Sustainability at Te Herenga Wake Victoria University of Wellington

I learned a lot today on our tour of the campus. During the lecture I found out that 80% of New Zealand’s electricity system energy is renewable energy and the bulk of this comes from hydro. 65% of this hydro energy that is created comes from geo thermal sources. Wind power generation is a small but growing sector in New Zealand, new farms are slowly popping up. The university itself was very impressive with their environmental approach. Within the cafeterias there were multiple bins for trash allocating waste to the best possible place. Only 7% of students relied on taking a car to school and the rest walked, rode bikes, or used public transit. Within the cafeteria of the school they had switched from using plastic milk containers to glass and this saves them thousands of plastic containers yearly. This new glassed milk is provided by a local supplier in order to reduce transportation emissions. They collect the empty glass bottles clean them and then reuse them. They also spoke about the reforestation program which was very interesting. It was founded in 2011 and was called growing graduates. The students and staff worked with city counsel to provide space and supplies to plant a tree for each and every kid that graduates this university. 72% of these trees would go on to survive for over a year. They planted all different types of tress in order to promote biodiversity. The next thing we herd about was the living building challenge. This was a building the college was constructing that not only has a zero carbon footprint but also gives back to the grid. They used materials with zero net carbon to construct this, and the building itself will generate 105% of the energy consumption it uses. On the roof it has solar panels and a system to collect rainwater. For the last seminar of the day we learned a lot about the SDGs (sustainable development goals) proposed by the United Nations. The goals of these were to promote sustainability and a better overall environment. I was amazed to see how similar the SDGs were. In some way shape or form you can make connections between any of the 17 of them. This was cool to analyze and work on as a group to see just how each sector can impact another. Overall I learned a lot at the university and I believe they are doing a much better job than Whittier College when it comes to environmental preservation and restoration.