Sustainability

List of 11 items.

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  Solar Array

  Thacher's 2,898 panel, 745 kilowatt system generates more than 90 percent of the School’s electricity, about 1.22 million kilowatts per year. Click here for a live dashboard showing current and historical power production. 
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  Green Cup Challenge

  Every February, Thacher’s 220 boarding students shorten showers, dim lights, lower thermostats, and recycle more trash as they vie for the title of greenest dorm. This friendly competition empowers students, builds community, and raises awareness about climate change and the importance of resource conservation.
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  Hog Program

  Several generations of well-tended porkers have completed the loop in our community’s food cycle by feeding on Dining Hall food scraps and eventually becoming food themselves. In addition to reducing waste, this program affords students a crucial firsthand glimpse into food systems.
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  Beekeeping

  Thacher’s student-powered Beekeeping Program supports a healthy, productive colony of local bees that pollinate campus plants and have supplied the community with more than 90 pounds of honey.
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  Horse Manure Composting

  Thacher recently completed construction of a manure and food waste composting facility, funded in part by the Will J. Reid Foundation. Instead of trucking the 1,200 tons of manure produced annually by Thacher’s 130 horses off campus, we compost it on-site for use as mulch on our pastures, fruit trees, and landscaping in order to slow soil erosion, build soil organic matter, improve plant health, and reduce water usage.
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  Water Conservation

  Water conservation is an imperative in the Ojai Valley. Along with targeted water conservation projects, Thacher has partnered with Banyan Water to adopt a total water management program. Our joint efforts, which garnered the 2018 Environmental Leader Product of the Year award, have generated a 56 percent reduction in annual water use from 2013 levels. Water conservation projects include, low-flow devices installed in dorms and faculty homes, upgraded irrigation systems, selective watering, and the use of greywater from our dormitory laundry machines to irrigate trees (saving up to 550,000 gallons of water annually), a new water-conserving athletic field at Upper Field, and the Banyan water usage monitoring system.
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  Rainwater Catchment

  A generous grant allowed Thacher to host a greywater workshop for 30 technicians from all over California. The class’s practical project was the design and installation of a 5,000-gallon rainwater harvesting system for half of one of the barn roofs. The program expanded with a catchment system added to the Los Padres sophomore boys dorm, and plans to install rainwater harvesting systems on every Horse Program area roof, which, with just a 3-inch rain, have the potential to collect all the water the Horse Program uses in a year (600,000 gallons).
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  Community Outreach Program

  The Environmental Action Committee (EAC) is committed to connecting, collaborating, and exchanging ideas with other schools and environmental organizations in the Ojai Valley and beyond. Through the Community Outreach Program they’ve scheduled beach clean-ups, organized creek-bed weed eradication, adopted a section of the Ojai Bike Path, and more.
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  Transportation Fleet

  Thacher made changes to its transportation fleet in an effort to significantly increase energy efficiency. The School partnered with Enterprise Fleet Leasing and Maintenance Services, leasing a new fleet of SUVs and two pluggable hybrids. By leasing rather than owning, Thacher can regularly upgrade to the most recent, high-mileage SUV models, cutting down on the amount of fuel used. In the same vein, the C-Max Energi hybrid vehicles have improved our fuel efficiency from 13.9 mpg to 32 mpg. For the same fleet miles driven, the changes represent just over a 50 percent reduction in transportation greenhouse emissions.
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  The Swale

  The 2012–13 Kumana Prize-winning student team made it their goal to rejuvenate Carpenter’s Orchard, an increasingly desiccated six acres on campus that were being used for horse paddocks. This student effort helped establish runoff protection needed to allow the broadcast of compost from our new manure composting project. The first compost was spread in May 2015.
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  Chickens

  Students and faculty built the campus coop that is now home to a brood of 17 healthy hens. The chickens’ diet includes surplus scraps of food from the Dining Hall and they, in turn, provide fresh, sustainably-produced eggs to the community every week.