Updated version posted 8/26 at 4:45 p.m. at request of the author:

Last April, I had the privilege of being confirmed by Senate and Treasury as SU’s next Executive Adviser of Sustainability (EAS). The EAS position was created in 2009 by then-SU President Jeff Nelson to advance SU sustainability goals, and I was excited about the opportunities presented by this role.

Still, most students involved in campus sustainability efforts will acknowledge that realizing environmental goals at WashU is difficult. Successful community-level initiatives take time and persistence. Moreover, other academic and extracurricular student commitments certainly don’t simplify such efforts.

Nevertheless, each semester offers opportunities to take another step towards sustainability, and the 2012-2013 school year has a few things working in its favor. To begin with, Director of Sustainability Phil Valko, hired last year to the Office of Sustainability, has provided a clear vision for university sustainability efforts. The number of green-oriented student groups is also at an all-time high.

What excites me most, however, is that our President, Julian Nicks, has affirmed his desire to improve the sustainability of our university community. It’s been years since we had a President express such a commitment to campus-wide green efforts.

Julian and the Exec team underwrite their ideals with a firm sense of pragmatism. When I mentioned to Julian last May that I thought we should pursue a campus-wide plastic bag ban, he told me he could only support it if thorough evaluation made clear that such a move, on the whole, would benefit the student body. He told me to start doing research.

Orma Ravindranath, Jennifer Chan, and Nancy Yang, all active members of our sustainability community, joined me in investigative efforts this summer that culminated in a report presenting the environmental impacts of disposable bags, current WashU bag distribution practices, case studies of successful municipal efforts to curb bag use, a stakeholder analysis, and recommendations for moving forward.

In the report, we urged that the WUSTL community form a Bag Use Reduction Committee to facilitate discussion among stakeholders about reducing disposable bag distribution. After the SU Exec team and various administrators saw this report, this Committee was established; it includes representatives from SU, the graduate student body, the Office of Sustainability, the Campus Store, the Women’s Society (which runs Bear Necessities), Bon Appétit, WUSTL’s Purchasing Department, and Campus Life. The Committee will meet monthly to discuss how to reduce campus bag use.

To be clear, our report recommends a plastic bag ban for the Danforth campus. WashU uses 271,000 plastic bags each year, the production of which consumes numerous nonrenewable resources and contributes to climate change. Their disposal is particularly damaging: only 5.2% of the 102 billion plastic bags used annually in the U.S. are recycled – the rest end up in landfills or the natural environment. These consequences harm human health, and evidence shows that pollution and climate change disproportionately harm minority and low-income populations. A plastic bag ban will require the WashU community to take responsibility for the externalities of its actions.

The report also recommends that the Committee explore the necessity of certain supplementary measures to the ban, including, but not limited to, developing an evaluation process for campus bag usage, implementing a fee for post-ban paper bag usage, increasing purchasing access to inexpensive reusable bags, and/or encouraging reusable bag use. Our report cites case studies where these measures, coupled with a plastic bag ban, have been effective in increasing reusable bag use. The Committee, incorporating the voices of all stakeholders, will make the final decision on these policies.

Our work is a collaborative effort. We aren’t excluding or vilifying any stakeholders; rather, we’re bringing them together in a reasonable way to discuss future steps.

Your perspective matters to the Committee, so we’ve developed an online petition for students to sign to indicate support for a ban. The petition also affirms that WashU should implement a responsible post-ban bag policy to meet both WashU’s environmental goals and student needs. You can also help by “liking” our Facebook page (“Another Step Towards Sustainability: WashU’s Plastic Bag Ban”) and encouraging others to sign the petition. The Committee will be updated regularly with the number of signatures received.

Opportunities to enact changes that help the planet come along rarely – this is our chance to move forward together to make Washington University a more environmentally-responsible institution. We hope you’ll join us in taking another step towards sustainability.

The original op-ed posted August 23:

Last April, I had the privilege of being confirmed by Senate and Treasury as SU’s next Executive Adviser of Sustainability (EAS). The EAS position was created in 2009 by then-Student Union President Jeff Nelson to advance SU sustainability goals, and I was excited about the opportunities presented by this role.

Still, most students involved in campus sustainability efforts will acknowledge that realizing environmentally-related goals at WashU is difficult. Successful community-level initiatives take time and persistence. Moreover, other academic and extracurricular student commitments certainly don’t simplify such efforts.

Nevertheless, each semester offers opportunities to take another step towards sustainability, and the 2012-2013 school year has a few things working in its favor. To begin with, Director of Sustainability Phil Valko, hired last year to oversee the Office of Sustainability, has provided a clear vision for university sustainability efforts. The number of active green-oriented student groups is also at an all-time high.

What excites me most, however, is that our President, Julian Nicks, has affirmed to the Office of Sustainability and student green leaders his desire to improve the sustainability of our university community. It’s been years since we had a President express such a commitment to campus-wide green efforts.

Julian and the Exec team underwrite their ideals with a firm sense of pragmatism. When I mentioned to Julian last May that I thought we should pursue a campus-wide plastic bag ban, he told me he could only support it if thorough evaluation made it clear that such a move, on the whole, would benefit the student body. He told me to start doing research.

Orma Ravindranath, Jennifer Chan, and Nancy Yang, all active members of the WUSTL sustainability community, joined me in investigative efforts this summer that culminated in a report presenting the environmental impacts of disposable bags, current WashU bag distribution practices, case studies of successful municipal efforts to curb bag use, a stakeholder analysis, and recommendations for moving forward (prefer to read our executive summary instead?).

In the report, we urged that the WUSTL community form a Bag Use Reduction Committee to facilitate discussion among stakeholders about reducing disposable bag distribution. After the SU Exec team and various administrators saw this report, this Committee was established; it includes representatives from SU, the graduate student body, the Office of Sustainability, the Campus Store, the Women’s Society (which runs Bear Necessities), Bon Appétit, WUSTL’s Purchasing Department, and WUSTL Campus Life. The Committee will meet monthly to discuss how to reduce campus bag use.

To be clear, our report strongly recommends a plastic bag ban for the Danforth campus. WashU uses 271,000 plastic bags every year, the production of which consumes numerous nonrenewable resources and contributes to climate change. Their disposal is particularly damaging: only 5.2% of the 102 billion plastic bags used annually in the U.S. are recycled – the rest end up in landfills or the natural environment. All of these consequences harm human health, and evidence shows that pollution and climate change disproportionately harm minority and low-income populations. A plastic bag ban will require the WashU community to take responsibility for the externalities of its actions.

The report also recommends that the Committee explore the necessity of certain supplementary measures to the ban, including, but not limited to, developing a formal evaluation process for campus bag usage, implementing a fee for post-ban paper bag usage, increasing purchasing access to inexpensive reusable bags, and/or encouraging reusable bag use. Our report cites case studies where these measures, coupled with a plastic bag ban, have been effective in increasing reusable bag use. The Committee, incorporating the voices of all stakeholders, will make the final decision on these policies.

Our work is, at its heart, a collaborative effort. We aren’t excluding or vilifying any stakeholders; rather, we’re bringing them together in a reasonable way to discuss future steps.

Your perspective matters to the Committee, so we have developed an online petition for students to sign to indicate support for a ban. The petition also affirms that the WUSTL community should implement a responsible post-ban bag policy to meet both WashU’s environmental goals and student needs. You can also help by “liking” our Facebook page and encouraging other students to sign the petition. The Committee will be updated regularly with the number of signatures received.

Opportunities to enact changes that help the planet come along rarely – this is our chance to move forward together to make Washington University a more environmentally-responsible institution. We hope you’ll join us in taking another step towards sustainability.

Note: The original posting of this article left out several of the latter paragraphs of content; Student Life apologizes for the error.