| Planting Seeds: Montreat College is Going Green! |
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 Seeds, Montreat College’s environmental stewardship club, is having a fantastic and successful semester! Creation stewardship is an ever-growing ethic on Montreat’s campus- and not just in the ranks of students- but within the administration and faculty as well. Montreat’s administration is reviewing a campus sustainability proposal submitted by Seeds co-founder and Renewal student leader, Aaryn Joyner. They also just reinstated the Green Campus Task Force- a collaboration of students, faculty and staff focused on integrating creation care into every aspect of Montreat life. What’s more, after reviewing the campus sustainability proposal, Montreat’s cabinet members recently voted to make sustainability one of the top budget priorities in the coming years! Seeds is also reaching out to the student body through hosting creation care initiatives and events. This semester, we launched the Garden of Eaten’, Montreat’s student-led campus garden, and just recently planted our fall crop of veggies. We also hosted a garden grill-out party; sent delegates to the Power Shift Carolinas Summit, representing Christian students at this major student environmental summit; held a successful Day of Prayer for God’s Creation that we co-sponsored with our college’s Crossroads Christian Literature festival; and sponsored a convocation, dinner, and evening talk with best-selling creation care author and speaker Dr. Matthew Sleeth. We’ve got big plans in the works as well! Seeds is working to improve Montreat’s campus recycling program and launch a month-long energy saving dorm competition. The idea is to have dorms compete to see who can conserve the most electricity on a percentage basis. This will be our 2nd annual dorm conservation competition. Last year, however, we worked on water conservation. Seeds is also looking at how we can affect positive change in our local community. For example, Duke Energy is trying to expand its Cliffside coal-fired power plant just down the road from us in Rutherford County, NC. The new expansion would use conventional coal technology and emit an estimated 6 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, which is equal to adding one million cars to the road each year! Needless to say, community groups in North Carolina are rallying to stop this massive and harmful expansion- and Seeds is exploring ways that Montreat students can get involved in this critical campaign. At Montreat, it’s often a struggle to engage and mobilize the student body. This fall has been especially challenging due to near epidemic levels of influenza ravaging the campus, and thus creating a huge backlog of schoolwork that often precludes extra-curricular activities like Seeds. However, despite these obstacles, Seeds is going strong with growing turnout numbers and student involvement at each meeting and event. Though we may get fatigued, stressed, and overwhelmed- as a campus and club we have reaped amazing benefits from our 2 semesters of active environmental stewardship. And we’ve got even bigger and better plans for Montreat! It’s going to take some work, but we will get there. God’s calling is too strong to be ignored- and God is calling for the renewal of this blessed earth. We here at Montreat are working hard to do our part. Article submitted by Lee Elliott. Lee is studying Environmental Studies and Communications at Montreat College where he serves as Seeds' Public Relations Officer. Lee enjoys hiking, reading, drawing, and listening to a huge variety of music. He is also very involved with Powershift, a movement led by young people that is calling for bold action on climate and energy issues. |