A recycling bin for empties in the dorm foyer doesn't cut it anymore.
College and university campuses have gone green big-time
in the past few years. Lecture halls are heated with
biodiesel fuels, the food in the dining hall is grown
down the street, and the leftovers are composted.
By embracing the sustainability movement, schools hope
to contain soaring energy costs, show the rest of the
world what can be done to help reverse climate change,
and even win the notice of potential students.
"We ought to mirror the action that we expect in
society, and for us to be irresponsible polluters is
even less acceptable than for anyone else," said David
Hales, president of the College of the Atlantic in Bar
Harbor, which this fall became the first college in the
nation to adopt a "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions
policy.
The policy means the college will use less fuel to
reduce its own emissions or invest in activities such as
wind power to offset the emissions created by the
college, including travel to and from the school by
students.
Most Maine colleges have set up sustainability
committees and sustainability offices complete with
staff who issue newsletters and ensure that new
construction is up to the latest environmental
standards.
Some Maine colleges have joined the Association for the
Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a
Portland, Ore., group formed last year to promote
environmentally sound practices with a membership of
more than 160 colleges and universities.
Katherine Creswell, an intern with Bowdoin College's
Sustainability Office, said a survey of incoming
freshmen this year showed that they shopped for colleges
with the environment in mind.
"Overwhelmingly they said they all care and looked at
schools with sound environmental practices that were in
keeping with their beliefs," Creswell said.
Her office is working closely with the admissions office
to make sure that Bowdoin's sustainability programs are
prominently displayed on the admissions office Web site
and that tour guides mention the environmentally focused
efforts taking place.
This fall, a host of new initiatives kicked off at Maine
colleges and universities.
HEATING WITH VEGETABLE OIL
The University of New England in Biddeford is
experimenting with citrus-based cleaners and is heating
one of its buildings with vegetable oils this year after
converting its fleet of diesel vehicles to biodiesel
last year. The two projects percolated up from students
and faculty members before receiving an endorsement to
go ahead from the university's environmental council.
"The university recognizes this is a high priority for
many students," said Matt Haas, assistant vice president
of campus services.
At Unity College, students are raising their own meat
for the first time on 40 acres of what had been unused
pasture. The point is to wean the campus from trucking
meat in from the Midwest, burning fossil fuels in the
process, said coordinator Aimee Sawyer.
The students started out with seven Katahdin sheep.
Three will be slaughtered soon and served as burgers and
stew at the campus student center. The others will be
kept for breeding. The students are also caring for 10
beef cattle on loan to the college to determine whether
a beef operation will work.
Sawyer said setting up a sheep and cattle ranch on a
college campus can be complicated, especially if the
student body, like Unity's, includes a mix of animal
rights activists and hunters. The student handbook was
revised just in case to include a section on
disciplinary actions that would result from tampering
with the animals in any way.
Most students seem to understand the value of raising
meat on campus, said Eric Bragg, a senior from Thetford,
Vt., and president of the campus chapter of Future
Farmers of America.
Bragg said the exercise has also taught students about
sustainable farm practices, such as organically
reclaiming a field for pasture while ensuring the grass
offers top nutritional value.
"We are really utilizing the land to full potential," he
said.
COMMUNAL BICYCLES
Bowdoin students launched the Bowdoin Communal Bike Club
to entice people to stop driving and start pedaling
instead, said coordinator Ben Lake, a senior from
Stillwater, Minn. The bikes are placed strategically
around the campus for use by any club members. The
program grew out of two years of discussions and surveys
to determine whether anyone was interested. The project
got the go-ahead and even a small budget from the
student activities council.
The bikes were largely donated by campus security, which
winds up with racks of unclaimed bikes each year. Lake
has been slowly repairing them and painting them bright
yellow. The first two bikes, dubbed Annabel and
Beatrice, hit the campus late last month.
"I have been getting a lot of positive feedback," Lake
said.
Already more than 50 people have signed up for the club,
paying $1 in dues annually in exchange for the
combination to the bike locks.
Faculty at the University of Southern Maine are being
trained to incorporate sustainability issues into their
lectures, thanks to a program initiated last year by
Sandy Wachholz, an associate professor of criminology.
She believes it's possible to make environmental issues
relevant to any discipline.
"We look at it in the context of spraying pesticides to
eradicate illegal drugs and the impact of that on the
environment," she said.
So far 30 teachers have gone through the program.
KITCHEN COMPOSTING
The University of Maine at Farmington is about to expand
its kitchen composting program, adding compostable to-go
containers and eating utensils made from corn byproducts
to the retail food counter. Last year the campus
composted 24,000 pounds of kitchen waste, such as
vegetable peelings and old bread. This year all scraps
left on plates are also composted, said Chris Kinney,
dining services director.
"It is the right thing to do and an exciting thing to
do," he said.
Last week seven College of the Atlantic students flew
off to a United Nations global climate conference in
Nairobi, Kenya, but only after purchasing carbon
offsets, which involves paying a company to reduce the
amount of carbon dixoide in the atmosphere by the same
amount contributed by the buyer's activity, such as
traveling.
Matt McInnis, 19, a sophomore from Portland, paid about
$50 for his offset, which will be used to introduce
clean energy into the grid. He even purchased carbon
offsets to cancel out his family's carbon emissions.
"They were really pretty psyched about it," he said.