Sustainability News

Meet the Farmers

Colgate campus faces a significant issue with unsolicited mail, which wastes paper, ink, money, and time.

Summer & Fall Green Raider Interns - 2016

Colgate has installed four new Elkay water bottle refill stations on the first, third, fourth, and fifth floors of Case‑Geyer Library to make it easier for the campus community to fill reusable bottles with filtered, purified water. These sensor‑activated stations were added alongside traditional drinking fountains to help reduce single‑use plastic bottle waste by encouraging tap water use—an approach shown to significantly cut down on disposable bottles across many institutions. According to Elkay, their ezH2O® bottle filling stations have helped save tens of billions of plastic bottles from entering landfills globally by promoting reusable bottles.

Over the summer, Colgate’s Office of Sustainability ran the six-week Foundations of Sustainability discussion group for faculty, staff, and students from over a dozen departments. The program explored topics like food systems, water, energy, waste, climate change, and green buildings, encouraging participants to consider the ecological, social, and economic impacts of daily choices. Weekly readings and discussions inspired participants to take small but meaningful sustainable actions and recognize their potential ripple effect on others.

The Colgate Community Garden (CCG) serves multiple purposes: Education, Local Food Access, and Community.

Colgate’s garden interns attended Open Farm Day in upstate New York, touring several farms to learn about sustainable agriculture and local food systems

Now hiring garden interns!

The Colgate Community Garden is thriving after recent rain and sunshine, with lettuce, radishes, kale, chard, snap peas, and squash growing abundantly. The garden has been harvesting for farm stands, Chartwells dining services, and the Hamilton Food Cupboard, fostering strong community connections. Special thanks were given to weekly volunteers, including a library staff group who helped mulch, weed, and plant, as well as painted decorative rocks.

At the Colgate Community Garden, pests like slugs, beetles, grasshoppers, cutworms, and birds are managed using organic, eco-friendly methods to protect plants while minimizing environmental impact.