Bobcat Blend Builds Student Awareness in Recycling

Stephen McIlhon
San Marcos, TX


Lunch in student cafeterias just got a little more complicated, but for good reason. A new program on campus called Bobcat Blend is helping to show students the benefits of recycling.
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The program asks students to separate their waste into three different receptacles: organic waste, bottles and cans, and trash. The organic waste from the school’s cafeterias, including cardboard and paper food packaging products, will then be composted and eventually brought back to campus as a nutrient rich soil in a continuing effort to beautify the campus landscape.

Bobcat Blend was created by graduate horticulture students Jason Sanders and Jon Montoya. The two students work in conjunction with the Environmental Service Committee at Texas State.

Sanders and Montoya hope to promote student awareness in the use and production of waste products. They also want the project to become sustainable on campus and teach others about the alternative techniques for producing agriculture.

At the beginning of this fall semester, Sanders placed the receptacles beside normal trash and recycling bins. With easy to follow signs and directions, the program didn’t take long to catch on with students.



“It’s not hard to figure out,” said Ryne Sturdivant, a student at Texas State University. “I think it’s pretty simple as long as you can read.”

The program’s popularity has kept Sanders and Montoya very busy. But they apparently don’t mind being knee deep in garbage.
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“I handle anywhere from 200-600 pounds of food waste a day,” said Montoya. “It goes to the university compost site to be composted and later returned to the grounds on campus as a soil amendment.”

​ The grounds expected to benefit include general green space on campus and flower beds. There are even future plans to improve both the Texas State football field and golf course.

The program hopes to promote student awareness in their use and production of waste products. The students also want the project to become sustainable on campus and teach students alternative techniques for agriculture.

Associate professor of horticulture Tina Marie Cade is the student’s graduate adviser and supervises the project.

​ “I'm the constant in the projects, whereas they'll want to finish up and graduate one day,” said Cade. “Other graduate students will come in and do other research on Bobcat Blend under my direction once these guys graduate.”

Sanders and Montoya hope Bobcat Blend will continue on for years to come. Texas State is the first school in the state to implement such a program.

'Smart' meters offer advantages to customers, city

By Michael Barrett

For Texas State students paying utility bills to the City of San Marcos, including those that live in apartments owned by the university, a recent citywide switch of electric meters for their buildings will mean an increase in options regarding how they manage their energy consumption in the future.

The city's implementation of Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI) technology will involve new, “smart” meters that will send frequent updates on usage to the city utility office using radio transmitters.

“There are several advantages: more frequent meter reads for the city and for the customer to look at consumption, so customers can try to adjust their consumption patterns to adjust their bills,” Angela Riley, Metering Supervisor for the City of San Marcos, said.

She said the city now has less than one hundred electric meters left to switch out, and that the installation of the water meters should be completed by around June of next year.

The smart water meters will offer the city and its customers similar advantages to the electric ones, including the city's ability to detect water leaks, even before the customer calls the utility office.

“The city has quicker notification when we have outages on the electric side, conservation reporting on the water side,” Riley said.

According to the City of San Marcos Web site, other advantages of the new meters include quicker connects and disconnects, greater personnel safety, and fewer personnel on the street, meaning fewer vehicles and less pollution.



Benefits of the system that are on the way will include the city’s ability to keep better track of customer demand and system loads, as well as the capability for the city to offer different rates corresponding to different times of the day, thereby encouraging customers to use appliances at off-peak times instead of when there is heavy demand on the grid.

According to the city’s Web site, the project will have paid for itself after 5 to 7 years, thanks to “labor savings, reduced water and electric line loss and increased operational efficiencies.”

The city won Utility Automation and Engineering T&D Magazine’s “AMI Project of the Year” award at a national conference in San Diego in February, according to the city’s Web site.

A city press release covering the award quotes City Manager Rick Menchaca as saying, “Winning this award reaffirms our belief that AMI and smart meters are a very good investment for the citizens of San Marcos.”

Riley, alluding to what has so far been a successful program, said that the process of installing the meters to date has been relatively smooth: “Minor problems, but nothing major.”

Texas State University features environmental courses

By Lisa Carter


Texas State University students are not just visiting environmental issues around campus. Deeper discussion about the environment is being encouraged in the classroom as well.

Chad Smith, assistant sociology professor, students in his environmental sociology course discuss sociological concepts dealing with problems such as pollution, waste and global climate change.

“The main things we discuss are humans’ interactions between our social and natural environments,” Smith said. “The overriding idea is how humans are dependent on the natural environment, not always in positive, but also in negative ways.”

Kelly McGauhey, applied sociology junior, said she chose to take Smith’s course because of her job at the River Systems Institute and the importance of general knowledge on environmental issues.

“I expected to come out (of the class) with a better understanding of people and how they interact with the environment,” McGauhey said. “I originally though of humans as separate from nature but after taking this class, I’ve realized that’s not true. I’ve learned a lot about the biotic community and how humans work with the environment.”

Smith said he enjoys teaching the course because it consists of students who are of various majors.

“It is a multidisciplinary class, so we take stuff from other classes and put it into this one, which makes for a lively discussion,” Smith said. “People self-select this class, so they’ve usually done some reading and facilitate some things from other classes that they can put into this one.”

However, not all environment-related courses are discussion-based. Ron Hagelman, assistant geography professor, is the instructor for environmental management, a writing intensive course with a focus on projects and lecture material. He said the projects help students prepare for environmental professions.

“There is one project in which the students will find a job advertisement in environmental management that they might be interested in and do a résumé assessment,” Hagelman said. “It gets them seriously thinking about being employed in environmental fields.”

Hagelman said the students do a project in which they analyze their personal carbon footprint and figure out what needs to be done to cut the result in half. He said the students also compare various cities’ carbon footprints and analyze the differences.

Corina Salmon, environmental studies junior, said the class has met her expectations, despite the workload.

“I’ve gotten a lot of real world experience out of it,” Salmon said. “(The students) are getting to know how to write things such as environmental impact statements for the professional world. We’re all pretty interested in learning about the environment beforehand and we all knew how much work was required.”

Smith said some of his students have the geographical background about environmental issues and have little knowledge about the sociological concepts before starting the class.

“Some students haven’t thought of (these issues) in sociological terms,” Smith said. “They may have in geographical terms, which leads to an interesting discussion about why humans behave the way we do and, if you can, how you change people’s behaviors in terms of global climate change.”

Master Plan involves green thinking

By Kaycee Toller and Greg Richards

With its “gray to green” theme, Texas State’s Ten Year Master Plan promises a more environmentally sustainable campus in the future.

Implemented in 2005, the Plan includes environmentally friendly measures such as planning for energy efficiency as well as converting impervious surfaces such as concrete and asphalt into green areas.

Nancy Nusbaum, project manager for the master plan, said that Texas State hopes that all new buildings will qualify for Silver level certification through the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED.

To meet this certification standard, university buildings need features that allow them to be more energy efficient, such as lights that run on motion sensors and digital temperature controls.

Coyle Buhler, director of Facilities Planning, Design and Construction said that meeting LEED standards is an important part of the Ten Year Master Plan.

“By building environmentally sensitive buildings, we put our campus in a better position for the future,” said Buhler.

Converting “gray” parking areas into “green spaces” containing natural vegetation is another integral part of the plan.

“It’s about maximizing the use of land,” said Buhler, “We can turn surface lots into something more environmentally friendly such as green spaces and parking garages.”

“Parking garages have less of a footprint than surface lots,” said Nancy Nusbaum.

Buhler said that storm water runoff can be collected from parking garages and buildings to be treated before running into the river.

“Texas State is doing a good job in trying to minimize the negative impact on natural areas such as the San Marcos River,” said Dr. Brock Brown, an associate professor in the department of geography.

Storm water runoff will also be redirected into green spaces that are added across campus.

“We currently have a substantial amount of campus covered with impervious surfaces,” said Buhler, “We’re trying to replace these with green areas.”

Brown said that green spaces improve the environment by clearing out air pollutants and moderating high temperatures.

“We’ve already added a green area on Concho Street, and will soon renovate Bobcat Trail to become green space in front of Commons,” said Nusbaum.

Maintaining the sustainability of the local river and aquatic environments has been another crucial point of the plan, said Michael Abbott, associate director of the River Systems Institute.

“The university has made it clear to the community that it wishes to protect one our important natural resources,” said Abbott. “More green spaces directly affect the river by recharging the aquifer more efficiently. Pollutants are filtered out through the ground, which enhances the water quality.”

The Future of Renewable Energy at Texas State

By Billy Crawford and Patrick Ygnacio

A recent report from the University News Service said Texas State is now working to further “green energy” technologies.

The staff in the Multifunctional Materials Laboratory at Texas State has partnered with MicroPower Global to develop thermoelectric-chalcogenide based chips which can convert heat into electricity. MicroPower chips are more than twice as efficient as photovoltaic materials already being used in solar power arrays, according to the company’s website.

Kyle Dicke, Assistant Director of San Marcos Electric Utility, said the city is pursuing grants for solar power arrays which will be constructed at the San Marcos Activity Center. He said these arrays are currently the best option for generating renewable energy locally.

“The science and technology is not hard they’re just very expensive,” Dicke said. “What we’re seeing with the residential customers is, in order to get one that is of any real benefit, it has to be very big and cover essentially the whole roof of the house.”

One hundred percent San Marcos’ electricity is purchased from the Lower Colorado River Authority and approximately eight percent of that power comes from LCRA’s “green energy” sources, Dicke said. These renewable energies include power generated at several West Texas wind farms. Dicke said the transmission of electricity from these facilities to San Marcos is costly and the willingness of the consumer to pay for this is a factor in determining future “green energy” purchases.

The University of Texas is one of the few area colleges that generates any of its own electricity, and turns excess heat from energy generation into an energy resource.

Mack Andrews, assistant utilities operations supervisor at Texas, said that capturing the excess heat allows the school to nearly double the amount of electricity it generates while drastically cutting down wasted energy.

One model that Texas State might look to follow could be the University of Central Florida. UCF is one of the nation’s most energy-efficient schools, and is emerging as a leader in renewable energy.

“We use geo-thermal heating to keep our buildings warm, which cuts back on energy consumption,” said David Norvell, UCF’s energy manager. “We’re leading the way in research on renewable energy right now, and hope by 2020 to get twenty percent of our total energy from renewable resources.”

In addition to using geothermal energy, UCF also uses multiple solar panels to generate energy. Like Texas, UCF utilizes excess steam and heat as an energy source.
Another school with strong ties to renewable resources is the University of Iowa. There, school officials have reached a deal with the nearby Quaker Oats plant, and burn waste oat hulls with coal for generating energy.

“The oat hulls are just one of the things we do on campus,” said Glen Mowery, energy management director. “We also have our own water plant, and we have our own power plant. All in all, we probably save about $4 million every year in energy costs.”

Other schools have turned to their regional resources as well. Arizona State and West Texas A&M both use power generated from nearby wind turbines and several campuses use nearby bodies of water to generate hydroelectricity.

“I think that there’s always a way for schools to be more self-reliant,” Norvell said. “There are always some sort of renewable resources that are available, you just have to know how to use them, and then continue to be committed to using them.”

Custodial Operations Going 'Green'

By Jenelle Madrid

Studies have shown a link between indoor air quality and student performance, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Custodial Operation’s director, Kim Graves, takes air quality and Texas State’s carbon footprint on campus seriously.

“As we purchase machines (and cleaning products), we look for noise and air quality,” said Graves. “We want to keep our employees, students and faculty healthy and help impact the learning process.”

The department not only looks for equipment that is environmentally friendly, but also those that are “ergonomically” beneficial to employees, in order to lessen bodily stress and injury.

“We are trying to be as innovative as we can,” said Graves. “We are doing anything we can for sustainability and to save labor and chemicals.”

A product she was particularly excited about was a floor finisher, INVINCIBLE™, that uses nano-technology to shine the floors as opposed to adding layers of polish that tends to yellow after a while.

She said that the machine uses diamond bits to strip the floor, while quartz is formed to fill in pores.

She recommends visiting a portion of the McCoy Hall, where part of the hallway is completed with the product while the other is not.

Also, her plans are to replace every mat on campus with those made out of recycled water bottles and tires.

“They are good for air quality, especially on rainy days when mud is tracked into the building,” said Margie Brownsberger, who is in charge of special projects associated with Custodial Operations. “It holds the mud better, which means less chemicals and products to mop the floor with.”

Another one of their go-to products is the use of microfibers.

Lance Trotter, trainer and workshop supervisor at Custodial Operations, showed a microfiber cloth, another go-to product that the department is in the process of implementing into their “green” plans.

“Microfiber cloths soak up three to five times more than cotton pieces,” said Graves. “They last longer so we are not buying them as frequently, and they are better on employees’ bodies.”

Green training also plays a key role in the success of the program.

They have a conference room where they have held teleconferences with the Association of Physical Plant Administrators, a non-profit organization for facility management.

Graves said that although the project costs more and will take about five to ten years to complete, the results will be more permanent.

The department is also seeking a LEED certification through the U.S. Green Building Council, which provides the framework for building owners and operators in implementing “green” operations and maintenance, according to the USGBC Web site.

“We do more than just mop floors,” said Graves.

Fermin Torrez, custodial supervisor of Custodial Operations, said that the department is also involved in the university’s safety council and in the community.

Torrez said that the department provided nearly 300 table fans last year for elders living in nursing homes in the Austin and San Marcos area.

Currently, the custodial operations department is in the process of preparing a presentation to show ASG next week.

Photo by Jenelle Madrid

Measurable Green Building Design

By Imelda Vergara


Texas State University is committed to standards for Green Building design and recycling the tons of waste generated by the its $640 million construction plan.

Green building is the development of healthier and more resource-efficient models of construction, renovation, operation and maintenance.

The Round Rock nursing school is just one of the buildings being built under LEED standards, Leadership in Energy and Enviornmental Design.

LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system, created by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED provides building owners and operators an outline for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

The Rock Round building is a $22 million project, it will generate 3-4 tons of waste, according to Coyle Buhler, the Texas State director of facility planning design and construction.

Recycling the waste will cost the university an additional $150, 000 for the Round Rock to meet LEED requirements said Buhler.

The university doesn't actually use recycled materials in their construction because right now the price of raw materials is actually cheaper than the price of recycled materials. Buhler thinks that if more people where to adapt to the USGBC waste standards the prices of these environmentally beneficial items should go down.


Flintco is the construction company contracted by Texas State, in charge of gathering the unused materials and placing them in the dumpsters. “We presort the waste, into 5 dumpsters on site. We then contract several recycling facilities who pick the dumpsters up, break the materials down and insert them back into the work flow,” said Peter Narvarte, construction director of the Round Rock nursing school and Flinto. Construction company employee.

Most of the waste generated from buildings needs to got to specific recycling centers. Texas State has to pay a premium for this to be possible because Flintco has to contract waste management facilities that take these sorted items to their specific locations.

Triad is one of the waste management companies contracted by Flintco. According to Adrian Neely, Triad owner, Texas State is good about meeting its LEED standards. “We have a goal of 75 percent divergence. So far we’ve picked up 2 tons of waste debris from the Round Rock building and we’ve met 93 percent divergence. Only 12 percent has gone to landfills.” According to Neely there is no room left on landfills and they constantly need to meet high divergence rates. He thinks the LEED is leading the way when it comes to efficient and long lasting construction and minimizing waste.

Attonery with U.S. Enivonmental Protection Agency, Pat Meehan, said that they provide grants to research organizations but that Texas State is not yet one of them. USEPA has many focuses among them is "green building" which is gaining in momentum.