A student-led grassroots effort to make Marshall University more sustainable in 2009 has grown into an entire Sustainability Department with bicycle sharing, a thrift store and the first commercial compost facility in West Virginia. Those include the Rolling Thunder Bike Share, where students can download an app to use bicycles; Gro Marshall Nature-Based Recovery, which uses gardening, meditation and yoga as therapy; and a compost facility that is the second largest at any university east of the Mississippi River. Former President Jerome Gilberts signed on to a pledge to phase out single-use plastics by 2026. Another project is replacing those plastics with aluminum, glass or compostable materials.