University’s sustainability not enough
Posted September 9, 2009 at 12:00 am
Updated September 9, 2009 at 12:40 am
For one of the most selective institutions in the world, Washington University is pretty average. In terms of sustainability, that is. Wash. U. only earned a grade of C-plus on this year’s College Sustainability Report Card. This annual evaluation is released by GreenReportCard.org, which rates the effectiveness of sustainability policies enacted by hundreds of American colleges.
For an institution as liberal and high achieving as Wash. U., this outcome is somewhat unsettling. Who gets C’s here, anyway? We may have beaten out Cornell and Brown on U.S. News & World Report’s list, but they both got us back on GreenReportCard.org. No one can dispute the University’s efforts; we’ve pretty much got the small stuff down. We no longer sell bottled water. We offer reusable food containers instead of cardboard boxes. We place recycling bins 10 feet apart across the entire campus, indoors and out. We have installed water-conserving toilets. We should be the greenest campus in the country. The problem, however, is that all these potentially green practices can be easily avoided by students.
Economy-sized packages of water bottles can be purchased at Target and kept in our dorm rooms. Trash cans are as prevalent as recycling bins. Why stop to read the water-saving flushing instructions when you can simply flush and run? Though admirable, some of Wash. U.’s sustainable policies could use some tweaking. Thermostats in every suite are obviously a luxury, but who remembers to turn down the air conditioning every time they leave the room? Banning bottled water was an innovative step, but what about the soda machines on every floor of every building? Coke bottles are made from plastic, too. The University is trying to make sustainability easy, but there will always be times when it is not easy enough. There will be times when a plastic bottle gets tossed into the trash can because the recycling bin is out of reach. There will be times when bedroom lights will stay on all day because there is no time to run back up the stairs and turn them off before class. If going green were easy, all campuses would be green. There would be no GreenReportCard.org.
What we need now is awareness. If students do not understand or care why we are trying to go green in the first place, the gimmicks in place will inevitably fall through. We need to look at the big picture. We need to remember why our toilets have multi-step instructions for proper flushing, why we can’t buy bottled water and why the trash rooms have six different bins. We need to examine why our community of 13,000 over-achievers is only collectively earning a C-plus.
Wash. U. has the talent and the resources to make going green possible for everyone, but this will not occur unless everyone is willing to make the effort. Ultimately, the greenest campus will be the one with the most aware, engaged and conscientious students. There is no reason we cannot achieve this because, after all, Wash U. is anything but average.
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On September 9, 2009 at 11:17 am Steve said
Feed two birds with one hand. If Washington University were to sign the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) it would immediately have an established goal of neutralizing its greenhouse gas emissions, it would have a framework to support the implementation of the commitment and it would join a network of over 650 other institutions working towards the same goal. And by signing the ACUPCC, it would increase WU’s Green Report Card grade significantly. Oh, plus Cornell has already signed the ACUPCC and Brown has not…so you would have one up on Brown. http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/
On September 9, 2009 at 11:54 am Eric said
Yes, we banned bottled water and started selling bottled vitamin water in its place, and I live in a ResLife-managed apartment building in U. City that has no recycling bins whatsoever. But the DUC has a couple showers in it so the school gets to put up big, shiny “LEED-certified” plaques everywhere, and that’s what really matters.