UNC Asheville's new crafts campus at the old Buncombe County landfill will relieve crowding on the main campus, spotlight the crafts industry that is so important to the Western North Carolina economy and show the way to recycling both materials and energy. What's not to like?

The landfill, closed down in 1998, is an unused source of energy, in the form of the methane gas produced during the decomposition of wastes. HandMade in America, a regional crafts advocate, already is tapping into the methane produced by the old Mitchell-Yancey landfill to power Energy Xchange's craft studios and greenhouses.

Now, UNCA wants to tap into the Buncombe landfill to power buildings on the 150-acre site, which Buncombe County commissioners will lease to the college for 50 years, renewable for another 50, at $1 a year.

In addition to craft studios, there will be a gallery, classrooms, offices and a visitors' center which will include "green building" exhibition and demonstration space.

UNCA will partner in the venture with Energy Xchange, HandMade in America, the UNC Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in Hendersonville, and the Western North Carolina Green Building Council.

The campus will be fully "green," which means that not only will it use landfill methane for all its energy needs, and recycle toxic materials, but the buildings will be constructed to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards of the U.S. Green Building Council, according to Jill Yarnall of the UNCA public information office.

This last can mean a number of things, Yarnall said. Materials can be recycled or recyclable, they can be locally produced so that energy is saved in shipping, or they can be produced using low amounts of energy. Additionally, buildings will be designed so as to require less energy for climate control.

One example of such construction is south-facing windows with deciduous trees in front of them. Light and heat would enter past the bare tree limbs in winter, but would be blocked by leaves in summer.

"That a landfill, the community testament to a throwaway culture, will become a symbol of environmental sustainability and the new creative economy is itself a source of pride and success," said UNCA Chancellor Jim Mullen.

Besides highlighting recycling and the crafts industry, the new campus will relieve crowding in the studios and classrooms at the Owen Conference Center. "Space limitations on campus make significant growth impossible in the three- dimensional arts," said Dan Millspaugh, who will direct the new campus. "Every year we're forced to turn away students ... because we don't have studio space for all of them."

Approval of the lease is only one step in a long process. State budgets being what they are, UNCA needs to raise $5 million in private money to construct the campus. The initial phase is to be completed within five years.

"This project is particularly timely in Western North Carolina, where craft is one of the strongest economic generators in a region that has suffered loss of furniture and textile manufacturing," Mullen said. He sees the project as an example of both "model partnership and environmental sustainability."

Not a bad combination.