Environmental Advocacy Conference encourages students to "go off and save this great environment"
Keynote speaker from Morgan Composting Inc. invited to discuss partnership with CMU
Brad Morgan, owner of Morgan Composting, presents his business to attendants at the Environmental Advocacy Conference Feb. 1 in the Biosciences Building. Morgan said he strives to be a leader in Agribusiness, promoting sustainable practices and creating economically friendly soil products.
The second-ever Environmental Advocacy Conference reviewed Central Michigan University's continuation in generating and preserving a culture of sustainability.
The conference, hosted by CMU's Sustainability Coalition, took place Feb. 1 in the Biosciences Building, Room 1010. More than 50 individuals, including students, faculty and Mount Pleasant community members attended.
The two-hour event highlighted both CMU's goals for promoting an environmentally progressive community and its current points of pride, such as its full-cycle partnership Morgan Composting Inc. and the use of green teams in residential halls.
"Our goals for today are to increase awareness of our sustainability actions," said Pat Cwiek, director of the College of Health Professions. "It is something I am very passionate about and I think a lot of students are, (as well). (We're) hoping to increase the passion related to sustainability and recycling."
The conference was also used as the unofficial kick off for RecycleMania, an eight-week, national recycling initiative beginning on Feb. 3, Cwiek said.
During the initiative, universities collect and record recycled items such as those made of cardboard, plastic and paper. In 2017, CMU ranked 87 out of 194 schools participating from Canada and the United States.
The keynote speaker of the event was Brad Morgan of Morgan Composting Inc., located in Sears, MI.
The business is a provider of organic compost and potting soils made from an excess of manure and unconsumed food, such as leftovers from the residential dinning halls.
Morgan said the business began composting in 1996, after admitting to being a broke dairy farmer with a "manure management problem."
"I want you to realize we've done an amazing thing to start composting and I also want you to realize we're at the beginning and we haven't met halfway yet," Morgan said, explaining his business aims to blend economic and environmental science while avoiding and eliminating further creation of landfills.
Their products, titled Dairy Doo, aim to eliminate use of conventional agricultural chemicals, such as nitrogen, phosphorous and nitrates, and have reached up to 250,000 acres of ground in Michigan.
"What we're doing here makes perfect sense, if everybody plays and is (in) the same game," Morgan said. "(We challenge ourselves) to bootleg into the biological side of land development and nourishment."
Morgan accredited his success to remembering everything contributing to composting has a method and system that should immediately utilize once compostable goods are attained.
"The problem with composting is we still have this mindset that if we throw it off in a corner it will take care of itself – (but) in reality it just becomes too big to control," he said.
The conference continued by celebrating the university's progress in being a more environmentally mindful community. On campus, there has been a development in pizza box receptacles for recycling cardboard containers, as well as the establishment of a pantry available to students suffering from food insecurity last semester.
Speaker Brooke Helm, of the College of Science and Engineering, said opportunities to be an environmental advocate thrive throughout all of the colleges, and the university is prepared to welcome an environmental engineering program for Fall 2019.
"(Wherever you are), you can go off and save this great environment and great planet that we have," Helm said.
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