My Service learning involved touring the 21 Acres Facility, a building that invests in teaching people about agriculture and sustainability. 21 Acres is Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, or LEED certified which ranks how resource efficient a certain building is. Any building with this sort of certification will have great strategies and practices being used to maintain high energy, water and waste efficiency. Out of four possible rankings (Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum) 21 Acres holds the highest rank: Platinum.
When we arrived at 21 Acres, we were greeted by Sean, who gave us a tour of the whole facility and noted how the infrastructure kept the building very sustainable. My favorite aspect of 21 Acres was the green roof that was installed, which had a number of advantages. The solar panel allowed for a much more sustainable energy source to be used. Sean also talked about the “Heat Island” effect where a certain area/building is significantly warmer than its surroundings: 21 Acre’s green roof helps alleviate this environmental issue.
After the tour, Nick brought us out to the farm, where we began to pick Himalayan Blackberries. These berries are highly invasive and become a nuisance to the goal of agricultural sustainability, they usually grow until the stem arches back into the ground, becoming ingrown. Our goal was to pick out these blackberries and their root in an effort to maintain growth of the other native plants.
Nick instructs us to re-cover the holes after we finished digging up Blackberries. During the course of digging, I found what Nick explained was a tarp that attempted to prevent growth of blackberries. Since it clearly was not performing its function well and wasn’t compostable, we decided to remove the tarp.
Our group organizer was Katia (ekaterina.rar@email.edcc.edu). I volunteered from 11:30am to 5:30 pm on March 10, 2017.
The tour of 21 Acres enlightened me on the importance of practicing sustainability and the positive effects it has toward the environment. Not only was the work we were assigned to do not particularly difficult, but it was also very fun.
The Blackberries across the Pacific Northwest are dangerous for the ecosystem, they compete better than plants found natively in the area. This pushes animals out of the area because they have to look for new plants to eat. These events can lead to speciation occurring in animals and plants, they become isolated based on where the Blackberries are found geographically.
Four Questions for Thought
- How long does it take for a building to receive Platinum LEED certification?
- How expensive is maintaining the sustainability of the building?
- How quickly can Himalayan Blackberries effect the native plants/animals?
- What’s the most efficient way of removing Blackberries?
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