Brendan Watson
Student Life Staff
A small group of student environmentalists presented Chancellor Wrighton with a massive petition and a five-point letter Monday, demanding proactive environmental policy changes by Washington University.
The petition was signed by 983 students and the letter was sent not only to Wrighton but to also to 30 other university officials, including vice chancellors, deans, faculty members and trustees.
The letter to the chancellor read, “We believe it is your responsibility, as the primary representative of WU, to promote this community’s environmental consciousness, to re-evaluate this university’s environmentally destructive and financially inefficient activities, and to pursue future sustainable development on this institution’s properties.”
Accompanying the letter was an eight-page investigative report, meant “to publicize the significant steps that this university has taken to improve efficiency” and at the same time “offer pragmatic suggestions that may be further investigated and expediently implemented to promote the interests of resource maximization and
sustainable future development.”
According to the report, WU Director of Capital Projects Steve Rackers has said that the university will implement any “environmentally sensitive” program that has “no cost.”
The report maintained that many of its suggestions can be implemented at “no cost,” possibly even with capital gain. But what aspects of the report will be implemented at WU, if any, will not be clear until well into the future.
“Because it is the end of the year, the administration can push this under the carpet over the summer,” said WU junior Garz. “But I hope that is not the case.”
The report was produced by students who met after Green Action’s Seventh Hour forum on environmental sustainability, held February 17 in Holmes Lounge, to discuss action with regard to WU’s environmentally related operations policies.
After listening to the panel speakers at Seventh Hour, Garz moved to extend the dialogue beyond Holmes Lounge and that night’s proceedings.
During the question and answer session following the panel discussion, Garz suggested that interested students gather at the same time the following night in Holmes, in order to write a letter to the chancellor, indicting WU for its environmental policies.
The next evening Garz and six other students met, but did not draft a letter. The group decided that they needed to gather more information before they went to the chancellor with an assessment of WU.
The group consisted of WU students Phil Valko, Eileen Beall, Deborah Gorman, Dan Durrett, Lisa Fink, Emily Lammert, and Garz.
“We talked about what issues needed to be addressed and from that discussion we decided that it was more important to go about [learning] what was going on around campus, instead of tearing off a letter-an emotional letter-to the chancellor,” said Garz. “We decided that we needed, instead, a factual letter.”
The group delegated research responsibilities amongst themselves to investigate a list of environmental policy concerns. These concerns included recycling, energy efficiency, the potential for a composting program, and the need for an environmental coordinator.

The Report:
“Addressing Inefficiency”

The report analyzed WU’s resource consumption and focused on two themes: environmental impact and financial costs. The group took this more moderate approach-taking into account both economic and ethical concerns-with the realization that there needed to be more than an ethical basis to their critique for it to be palatable.
“Besides [the] ethical issue-because that can be debated-this.is financially affecting students,” said Valko. “Inefficiencies are digging into all of our wallets. We are paying a lot of money to go to this school, and I wish they would use that money as wisely as possible.”
The double thesis of the report was that WU would reap financial rewards while they worked to protect the environment.
“Conservation and recycling are not [negative] economic externalities and do not have to be,” said Garz.
The report identified potential for financial benefit in two departments: the development of an efficient lighting system and a composting program.
The development of an energy-efficient lighting system has been in the works for some time at WU.
The report noted that starting in 1995, builders began installing more efficient “T8″ lighting under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Green Lights Program.” The “T8″ lighting replaced the less efficient “T12″ in five buildings in 1995, and since has been expanded to include 18 more buildings. The report also noted that the university hopes to install the efficient lighting in nineteen more buildings.
According to the report, WU is already realizing a savings of $1 million each year on its investment in the new technologies. WU energy and lighting engineer Larry Downey said that this estimate might even be on the low side. An Environmental Protection Agency report on WU energy savings from the new lighting technologies estimated $1,685,950 in annual savings.
The other investment that the report suggested would make a financial return- though likely a less significant one-is the development of a composting program at WU. Organic waste, the report stated, could be taken to a composting sight where it would decompose and then be used as a fertilizer on campus. The report suggested the establishment of a composting sight at the Tyson Research Center, a WU-owned 2000- acre site located 25 miles from campus.
Presently, Suburban Suns Carting Company disposes of the waste. The cost of disposing of the waste includes both transport and the disposal of waste in a landfill. The report estimated the cost of the present disposal to be $135 per ton, but said that the cost of composting would be $35 per ton.
The report cited Middlebury College as an example of a successful composting program. Middlebury Facilities Manager Norm Cushman estimated annual savings of $102,000.
The report assessed returns on recycling to be lower, and possibly even negative. It noted improvements in the WU recycling program, such as the “growing presence” of well-marked recycling bins around campus.
While encouraging further improvements in this area, the report noted that many of the difficulties of recycling stem from discrepancies between the resources used by WU and those that can presently be recycled.
For example, the plates in Holmes Lounge are made of #6 plastic. According to the report, St. Louis recycling companies cannot recycle this plastic.

The Call to Become “Pro-Active”

In addition to streamlining and increasing the effectiveness of the present recycling program on campus, the report noted a need for a “pro-active” approach.
The report recommended increasing the distribution of reusable dishware-such as the mugs presently available to students-and a financial incentive to use these products. The report also argued for the establishment of dishwashing facilities in more of the campus’ eateries, which would allow for normal dishware to be used.
To oversee these changes, the report suggested hiring an environmental coordinator. The university plans to hire senior Nate Dewart as the WU recycling coordinator, but Valko says that more is needed.
“Nate is a wonderful person; however, he is not specialized in building management,” said Valko. “Consulting is the number one thing they [the coordinator] should do. If they got a consultant on campus, that person would work in a lot of different areas.”
“Paying someone to work at the university will save them quite a bit of money and promote an [environmentally conscious] ethic on campus,” said Valko.
Garz expressed hope that this project will pick up momentum in the next school year. He noted the support that the group has received thus far in distributing a petition amongst students.
“There has been incredible support from groups like Green Action and the Sierra Club, but even people not typically associated with environmental issues . people from the Greek community, everywhere,” said Garz. “There were a variety of people who have helped us to get the petition out there.”
There are no immediate plans on what the next step will be for the student environmentalists. The group now awaits a response from Chancellor Wrighton, as well as the results of a Senate vote on a proposed Student Union resolution that expresses support for the report, which will brought to the Senate floor Wednesday.
While they wait for a response, the group will plant several trees in and around the community to negate the damage done by the large amount of paper used to circulate the report and petition.

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