Georgia Institute of Technology Office of Campus Sustainability | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA

We connected with Marcela Moreno, the Green Champion in the Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory in the Strategic Energy Institute. They used their Work Green grant to fund a raised bed garden in their parking lot and to create a composting system. Raised bed gardening, or container gardening, is an urban style of gardening that continues to rise in popularity. This way of gardening allows for gardening in small areas that may or may not even have a patch of land to garden.

Our next Work Green Champion is Georgia Tech Strategic Consulting (GTSC). GTSC is an internal team that is focused on advancing organization excellence across the Institute. We met with half of the GTSC Work Green team, Andrew Billings and Juana Cunningham, to hear about their Work Green project. GTSC Work Green team members Kara Tillman and Byron Fitch were unable to join us for the interview. The GTSC Work Green project, titled “office-ponics,”—involved the installation and maintenance of indoor plants with the goal of improving indoor air quality.

Facilities is one of the largest departments at Georgia Tech, with 570 employees. They have achieved national acclaim through their innovative green cleaning solutions that lessens their environmental impact. Knowing that this is a huge department that is already on the cutting edge of green methods, we were excited to support their Work Green Mini-Grant project.

Consider the yellow jacket (the actual insect, not our mascot). What purpose does this pest have in our ecosystem (other than to viciously attack when disturbed)? Yellow jackets serve an important purpose by helping to control the pest population. The importance of every living creature, no matter how small, is at the heart of permaculture—the development of agricultural ecosystems that are intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient.

A (good!) bike for less than $60 including the labor to fix it up? Where else in Atlanta can you find such a deal? Look no further than the Starter Bikes, a collaborative project between Georgia Tech’s Students Organizing for Sustainability and the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Starter Bikes is now its own student organization.