What's Happening

February 15, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – Composting, recycling, and worms – those are some of the elements of the sustainability efforts at the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse Campus and the focus of the sustainability update presented by Sister Corinne Sanders, OP, Director of Sustainability. 

Living more sustainability is the focus of one of four Enactments approved by delegates at the Adrian Dominican Congregation’s 2016 General Chapter. The Sustainability Enactment calls on the Sisters as a Congregation and as individuals to “sacrifice to mitigate significantly our impact on climate change and ecological degradation.” 

Sister Corinne spoke in particular of efforts by the Sisters to recycle when possible, and to compost organic material. Through the services of Key Green Solutions, the Congregation is able to track how much of its waste goes to the landfill or is recycled or composted, she said. This tracking system revealed that during the 2018 calendar year, some 85 percent of the waste from the Motherhouse campus went to the landfill. This benchmark could motivate Sisters and Co-workers on campus to focus more on recycling and composting to reduce the amount of waste that goes to the landfill, Sister Corinne said.

Weber Retreat and Conference Center is systematically increasing the practice of composting on the Motherhouse Campus by providing plates, cups, and napkins made of compostable material. Sister Corinne added that the best way to cut down on waste, however, is to use the ceramic mugs available at Weber Center’s coffee station.

During much of the presentation, questions about specific practices in recycling and composting were raised as people on campus strive to live more sustainably. Living sustainably “takes a lot of creativity, a lot of thinking, and a lot of changed behavior,” Sister Corinne acknowledged.

On a lighter note, Sister Corinne noted the success of the Congregation’s efforts to compost through the vermiculture process, in which worms help to break down compostable material. The Motherhouse campus now hosts 150,000 worms in its composting bin, an intergenerational community.

January 3, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – The use of renewable energy is one of the key components of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ sustainability efforts, Sister Corinne Sanders, OP, Director of the Office of Sustainability, told the Energy News Network. In a January 2, 2019 article, Sister Corinne and Joel Henricks, Director of Facilities and Grounds, describe the efforts of the Adrian Dominican Congregation to live sustainably at the Motherhouse Campus. The efforts are in response to the 2016 General Chapter Enactment to “sacrifice to mitigate significantly our impact on climate change and ecological degradation.” 

Read the entire article by Andy Balaskovitz.

Feature photo: Ice storage tanks installed in 2018 are part of the Adrian Dominican Congregation’s sustainability efforts. The tanks store ice created during off-peak hours and are used to cool the buildings on the Motherhouse Campus.