Themes

AUN aggressively engages students into on-campus and external sustainability activities through its community service program. These are spearheaded by the Student Teams Advancing Regional Sustainability (STARS), with programs such as our nature trail, bottle-brick construction projects, tree planting, support to community women’s groups.

Currently the Sustainability Office is working on this subject with the help of the Chemistry Department and students carrying out projects looking at various oily seeds to see which ones could be turned into Biodiesel.

AUN’s STARS, stands for Student Teams Advancing Regional Sustainability.

STARS was founded in August of 2012 and grew quickly as a result of recruiting meetings, weekly work sessions, and special events.

In May of 2013, STARS won the campus award for Outstanding New Student Club

This year, the office of sustainability has invested a lot of its effort on ‘Energy’. The aim here is to reduce the fuel expenditure, as well as raising the level of social consciousness in terms of reducing air and noise pollutants and preserving the life-span of equipment, humans and wildlife with simple energy saving behaviours – turning off the a/c at the end of the day. A huge campaign is currently going on to create enthusiasm and support in taking part in Energy saving strategies. Educating students, staff and faculty how they can help AUN save Energy is also a critical priority.

Last year AUN’s STARS students recruited their peers to build a nature trail on campus and celebrate its opening. The trail is 1.5km long and is an excellent relaxing walk after a full day of being in class

AUN teamed up with women from five Ngo’s working on improving the lives of citizens who might otherwise be left out of economic and social development. These women are taught to crotchet with the used clean bags to create various beautiful items such as handbags, mats, baskets, keyholders, etc. These gift items are then sold and majority of the profits go back to the women, contributing to their family needs such as paying for: school fees, transportation, and other basic livening amenities.

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Another project launched at the beginning of 2013 by Dr Reith and the STARS student club members is the Jatropha - Biodiesel project.

Jatropha is a hardy tree shrub capable of growing in unfertile soils, as well as being able to capture atmospheric carbon, one of the main green-house gases that cause global warming. Its potential to be used as biofuel, herbal remedy, fencing, raw materials for the soap industry and carbon sequestration, make it especially interesting for the Sustainability team, as it may solve some pressing environmental challenges facing then community.
Currently, there is a 700m2 area of land being used for Jatropha research within the school premises under the supervision of our Farm Manager, Rotimi Ogundijo.

The Sustainability office reaches out to nearby communities, such as the village of Bole in the Yola South Local Government area, and planted Jatropha on their land. The hope is to reach out to more communities in the future, to sensitize, extend and provide technical support on setting up a Jatropha plantation.

From the moment the office was set up, the team was focused on assessing, measuring, evaluating and innovating sustainable environmental initiatives at AUN. One of the first major issues was to find a way to better manage AUN’s waste. With the assistance of the Facility Department, this meant creating a Recycling Depot center placing recycling bins around campus premises, along with other innovative strategies. Besides modifying behaviors, the Office of Sustainability invests a lot of effort in educating the AUN Community on separating their waste (glass, bottles, plastics, paper). At the Recycling Depot, today, AUN is able to recycle paper, plastic bottles, plastic bags, glass and other waste materials.

a. Paper recycling, ie Ecobriquette
Paper: this is soaked in water and then transferred into a mold to make what is known as an Ecobriquette, which is a brick made out of compacted paper. Small recent experiments have shown it can be used together with firewood for fire in cooking. Further test will be carried out in the hope that it can actually replace most of the wood used for cooking and help in decreasing deforestation in the Yola-Jimeta area.

b. Ecobricks for building
Plastic bottles: the team came up with the idea of filling these with sand, well compacted, which then turns the bottle into a solid brick. If filled properly, these are stronger than cement. These have then been used to build an Ecobench as well as the walls of the recycling facility. They are even good enough to build houses.

c. Reuse of Nylon bags
Plastic nylon bags: these bags are a big waste problem in Adamawa, but again a way was found to turn this waste to beautiful products. See Yola Ecosentials.