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Happy Earth Day from BCIT’s Green Team

By Cynthia van Ginkel |
GT tour walking

In celebration of Earth Day, BCIT’s Green Team, with help from the Library, and expertise from Facilities Services, organized a campus walk and tour.

Adam Dickinson, Manager, BCIT Facilities Services – Transportation, Landscape and Grounds, led a tour through campus focusing on sustainability features and topics. Twenty staff participated and got a lot of questions answered. If you couldn’t make it, here are some highlights and takeaways!

5 things about water on campus

  1. Campus planters have built-in water reservoirs to conserve water and reduce watering needs.
  2. The lovely raingardens around campus – cutouts from the concrete or hardscape – help filter rainwater and are an important part of storm water management.
  3. In winter the Facilities team uses a salt brine to reduce ice on campus, which allows the teams to use a fraction of the typical amount of road salt (which can overload the ecosystem).
  4. The Facilities team converts the winter brine tank truck into a watering truck that uses over 15,000 gallons of captured rainwater from 5 tanks on campus to fill campus planters and tree watering bags.
  5. Guichon Creek is being opened up – “daylit” – and restored as campus redevelops, with many beautiful spots to visit in south campus. There is still about 1km of stream culverted underground.

5 things about plants and trees

Adam Dickinson points out salmonberry bushes along the trail
Adam Dickinson points out salmonberry along the trail
  1. Campus has many edible plants and there is a foraging map available for those who would like to sample. The espalier apple trees in the Rix courtyard each have four different types of apples on them, including pink lady and yellow transparent.
  2. The south campus new fruit tree orchard has over 25 trees.
  3. There are some gorgeous sequoias on campus, known for their distinctive shape, impressive size, and soft bark.
  4. Facilities Services is working with BCIT Ecological Restoration students to test what kind of seed mix ratio works best in restoration plantings when removing canary reed grass. This BCIT blend will used in a variety of applications once the data is in.
  5. There is a pond behind the Rix that is filled with water-loving plants – later this season you can check out flowering hibiscus.

5 things about local fauna

  1. The BCIT pollinator program – different than our usual kind of programs – involves efforts to be a pollinator-friendly campus with things such as naturalized dandelions, and clovers in lawns.
  2. Over the last 2 years there have been a few bear sightings on campus. They’re typically checking out the abundance of fish in the creek, and areas of blackberries, salmon berries, and other edible plants on campus.
  3. BCIT has its own honey, produced by industrious local pollinators.
  4. Yes, there are about 6,000 crows that pass through campus every day!
  5. Chum salmon fingerlings are released in Guichon Creek every spring.

Happy Earth Day, everyone! This is the only earth we’ve got and it’s a wonderful home.

three people stand in front of a small flowering orchard while drawing prize names from an envelope
Adam Dickinson draws door prizes of BCIT honey with help from Green Team leaders Alison Griffin and Britta Schmidt

 

About the BCIT Green Team

Vision: Employees inspiring change from the ground up.

Mission: Reduce the Institute’s ecological footprint by engaging BCIT employees through sustainability initiatives that create awareness, participation, and behaviour change.