National Technical Institute for the Deaf

During winter quarter, members of our NTID Committee for Sustainable Practices participated in two waste audits led by RIT environmental sustainability professor Josh Goldowitz. Our first audit analyzed how much trash thrown into waste bins could have been recycled and kept out of the landfill.  Our second audit focused on figuring out how much trash was disposed of into recycle bins. Students from Dominique Lepoutre's capstone classes made up roughly half of the participants in the second audit, and NTID President Gerry Buckley joined the festivities. We are proud that they made the news on NTID's web site!

RIT/NTID Students Help Campus Go Green

Check out the new EZH2O Hydration Station, recently installed in the SDC! Located just outside of the Dining Commons, this touch-free filtered water dispenser is not only a convenient way to fill reusable containers but also tracks the number of disposable bottles saved from landfills.

So grab your reusable container, head over to the SDC, and see how many disposable bottles we can save by looking at the counter on the hydration station!

In this captioned news video, RIT President Dr. Bill Destler discusses RIT's participation in the Clinton Global Initiative, as well as several sustainability initiatives on RIT campus. Particularly exciting is Dr. Destler's announcement that RIT will be carbon neutral by 2030! The Clinton Global Initiative, established in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton, brings together global leadersto develop and implement solutions to some of the world's challenges, including population growth and rising consumption. The RIT sustainability education model will be used to assist five countries: the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and Peru.

To display its commitment to sustainable practices, NTID has appointed Chris Knigga, formerly NTID's Facilities Services Manager, as NTID’s Director of Facilities Services and Sustainability.  Chris has assumed the following responsibilities for sustainability at NTID:

• Create strategies to integrate sustainability into both the operational and academic functions of NTID, network with and facilitate internal and external resources to accomplish that goal, and evaluate the needs of the NTID community.
• Facilitate and support the NTID Sustainability Committee to develop long and short-term strategic plans, recommending policy and organizational changes necessary to advance NTID sustainability initiatives.
• Create and implement communication strategies to promote broad awareness of initiatives and develop a college-wide process to support sustainability inquiry, change, and assessment.
• Build effective partnerships and relationships with RIT’s Office of Sustainability Initiatives to establish effective linkages with units across campus that may have sustainability initiatives in process or as part of their overall strategy.

Chris has been with RIT/NTID since October 2010. He received an associate degree in Architectural Technology from RIT/NTID, a bachelor’s degree in Construction Management and Architectural & Environmental Design from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University, and a master’s degree in Management from Walsh College in Troy, Mich.