Colby College
EN-3: Student Life

The Environmental Coalition or “Enviro Co” seeks to educate the Colby and Waterville communities about recycling, water quality, maple sugaring, forest management, and other environmental issues. It has been an influential club throughout the years, instituting a number of changes that make the campus more sustainable. It holds weekly meetings and sponsors events throughout the year. Its Unplugged events, co-sponsored by Colby’s EcoRep program, are particularly popular among students. During these events acoustic and a cappella groups perform and locally produced snacks are served, showing that conserving electricity and eating sustainably can be fun. Enviro Co also regularly sets up information tables to raise awareness of different sustainability initiatives on campus. The Environmental Coalition was in charge of the Take Back the Tap movement both on campus and in the Waterville community, greatly reducing bottled water use and educating people about water quality. In the past, the Environmental Coalition helped push for trayless dining, food composting, fair-trade coffee, and using To-Go mugs in the dining halls. These are now integrated practices of Dining Services.

Colby College has a ½ acre garden located on campus on Runnals Hill. The garden is supervised by the Associate Director of Dining Services; technical assistance is provided by a faculty member from the Biology department. The garden is staffed on a volunteer basis by the Colby Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which is the student gardening club on campus, and by three paid student interns during the summer. As part of the interns’ responsibility, they are required to visit both conventional and organic farms and distributers in the area to learn about everything that goes into supplying produce to institutional users. Ten percent of the produce harvested from the garden goes to local food pantries while the rest is used in Colby’s dining halls.

Colby College has an iBike program that had been run by students since 2008. After signing a waiver, students, faculty and staff may borrow a bike, free of charge for up to 24 hrs. at a time; a fee is assessed for late returns. Each bike comes with a helmet and lock. The mission of iBike is to make sustainable transportation, exercise, and areas off campus more available to students and faculty.

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The Environmental Studies Department hosts a series of lunch and evening colloquia throughout the year. The list of colloquia is published at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters and posted in several buildings on campus. The colloquia are also promoted via the daily electronic announcements. These talks, given by people from many different disciplines and from many different places, cover numerous sustainability topics, including sustainable forestry, ecotourism, climate change, environmental justice, water quality, and tips on how to promote sustainability and become a leader in sustainable practices. There is generally at least one talk each week.

One example of a cultural arts event related to sustainability happens every year during Earth Week. The Office of Sustainability and EnviroCo set up an environmental art exhibit in the student center.

Colby College has been a member of the Leave No Trace partnership since 2009.The Colby Outing Club is a student run program that schedules hikes, kayaking trips, and other outdoor activities. It also provides students with equipment for a broad range of activities, including camping, hiking, backpacking, ice/rock climbing, cross country skiing, canoeing, kayaking, snow shoeing, etc. The officers of this club are offered an optional LNT certificate course. Ten students were involved last year. These students apply many of these principles during the club’s scheduled trips. The Colby Outdoor Orientation Trips (COOT) program is offered to all first year students entering Colby in either the fall or spring semester. The students are divided into groups, each of which goes on a different trip. The majority of the trips involve backpacking or camping in established campgrounds in Maine. Each group is assigned three COOT leaders who are chosen from the student body using an application and interview process. These 140 or so leaders are required to go through a two day Leave No Trace (LNT) training program and are provided with durable LNT note cards designed to be attached to a backpack with a carabineer for easy reference. The goal of the COOT program is to build strong bonds between incoming freshmen while instilling them with the principles necessary to interact with the outdoors in a respectful and sustainable manner.

The Green Cluster is a three-course cluster on environmental ethics, activism, and biological science. See Biology 131 (lab B is designated for this cluster), English 126, and Environmental Studies 126 for course descriptions. Satisfies the First-year writing (W1), Literature, Natural Science with lab, and Social Science distribution requirements.

One way students can learn sustainable life skills is by attending events organized by EcoReps and the Office of Sustainability.

Aside from hiring students as EcoReps, the Sustainability Office currently hires a student summer assistant and research assistant.

In past years, there has been a green graduation pledge.

RESCUE (Recycle Everything, Save Colby’s Usable Excess) started in 2001-02 to capture clothing, household items, furniture, appliances, and other items that departing students leave behind. Now clothing and furniture are donated to local nonprofits and other items are cleaned and stored for sale the following fall, taking literally tons of material out of the waste stream for reuse. In 2003 RESCUE was named a “best management practice” by the EPA.