The Past, Present, and Future of EU’s Sustainability Efforts

Photo by Kelly Gregory

Tucked away, across from the Elmhurst Public Library, sits a plot of land unnoticed by many, but wholly loved by those who know it’s there. The 1871 Heritage Garden started in 2017 by Elmhurst University’s Sustainability Committee is now run mostly by one man, Kyle Bennett.

Bennett, an associate professor of biology here at EU, has been running the garden for over six years, inheriting it from a retired German professor who asked him to take up the mantle.

“He was 82 years old and the beginnings of it was just a few beds,” he said. “The reason it’s called the ‘1871 Heritage Garden’ is because the original attempt was to sort of recreate the things that were grown by those first students in seminary as they were growing their own food.”

Although the garden may have had humble beginnings, Bennett has been putting in the work to ensure it continues to flourish. From the first few modest beds of crops, Bennett, with help over the years from various students through his ‘Gardening to Give’ class and the gardening club, has expanded the Heritage Garden to over forty plots of crops.

These plots generate over two thousand pounds of fresh produce each year that is then donated to the local Elmhurst Food Pantry.

“Gardening this way, you know, sometimes I’m taking a hundred pounds of cucumber over there at a time. But the food pantry doesn’t often get real fresh produce, they get donations from supermarkets that are things that are already on their way out.” Bennett reflects on the very start of these donations, “The first year I did this pre- COVID, I’d be coming in with things of food. I’d put a cabbage head on a shelf, bend down to get another one, and a customer had taken it. Fresh produce is rare to get.”

“This is not part of my faculty duties, I don’t get paid extra to do it, but I end up working somewhere around five to 10 hours a week during the growing season,” explains Bennett, “Each year we’ve had a little expansion, I’ve gotten lots of grants to help pay for it. So most of the funding, actually all of the funding has come externally from the university.”

Bennett receives funding through grants from various local organizations including The Elmhurst Garden Club, The Garden Works Project, and most recently an innovation grant from the Wild Ones which advocates for the inclusion of native plants, inspiring the fauna placed around the front of the Heritage Garden.

“The thing that’s difficult though, is the garden has no official sanction,” Bennett laments when talking about how he sees things moving forward. “Any moment someone could say ‘Oh that garden’s gotta go’ and there’s really no recourse I can do. The thing that had been sort of the overreaching protection was the sustainability committee.”

EU’s Sustainability Committee, while still officially ‘on the books,’ has not been active since 2017.

Bennett, who was once an active member of the committee and looks back fondly on the work they did, says he remembers countless initiatives spearheaded by the committee, including but not limited to; countless recycling events, and even an initiative to provide commuter students free bikes if they chose to opt out of buying parking passes.

“So much of it was driven by administration,” said Bennett, “The president and deans that were interested in it, the people who had the power to make those kinds of decisions, they all left.”

Sarah Strom Kays, chair of the department of communications and media, was also once a member of the sustainability committee.

Currently, she teaches an environmental communication class each fall semester and is passionate about the topic of sustainability within the university — so much so that she planned and proposed the creation of an Office of Sustainability to try to prevent the dissolution of the committee, an office that ultimately never came to be.

“We need the structures in place so students can just bump in and bump out, but we don’t have that,” said Strom Kays. “It went away, now we have to build it back. I don’t know if it will ever happen again unless there’s some sort of external force. I would love to do it, but I need help.”

Like Bennett, Strom Kays also remembers a time when that structure was in place. She said there is a rich history behind some of the early sustainability initiatives spearheaded by the committee — including, but not limited to, the establishment of a campus ‘Food Recovery Network’ chapter which was led by Chartwells-sponsored interns who would take food donations from students and distribute them to those in need.

There was also a beekeeping program aimed at providing further pollination to pre-existing crops. Strom Kays said EU was one of few institutions at the time that were regulated to have hives by the City of Elmhurst, and that the current legislation on the maintenance of beehives in the city has since expanded to include all educational institutions in part because of that initial program.

Perhaps the most widely known initiative spearheaded by the sustainability committee in its heyday was EU’s composting program –– a program that, like the committee, exists in a state that is now called into question.

There is a largely documented history of EU being recognized and awarded for its composting efforts, which began in the summer of 2013 when EU was given a $28,000 grant by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s competitive Food Scrap Composting Grant Program.

This grant went towards a high-powered grinder that according to EU would be, “used in the campus dining operations to increase the diversion of material from landfilling to composting.” EU stated that the grinder would be ready for use by the time students returned to campus by August 2013.

However, representatives from the facilities department said that problems with the grinder began shortly after its installation in early 2014 due to incorrect items running through the machine and causing jams. According to them, the grinder had to be taken out of service after about a year.

By the fall of 2015, EU was again awarded a Gold Partner designation in the We Compost program run by the Illinois Food Scrap Coalition. This Gold Partner designation recognized “businesses and institutions that demonstrated the highest level of commitment to food scrap diversion.”

At this time, EU was calling itself, “A regional leader in the food scrap composting effort since mid-2012,” and even said that they had “generated more than 21,000 pounds of food scrap compost in this academic year so far — keeping more than 10 tons of waste out of landfills.”

However, sometime around 2017, these sustainable changes fell through, about the same time the committee did.

The composting program was set up through Waste Management, the garbage disposal company used by EU, and grant money was going towards hiring student workers to stand in front of the bins to ensure proper sorting was taking place. However, even with these safeguards in place, Bennett explained the practice was “incredibly cost-prohibitive” for EU.

“The sustainability committee had pushed forward a composting program on campus, and it collapsed,” said Bennett, going into more detail, “We had set up the whole program, but if there’s any contamination in the composting bin the whole thing goes in the garbage. We had gotten to somewhere like 90% of our bins were contaminated and went into normal garbage. If the student worker in charge of sorting went to the bathroom, they’d come back and the compost bin would be contaminated.”

Except by the looks of it, you wouldn’t know that the composting program has collapsed. Students walk past clearly labeled bins in the cafeteria every day, some even still appropriately sorting, under the impression that they’re doing their part to keep campus green.

“It’s an added cost to take out the bins,” Bennett surmised, “It’s easier to keep the bins and just have it all removed as normal garbage.

Despite intel saying otherwise, and the rumors around campus among the student body (and student workers) that recycling and composting have fallen to the wayside, representatives from Chartwells say they maintain a “robust recycling program,” and that they “still separate compostable and recyclable waste for processing by the waste management company.”

Senior Kelly Gregory is currently enrolled in Bennett’s Gardening to Give class and since then has become interested in sustainability efforts around campus.

“I don’t feel very good about it,” said Gregory, upon hearing the conflicting information about the state of the campus’ waste disposal.

“There is a mass amount of waste that is not going where it should be,” said Gregory. “I think it’s a missed opportunity for Elmhurst to take initiative and lead by example. By engaging in sustainability practices, it can encourage students to do the same.”

While Bennett wishes they could have continued with other initiatives the committee planned, he is grateful for the ability to keep the garden running — despite the challenges of not having the same support of years past.

“The sort of loss of those people on campus who were driving [the committee] has made it difficult. Me as one professor and Dr. Mikenas as the other environmental studies professor, we don’t have the power and clout to make it happen. But you know who does? Students.”

Although the sustainability committee’s numbers have dwindled to one, there are still other sustainability-focused organizations around campus, and students within them hoping to make a difference in their own way.

“The Greenjays, I’d say we’re bouncing back,” said Justyn Samuels, the president of the organization. “We’re working on building back and revitalizing. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it also doesn’t have to be if you have a lot of people working on the same goal.”

The Greenjays’ mission is to focus on building a more sustainable campus and engage with the community. According to Samuels, they are getting back into the swing of things with a new set of mostly underclassmen members, and some recent successful events for Earth Day, including their farmer’s market.

Samuels says he’s proud of the work his organization does and hopes to continue raising awareness about sustainability efforts on campus. “We’re working on seeing what we can do to give back because I think small gestures go a long way.”

While small gestures may be the way to go, Samuels explained that he and other Greenjays members took larger action a few years ago when they drafted up a sustainability plan for EU in one of their classes. Looking back, Samuels says they hoped that there would be some change made by now, as a result of that plan.

“We did look over the recycling and composting [for the plan], we actually interviewed a lot of the people that are part of that process. They said we no longer do it due to the cost and because a lot of it the students don’t separate properly. There’s a lack of education on proper disposal methods, there’s a lack of care. Those are all things that could easily be changed too, which is why it’s kind of sad that we got rid of it.”

Despite his disappointment, Samuels says he understands why the cost cuts were allegedly made.

“From a financial standpoint, I understood because they’re paying so much extra just for it all to end up in the same place. However, I would love to change that because we only have one planet, and what’s a few extra dollars, if it’s helping to protect the planet?”

Alex Bulley, the president of the Student Veterans Association, is putting the work in with the organization to spearhead their own recycling program. The process will eventually include new bins brought in by the SVA themselves, and fliers posted to inform students that what they put in these bins will be recycled.

“I put up a bin in the Vet Center and a couple of students responded to it, like really, they were like, ‘Oh, this is really cool, this is a good idea.’ And then it got me thinking about recycling,” Bulley explained, going into detail about how they partnered with energy drink company C4 and collected a lot more cans that way. “I’ve just got one bin right now, and I think it’s full, actually, I have to empty it.”

Even though there’s only one bin in the Veterans Center now, Bulley says he plans to expand the project and hopes to partner with the Greenjays to get the word out.

“So I got these printer paper boxes. And I was just going to throw those around and put a poster on the wall in front of it, or staple something to it, and put one in the library, maybe one out in the Frick Center.”

Bulley’s vision doesn’t stop there, though. Ultimately, he says he’d like to see this sort of program implemented across the city of Elmhurst.

“Man, I’d like to see Elmhurst University do this out in town, you know, maybe partner up with local organizations or something like that,” Bulley said. “I would like to see a map or a flowchart saying, here’s where we can dispose of this stuff. I’d like to see it get a little bit more widespread and maybe kind of, you know, be like a community solution to recycling issues.”

Gregory said after seeing the Heritage Garden on a field trip for another environmental science class she was in, she was inspired to take Bennett’s Gardening to Give class to learn more. Gregory also thinks we need more green initiatives on campus, and she has some ideas for where to start.

“I noticed in my class that a majority of students did not even know about the garden or the greenhouse on campus,” Gregory said. “I think we first need to raise awareness for the things we currently have, like the reusable lunch containers.”

She went on to explain that this prompted her to do further research.

“I learned that we used to do an annual ‘Recycling Extravaganza’ event, we could bring that back,” Gregory said. “Actually, I think we should bring all the events back.”

While the work amongst those keeping sustainability efforts alive here at EU may not be widely recognized, students like Bulley, Samuels, and Gregory said they’re more than happy to do their part to continue spreading awareness.

And as for the future? Bennett said he’ll still be working in the garden. His goals include writing up a proposal to keep the money from his Innovation Grant that has gone unused thus far but would allow him to fund the Heritage Garden for the next five years. He also wants to have a sign put up in front of the garden, to make it official, and to tell people they’re welcome to come and take produce as needed.

Bennett hopes that continuing to run the garden will help educate not only students and faculty of EU but also help to bring the community together.

“That library across the way gets three to four thousand people through it every day,” Bennett estimated. “That big front window is like a picture window looking at our campus and all people see are a few beat-up houses we’re using as student housing. Now they get to see a big colorful garden, and I think that’s wonderful.”