Practice

Gardens & Food

Five gardens are spread about campus grounds. Many of these gardens are designed, planted, and cared for by students in classes like Principles of Small-scale Agriculture, Soil Science, and Agroecology. In the piney desert highlands of northern Arizona, our gardens provide tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, and the three sisters—corn, beans, and squash. However, the gardens also provide other ecosystem services to our campus. In particular, the Rain Garden is one of our newest additions to the campus and was designed by a student to slow down water runoff from a parking lot before entering Butte Creek, which cuts across campus. This garden features native grasses, cacti, and a small apple tree that draw in pollinators and allow some road runoff to infiltrate soils. All of our gardens are living examples of the Principles of Agroecology set forth by the United Nations, instilling elements of shared governance, co-creation, diversity, efficiency, recycling, and resilience, and they are one example of how we are rethinking food systems for sustainability.

In addition to gardens, the Prescott College campus is home to several chickens! These are a main attraction for many students, staff, faculty, and visitors on campus. Our girls are outside the Green Mountain Center for Sustainability next to one of the campus compost systems, where they enjoy juicy worms and grubs during free-range time.

Composting

Over a ton of food scraps are collected each term from student housing (The Village) and the campus cafe (Crossroads Cafe). Student workers collect compost buckets weekly and process them in one of our three-bin composting systems on campus. Food scraps are chopped and mixed with leaves, woodchips, and other “browns” before being piled in one of the bins, decomposing via microorganisms for about a month. At this point, the pile is hot (130-160°F) and is shoveled/forked to a different bin to add air and water. This process repeats one to two more times over a few months; the compost is considered “finished” and ready to be sifted. Sifted compost is added to our campus gardens to provide nutrients, retain moisture, and build soil organic matter. Composting is one of the ways we try to establish a “closed loop” of materials recycling on the Prescott College campus.

Free Store

The campus Free Store is a popular attraction for students, staff, and faculty visiting the Green Mountain Center for Sustainability. Stocked with clothes, shoes, hats, blankets, books, and miscellaneous mystery items, the Free Store is another way we try to “close the loop” on campus and give second, third, and fourth lives to textiles and other materials. Donations can be made anytime Monday through Friday from 9-4pm. On Fridays at noon, we host a special weekly event called Free Store Fridays, which features a free soup lunch and an opportunity to explore the newest donations added to the store from the past week.

Rainwater Catchment

Arizona is the third driest state in the U.S., with only 13 inches of average yearly precipitation. Rainwater catchment is an integral part of our eco-friendly initiatives, harnessing the natural gift of rain, allowing us to conserve water resources and reduce our ecological footprint. By capturing and storing rainwater, we mitigate runoff and utilize this renewable source for various purposes, from landscape irrigation to water conservation efforts on campus. We are particularly proud of the 1,200 gallons of rainwater catchment installed at the Gear Wearhouse / Field Ops. Students and employees use the rainwater to wash gear from rafting trips and other field courses rather than utilizing municipal groundwater.

Renewable Energy

Three solar arrays are installed on the campus, producing about 10% of our electricity use. While we are working to increase the amount of solar installed on campus to produce a greater percentage of our own electricity, we also purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to produce renewal electricity equivalent to the amount used annually at the college. These RECs support renewable energy projects in other parts of the country, displacing the ‘non-renewable’ energy consumed via the local electric grid.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

Students are central to our sustainability mission, so our student resident complex, The Village, embodies sustainability at Prescott College. The Village has received LEED™ Platinum certification, the highest standard developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. This achievement places Prescott College with the first-ever LEED Platinum building in Yavapai County, AZ, and one of few such higher education student housing facilities in the nation. In recent years, we have had students hold competitions between dorms to see how much energy or water they can conserve.

The Village’s green features include:

• Energy reduction of over 90% in high-efficiency design modeling
• Over 95%, 550 tons, of construction waste diverted from landfill
• Rainwater catchment system for irrigation for food-producing landscaping, namely fruit trees
• Native dryland species landscaping installed with no long-term irrigation
• Copious bike parking with covered/shaded areas and a bike repair station
• Compost buckets and regularly scheduled pickups

Degrowth Group

Sustainability at Prescott College extends beyond our physical campus and includes our online students. One of the initiatives launched in 2023 is a Degrowth Reading Group that engages on-campus and online college members in interdisciplinary reading and discussions about climate change, rampant inequality, and how to envision and implement a more convivial future. The group reads one book per semester and meets monthly for one hour to discuss the assigned chapters. Previous readings included Less is More by Jason Hickel, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Material World by Ed Conway. Prescott College students, staff, or faculty can join the reading group by enrolling on the Canvas page with their school email.y-related courses.