Meet Misha Kouzeh, Institute For Sustainability Coordinator

By: Brittany Smith

Misha Kouzeh is the project coordinator at the Institute for Sustainability at CSUN. Originally from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Kouzeh says the environment she grew up in was very eco-friendly, as it contained lots of green landscaping, organic agriculture and sustainable transportation.

Kouzeh moved to Los Angeles to be a part of the UCLA Extension Sustainability Certificate Program where she currently teaches two classes.

Traveling and getting to know the world is a part of who she is, and it helped her discover her purpose. When asked what her goal is, Kouzeh said she wanted “to educate students about sustainability issues on and off campus and increase their awareness so that we can empower them to make positive change!”.

Kouzeh describes her workday at CSUN as busy, which usually begins by checking in the student assistants about their volunteering tasks in the Food Garden. She oversees eight student assistants. She answers emails and works on presentations for meetings. She says meetings usually take up a lot of her day. She also gives building tours and coordinates different activities for the Institute of Sustainability office.

The Institute for Sustainability works closely with Associated Students (AS) to educate Matadors on the reduction of harm to the ecosystem. Kouzeh says everyone can help make change at home every day by recycling, reducing food waste by purchasing only what will be consumed, and properly storing leftovers. She also suggests repurposing clothes or donating them. Going meatless for just one day a week can also make a big difference, as over a thousand gallons of water go into producing one gallon of beef.

Many campus resources are also available to students and staff, including the CSUN Food Pantry which provides food and groceries to help alleviate food insecurity that many people with financial difficulties often face. The Food Recovery Network also provides free breakfast for students every Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Bayramian Hall 245. There, students can find information on recovering food from CSUN dining locations and delivering it to homeless and those in need.

You could learn how to start your own food garden in your backyard. There are volunteer opportunities that students can take part of and learn how to grow and maintain their own garden at home. Join the Institute for Sustainability’s upcoming events to learn more about how you can take small steps at home for a big impact on the planet.

Recycling Center Shows Progress For CSUN

By: Alex Guerrero

Legal policies and social movements are drawing urgent attention to a pressing issue – resource sustainability. The rate that materials are used to make consumable products is dangerous to the future of our planet. Straw bans, reusable water bottles, solar panels, and more are becoming the social standard in order to preserve our dwindling resources.

The community here at California State University, Northridge is home to a very unique program that is working to limit our waste in large quantities-Associated Students Recycling.

A fenced yard served as the hub when the program was founded in 1991 by a student. The small operation had less than 15 recycling locations on campus and three buildings that recycled paper. CSUN was the last school in the Cal State system to have such a  program.

Funding from the university administration and Associated Students allowed the new facility to be constructed, paving the way for more programs that align with the universities 10-year sustainability plan. Now, the campus is a leader in green efforts.

In 2018 the current state of the art facility was built in efforts to get CSUN in the race to be one of the most sustainable campuses in the California State University school system. CSUN is the first campus with a LEED-certified facility focused on the idea of zero waste emission.

CSUN is one of the largest single-campus public universities in the nation. Approximately 40,000 students are enrolled in classes, and the various dining halls, recreational facilities, and offices produce a vast amount of waste every single week.

Rolando Valiente, the Sustainability and Recycling Manager, has been working with the operation since he was a business management student in 2004. He has high praise for his hard-working staff that are leading the way to a cleaner and more sustainable campus.

The facility is operational during the school week. 12 students are on the payroll to keep the production running efficiently. They gather recyclables from all over campus each day to be sorted at the plant behind the Student Union. These items include cans, bottles, paper, cardboard, and electronic waste.

When the program was founded in 1991, the only materials recycled were glass, aluminum cans, and bottles. The increased size and addition of equipment allows the sorting and shipping of the bigger materials present in the yard today.

Machines are used to sort and bale these items to be shipped off to outside vendors. These local companies repurpose the materials that get processed at the recycling center and distribute them back into the community.

The plant processes roughly 400,000 pounds of recyclables a year, which is shockingly only 7% of the total university waste stream.   

These materials can be collected and sold in bulk so the market is better than for other rarer and difficult materials to work with on campus. Cardboard is one of the biggest materials they handle because of the craze of Amazon shipping and packaging. Glass is not a common material anymore, whereas plastic is abundant in the student convenience stores. This limits the potential effect of the plant because they cannot collect enough to make it worth their energy and get market value.  

Straws are gone. More water bottle fill stations are emerging. Recycled materials for utensils and food containers are all over dining halls. The Sustainability Center and Recycling Plant have been doing their fair share, but they can only do so much.  

Recycling isn’t the long term solution to resource conservation efforts.

“Think about zero waste. Think about reducing, not so much about recycling,” said Valiente in his office. “Bring your own reusable item so that you can minimize the waste generation here on campus.”

The staff does not want to see the facility grow and operate on a larger scale. They want to help the campus remove all waste and need for recycling.

Slowing down the campus’s waste stream is a productive step in the right direction, but recycling materials just puts them right back on the shelves, then the trash.

“In the very near future, the [plastic] water bottles are gonna be banned,” said Valiente. “It’s coming because this is serious.”

Now with the Education and Outreach Department of the center, students are soon going to see interactive campus initiatives and information sessions on how they can contribute to community’s environmental efforts. Involvement can go beyond using the recycling cans, and awareness will help that in the future

Eliminating the materials that we recycle will get us closer to zero emissions. Recycling can be a last resort if materials are used efficiently and not wasted for convenience. Education and advertising are a focus of the department in order to teach students about the most productive options to help the green movement on campus.

CSUN’s Zero Waste Plan Looks To The Future

By: Madeline Reali

The Zero Waste Plan is headed by the Energy and Sustainability Center on campus, and will be implementing a great number of strategies, policies and initiatives in order to completely reduce waste on campus by 2025.

The CSUN Sustainability Plan and Update for 2017-2018 contains details about how the plan is now being put into motion. It also explains the importance of waste reduction on a campus as large as CSUN’s.

“Campus waste generation amounts to approximately 70 pounds per person annually,” the plan reads. “Reduction of CSUN’s waste is necessary to conserve valuable natural resources, reduce environmental pollution and reduce negative social impacts.”

Nikhil Schneider, Energy and Sustainability Coordinator, explains the data and outlines the basic principles of the zero waste plan, and is excited to see this plan in motion.

“The plan builds on the CSU system-wide sustainability policy, which established the goals of 50% reduction in landfilled material by 2016, and an 80% reduction by 2020, using 2006 as the baseline,” Schneider said. “Our plan adds an additional goal of 95% reduction by 2025, and identifies over 70 specific strategies to achieve this outcome. These strategies address campus operations, infrastructure, policies, education, programmatic changes, and other areas of impact that will be essential to making progress towards our zero waste goals.”

Several measures have already been implemented, such as compost bins in the Sierra Center Marketplace. Most of the go-to items sold at the dining hall can be composted back into soil at industrial composting facilities.

Removal of waste bins in classrooms require students to throw away their trash in the hallways, where recycle bins are provided.

A reusable cup discount of $0.30 is offered at any CSUN dining facility. Finally, there is a pop-up shop in student housing where clothing, non-perishable food items and appliances are donated to students who may need them during move-out. These measures have generated lots of positive feedback.

However, there are some roadblocks that Schneider foresees in the future when it comes to completely reducing waste.

“I think plastic film and food packaging will be a huge challenge, largely because there aren’t alternative products available,” Schneider said. “Single-use coffee cups can be replaced with reusable ones, to-go containers can be composted and soda cans can be recycled, but there aren’t currently reusable, recyclable or compostable options for chip bags, candy wrappers, or other plastic film packaging. Right now, the only way to phase out that waste is for the campus and its users to stop buying and selling products that come in this packaging.”

Another struggle Schneider talked about is a costly remedy for campus restroom waste.

“Paper towels will also be difficult to address,” he said. “They are estimated to make up 15-20% of our waste stream, and they cannot be composted or recycled by traditional waste haulers. One solution is to install hand dryers, but not every restroom has the capacity to support such infrastructure, and the units and installation can be costly. We’ve already installed hand dryers in a few buildings, but drastically reducing paper towel usage campus-wide will be quite a challenge.”

Despite these difficulties, the Sustainability Plan will have a positive influence on the campus and its surrounding areas. It will be economically beneficial despite the initial costs of making structural changes on campus.

The awareness that this zero waste initiative will foster will be carried on into the future, where environmental impact is becoming more and more important to think about and base decisions around, saving wildlife and the planet at the same time.

“CSUN is making a valuable contribution to a waste-smart society, which will be compounded as graduating engineers, planners, artists, policy makers and others continue to embody zero waste principles through their work and daily lives,” Schneider said.

CSUN Garden Workday Encourages Students To Connect With The Enviorment  

By: Natalie Schetritt

With the global rise of eco-conscious agriculturists aiming for a more environmentally safe way to garden, Cal State Northridge encourages students to volunteer in their own sustainable food garden, with an event called, Garden Workdays.

The event, spearheaded by Dr. Mario Giraldo is designed to teach people how to weed the garden, harvest and plant crops, install new irrigation and create compost in an effort to reduce waste.

Many students who live in the city lack exposure to pastoral areas or food production, causing a disconnect between food and the life cycle of animals, plants and the physical environment required for plant production. Garden Workdays aims to eliminate this detachment by promoting direct community involvement and providing service-learning opportunities.

“For a lot of people there is not a connection between a cow and meat or milk,” Dr. Mario Giraldo said.

“A lot of people see it in the grocery store and think of it as just a product,” Giraldo continued.   

Giraldo, along with the garden’s founder, Dr. Erica Wohldmann, hopes that Garden Workdays will increase awareness of what kind of foods are good for our bodies and ingrain the importance of taking care of the environment into all students who participate.

CSUN’s Food Garden has been fully operated and maintained by students and volunteers since its opening in 2010. Last academic year, more than 500 students visited or participated in Garden Workday events. Project Coordinator Misha Kouzeh, said that students who volunteer enjoy working in the garden because they learn gardening skills that they can use in their own lives.

“You don’t need a big backyard to grow your own food. Students often enjoy taking herbs like fresh mint or produce home with them.” Kouzeh said.

Kouzeh said that though most students participate because they need the volunteer hours, it becomes a valuable opportunity to get involved in campus efforts, acquire important skills and give back to communities by doing good.

“It is a positive experience that educates students about building garden and communities that can be sustainable to feed many people,” she said.

Last academic year, this project converted more than 35,000 pounds of waste into fertile soil and produced over 300 pounds of food donated to students, volunteers and the CSUN Food Pantry.  The project was also featured in a case study published on the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) website.

According to a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than three quarters of gardeners are avoiding the use of chemicals in their gardens, with 46% using organic fertilizers instead.

The survey also concluded that the number of certified organic farms in the country increased by 11 percent between 2015 and 2016.  California is the leading state for sustainable farming with 2,713 certified farms and 1.1 million acres, which is 21 percent of the total U.S. certified organic land.

Students can contribute to this growing trend on campus and get their service-learning hours by working in the garden on one of the six  select Saturdays throughout the semester.