Transportation

The Sustainability Initiative intends to increase opportunities for students, faculty and staff to engage in alternate forms of transportation, including carpooling, mass transit, walking and biking. Initiatives include increasing the size of the campus bike share program, providing winter storage for student bikes and implementing web-based carpooling software.

Energy Conservation

Luther is committed to reducing its electricity, heating and cooling usage, which together account for 83 percent of our carbon footprint. Possible and planned initiatives include: Project Energy--first-year residence hall energy education; Energy Evolution--campus wide energy conservation competition; programs to encourage faculty and staff to “reduce their use.”

Sustainable Dining Services

We recognize how energy intensive our food is. The college is working to cultivate a local food system that can provide the school with healthy, fresh, affordable local food. We are also looking into effective means of getting a handle on the amount of post-consumer food waste, such as removing trays from the cafeteria.

Recycling and Waste Reduction

Reducing our waste output is one way every person on campus can be part of the solution. With the “zero waste” principle in mind, we will search for ways to eliminate disposables and modify high-waste locations while encouraging individuals to be responsible consumers. We will create a comprehensive recycling plan to revise and improve campus recycling, continue to improve our waste collection at move-in and move-out, improve our composting system from start to finish and find a means to measure all our waste streams. As the saying goes, “what gets measured gets managed.”

Education

The tie that binds all of our initiatives together is educating the campus community. The more environmental advocates there are, the more quickly sustainability initiatives will catch on and the more easily Luther will be transformed. We plan to hold regular events educating about and promoting the various components of sustainability. We'll also develop Luther’s sustainability website to connect with the computer-based generation and to get the word out about our iniatives beyond the campus.