broken electronics, in a cardboard bin located in the front atrium of the University Community Centre this week, provided by the University Students’ Council. With the help of Housing & Ancillary Services, some residences will be outfitted with large bins for items such as microwaves, CD players, and televisions, as well as computers, phones, radios, etc.
Physical Plant communications intern Joyce Hui’s video about Western’s take on sustainability will be profiled on the Western home page on Earth Day.
A reception will be held at 5 p.m. on April 22 at the Grad Club to kickoff the 7th annual Earth Day Colloquium.
A day-long line-up of speakers will showcase the latest research and innovative thinkers in environment and sustainability on Friday, April 23, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Held in the Spencer Engineering Building, Rooms 2200 and 2202, the multi-disciplinary conference-style program offers a sampling of research from science, engineering, social sciences, business, policy and management. It is organized by the graduate students in the Environment and Sustainability program.
Choose from two concurrent sessions consisting of five, 10-12 minute presentations. A question and answer period will follow.
Dean Jacobs – Consultation Manager for the Walpole Island First Nation and founding Director of the Walpole Island Heritage Centre, will deliver the keynote address on “Spirit of the Land: Sustaining the Circle of Life.”
Other distinguished speakers include: Sean Galloway, Urban Planning, City of London; Jamey Essex, Department of Political Science, University of Windsor; and Doug Haffner, Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) at the University of Windsor.
The colloquium is open to students, faculty, government and industry representatives and local residents.
To view the entire program, visit www.uwo.ca/enviro/edc.
Shedding light on one the campus’ commitment to sustainability, Western has become the first Canadian university to be recognized by the Cree LED University program, an international community of universities working to accelerate the adoption of energy-efficient LEDs (light-emitting diodes) across their campuses.
The initial LED lighting installations, combined with planned installations throughout 2010 is predicted to save Western more than $750,000 in energy and maintenance savings over ten years.
“We’ve adopted LED lighting in many key areas around campus and have experienced improved light levels and a reduction in energy consumption,” says Roy Langille, Associate Vice-President, Physical Plant and Capital Planning Services (PPD) at Western. “Maintenance savings are another driving force behind these installations and most of the LED retrofits are showing strong returns on investments ranging from a few months to an average of just four years.”
With more than 100 LED lighting installations to date, Western is already seeing the benefits with more than 70 to 90 per cent energy savings.
Western joins Cree LED University participants such as North Carolina State University, University of California, Santa Barbara, Notre Dame, University of California, University of Miami and Tianjin Polytechnic University in China in evaluating, promoting, and deploying LED lighting as they work towards increasing energy savings, protecting the environment, reducing maintenance costs, and providing better light quality for improved visibility and safety.
For more on Cree, visit https://www.cree.com/