This year, in order to celebrate local Wayzata businesses or organizations that have shown particular progress in sustainability, the City of Wayzata’s Energy & Environment Committee developed a Sustainability Champion Award. The first recipient of this new award is Wayzata Community Church.
John Estrem, Director of Building and Grounds at Wayzata Community Church (WCC), has led sustainability initiatives for more than 20 years. Other key leaders in change include Laura Babcock, Chad Gehrman, Jason Parks, Leigh Kallestad, Brian Trunk, and Don Miller members of the building and grounds board at Wayzata Community Church.
Zero Waste Community Meals
Every Wednesday, an average of 180 people attend the “Community Meal” at Wayzata Community Church. These large social gatherings were one of the main catalysts for environmental change in the church and have now been named “Zero Waste Community Meals”. In order to be more sustainable, the WCC made major changes to the way they host their community meals including no longer using or offering anything disposable and instead using real plates and silverware. The church also started to prioritize placing waste into the organic bins and have also eliminated individual servings of butter in plastic containers. This led to the development of the “Kitchen Krew”, a group of dedicated members that come every Wednesday night to wash dishes. Another large change was sorting through the waste after the community meal to gather information on what was working and what could be done better. For example, the church was finding success in collecting pizza boxes and coffee grounds for composting, however their organics bin in the main hall contained 30% trash, including coated paper plates, plastic utensils and general trash. This level of contamination caused the whole load to be trash. In order to solve this, WCC grouped trash and compost bins, created better signage to help members know what should go where, used more reusable silverware and dishes, and invested in compostable products to use when needed.
“One of the biggest surprises from our waste sort was how many paper towels were in all the trash bins,” said John Estrem, Director of Building and Grounds. “We used waste sort data and purchasing information to estimate that over 1,700 lbs of paper towels per year were heading to the landfill. In 2019 we put organics labels on all restroom containers and paired these with trash containers. The labels are available at no cost from Hennepin County, and we found numerous small trash and recycling bins at no cost on the Minnesota Materials Exchange. The custodial staff, who are very engaged with our sustainability efforts, devised a way to collect both trash and organic paper towels with no additional time required.”
Utility Bill Analysis
In 2013, WCC analyzed their utility billing history and conducted a building analysis in order to identify and prioritize improvements, find qualified installers, and capture rebates. Most interior lighting is now LED lamps and all of the exterior is LED, the boilers are tuned up every year, HVAC filters are replaced on a regular schedule and almost all fans and pumps have variable frequency drives. Other changes include encouraging staff to turn off office equipment, installing motion sensor lights and an update of schedules on the automated system for the boilers to maximize savings and more.
Rain Garden
Eagle Scout projects have been a driver for change at WCC. A rain garden, built by Cody Clark, has aided roof drainage between the east entrance and Mithun Hall, a location with ongoing water issues. The rain garden has also improved groundwater quality and reduced runoff to rivers and streams as well as beautifying the landscaping.
Pollinator Garden
Another Eagle Scout Project, conducted by Emily Trunk, was the creation of a community pollinator garden outside the west entrance of the church. Emily organized the transformation of the old landscaping into a new and beautiful Pollinator Garden. Members of WCC and Scouts donated various pollinator plants from their gardens or purchased them from a garden center.
Wayzata Community Church is currently working on taking advantage of incentives to install solar at Wayzata Community Church.
“The best advice that I would give to anyone working on leading a sustainability movement in their organization is to do what you can do. Just don't do nothing,” said Estrem. Take a small manageable piece and change it. It's about playing the long game.”