The Wku Green Tour Essay Examples

The Green Tour at WKU is nothing short of a revelation! I think all of us who went on this tour from the WKU Sustainability Office guided by Christian Rayne, found it a real eye-opener. We were amazed at what can be done in the fields of energy saving, carbon footprint reduction and general environmentally-friendly measures and policies, by an organization that has obviously given serious thought to those issues. With so many interesting and innovative things to see and learn about; I will describe just some of them here.
The first thing that struck me was that even mundane things like the car parks are playing their part. Not only is there a reflective coating applied to the surface to reduce heat absorption and any consequent effect on the micro-climate, but there are landscaped areas to help absorb and retain rainwater, which is also allowed to run through permeable concrete, minimizing storm water runoff. There is also a campus-wide rainwater storage system, using cisterns that hold many thousands of gallons that can be used in dryer times for irrigation.
As an energy saving measure, car park lighting has been replaced by efficient LED lighting systems, and even those are switched off in unused and closed-off parking areas to save energy. Similar energy saving lighting systems have also been utilized in the campus TV studio and in other buildings to reduce energy costs wherever possible.
The “Big Red Bikes” lending program refurbishes donated bikes which are then loaned free of charge to anyone on campus, encouraging bicycle use. Another environmentally-friendly program is the rooftop solar-powered swimming pool heating system that keeps our indoor pool heated for most of each year, using glycol passing through a heat exchanger system. The WKU carbon footprint has also been lowered by the installation of a natural gas boiler for campus central heating that circulates steam around the campus, saving the use of the existing coal-fired boilers.
In conclusion, although there are other features like garbage recycling that help energy saving and make WKU more eco-friendly; I just don’t have the space here to describe them. I have to say though that the overall impression is that WKU has gone to extraordinary lengths to put in place so many measures to make this a “green” campus!