Since 2013, Haley Hix, Sustainability Coordinator at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, has been hard at work, creating and implementing environmentally conscious projects. Her goal in each new endeavor is two-fold: to educate the Huntsville community about sustainable options and to make the UAH campus more environmentally friendly.
The small town girl from Tennessee has always been keenly aware of her environment.
ALCSE: “Is there something in your life that makes you love sustainability – or be a champion of it?”
HALEY: “I think it probably had a lot to do with growing up, the way I was raised on a farm, and learning to be protectors and promoters of our environment. In my eyes I just saw it as a very sacred thing. I mean it doesn’t belong to us. We’re here to be caretakers of it.”
Her position as Sustainability Coordinator required a little more initiative, but that’s something Haley isn’t lacking.
ALCSE: “So. Tell me how you got this job… because my co-worker.” Uncomfortable pause. “she said that you basically…” More pause. “kind of…”
HALEY: “Created it?” Laughter.
ALCSE: “Well.” Laughter. “Let’s start with that.”
HALEY: “I started 2013 as an intern here for our energy manager. I was a Power Save Campus Intern. It was a position through the Alliance to Save Energy, which is a national nonprofit that encourages universities to do energy conservation and energy efficiency. I was about two months in when I realized: we don’t have any sustainability projects going on campus. We don’t have a budget for sustainability or any sort of way for students to start sustainability projects.”
ALCSE: “What were your tasks when you began the internship if there weren’t any projects?”
HALEY: “We would do lighting audits of the buildings, make plans for upgrades for new lighting fixtures. We hosted events where students could come and switch out bulbs for more efficient bulbs in their dorm rooms. We would do energy competitions for the residents halls on campus where they would compete for three weeks in the spring to turn all their lights off and save energy and the winning dorm won a prize.”
ALCSE: “That’s kinda cool.”
HALEY: “We didn’t do any institutional changes. It was more an awareness program. And so I thought we needed to do something a little bit deeper. As a student I wrote a proposal for a campus green fund, researched other universities’ student green funds and put together a proposal for the vice president of finance. I proposed in August of 2013 and we got approval for 20K the first year.
“Then I started doing little projects here and there and I eventually convinced this department that they needed a sustainability coordinator.” Laughter.
ALCSE: “I love that.”
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Haley loves her job. She’s implemented a lot of projects in the two short years she’s held the position.
If you’ve been to the Charger Union, or any academic building on the UAH campus, you’ve seen Haley’s first campaign: Hydration Stations.
Fact: Only 1 in 5 plastic water bottles really find their way into recycle bins.
Other projects followed, getting larger and larger in scale. Take for instance, the recent composting project, with four departments and three student groups involved.
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ALCSE: “Which one of these [projects] is your fave? Or, to ask a different way, which one are you most proud of?”
HALEY: “Actually our composting project is really cool. I don’t know if it’s my favorite…but it is neat because it’s solar-powered and rain-water fueled.”
“Mike Marshall and I wrote a proposal for the Green Fund to start a composting project here at the community garden.
“We built – and I mean we literally, physically built – this composting facility with solar panels on top to power the compost tea brew room. Solar panels power the tea brewer for the compost. We have a rainwater catchment system. We use the rainwater to make the compost tea.
“We collect food scraps – this is in process – from the dining facilities on campus.”
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ALCSE: “How big is it?”
HALEY: “Half the size of this room…the pile is….about 9×12. Our grounds crew turns it for us.
“We also have a vermiculture system. We take the compost and the worm castings [from the vermiculture system] and we use both of those things to make the compost tea.
ALCSE: “Where do you get that part?”
HALEY: “The castings?’
ALCSE: “Yes.”
HALEY: “We built a vermiculture continuous flow system. We put in red wrigglers and we have this system to catch the castings to use for the composting.”
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ALCSE: “Who did that part?”
HALEY: “That was mainly Mike Marshall. He’s the student who headed the garden.”
ALCSE: “So he had other students help him?”
HALEY: “Yeah. That’s the other thing. We have curriculum designed around it.
ALCSE: “Who wrote the curriculum?”
HALEY: “One of our biology professors, Dr. Leland Cjecka. He’s kind of like the faculty advisor for the garden and he also designed a class around this whole system out here, which is called People Plants and the Environment.”
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ALCSE: “Who takes it?
HALEY: “Well anyone can take it really. It’s mainly undergrad biology students. I took it as an undergrad. It was a really cool class.”
ALCSE: “That sounds like a neat program.”
HALEY: “We use the compost tea on the garden and we use a few pieces of the greenway to test it out because we eventually want to use it to replace all our commercial fertilizers that are used on the entire campus. So that’s the big picture.” Read more about UAH’s Community Garden HERE
As big projects morph into even bigger ones, Haley plans to keep sharing the message. She’s most interested in the third piece of the environmental pie: environmental justice. She’d like to see more minorities in leadership roles and less environmental hazards placed in low-income areas.
And of course – more projects! Stay tuned.
OTHER COOL PROJECTS
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- Reduces packing waste by 95%.
- Ensures complete roll usage.
- Decreases total waste by 11,900 lbs.
Electricity-powered Heat Machines/Chillers
- Savings Realized: 5.2 million gallons of water
- Savings Realized: 350,000 therms of natural gas
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- Projected Savings: 700 gallons of gas.
- Projected Savings: $2,000 in maintenance expenses.
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- Offsets greenhouse gas emissions.
- Adds tree canopy to the UAH campus.
- Creates aesthetically pleasing space.
- Provides relaxing environment and reduces stress.
- Shades buildings for lower energy bills.
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Solar-Powered Golf Carts
Solar Golf Carts created in partnership with ALCSE
- Raises awareness of solar power
- Allows for maintenance-free transportation on campus
- Develops partnerships with Hunstville-area business. (link to our story)
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- Provides fresh fruits and vegetables for campus dining facilities.
- Connects the university with the larger Huntsville community.
- Offers hands-on learning experiences for Biology Department.
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5 AWESOME WAYS TO GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
- Got an idea for a new green project? Share it! Guidelines here: http://www.uah.edu/sustainability/green-fund
- Get your own plot in the Community Garden: uahcommunitygarden@gmail.com More info here: http://libsys.uah.edu/LibraryBlog/wordpress/?tag=uah-campus
- Join the Green Fund Committee. Terms are one year. You’ll get to judge and review projects. There are two mandatory meetings per year: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4EHc6KB2l6hUEpCTk1CNVZrYjQ/edit
- Take a class. I heard BYS 302 was pretty cool – you get to play in the dirt: http://catalog.uah.edu/undergrad/course-descriptions/bys/
- Write. The community garden needs a blog writer. Their old blogger graduated. Check out more garden info here: https://esscommunitygarden.wordpress.com/ And here, too: https://www.facebook.com/uahcommunitygarden
FUTURE PROJECTS
- Gala Fundraising Event
- Community Partnerships
- Environmental Justice Programs
- Campus-wide Solar Project
- Climate Action Plan
- Tree Planting Project
- Fertigation
Want to learn more? You can read about Haley’s projects and lots more here: http://www.uah.edu/sustainability/past-and-current-projects
