UnderwoodTheMatrix1

Are Colleges Training Us For Eco-Failure? Every college has a huge concentration of people. There are thousands of students, most of whom either live on campus or nearby, and there are thousands of faculty or staff, most of which commute, some as far as 3 hours every day. As such, colleges are also a huge concentration of waste and consumption.

According to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, “ Average annual emissions from all institutional classifications are 52,434 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent ([MTCO.sub.2]E), with emissions from purchased electricity, stationary combustion, and commuting accounting for approximately 88% of total emissions” (Parikhit 2010). To make this even clearer, that means about “19.39 [MTCO.sub.2]E per 1000 gross square feet (GSF) and 7.67 [MTCO.sub.2]E per full-time equivalent (FTE) student” (Parikhit 2010). This accounts for “approximately 121 million [MTCO.sub.2]E, or nearly 2% of total annual U.S. GHG emissions” (Parikhit 2010).

These greenhouse gas emissions come from a number of sources. One of these is energy usage. Colleges use a lot of energy, for computers, electronics, heating, cooling, light, vending machines, automated sprinkler systems, gyms, cars, etc. To try to figure out just how much energy they used, Penn State did a study, and found that “ each Penn Stater (i.e., full-time students, faculty, and staff) consumed about 7,000 pounds of coal per year, resulting in the emission of, among other things, about 10 tons of carbon dioxide per person” (Uhl and Anderson 2001). Colleges also use a prolific amount of water, not only for personal use, but also for pools, the aforementioned automatic sprinkler systems (which often are on while it’s raining), labs, cleaning, construction, and the like. “During 1999, for example, water consumption at Penn State University was roughly 1 billion gallons. Students living in dorms consumed almost 60 gallons of water each day through showers (40 gallons per student), toilets (10 gallons per student), clothes washing (5 gallons per student), and sink usage (2 gallons per student)” (Uhl and Anderson 2001). The learning system is also highly dependent on paper, there’s no denying that. People tend to take paper for granted, and always seem to forget that paper is made of trees. In the Penn State study, they “calculated the forest area necessary to supply the annual paper needs of a typical student at Penn State. The result: 3,100 square feet of forest per student. At the other end of the materials stream is waste. Penn State produces almost 10,000 tons of solid waste annually” (Uhl and Anderson 2001). These numbers are all mind blowing. Every single statistic this study produced seems huge, but when you break it down, Penn State is a relatively ‘normal’ school. There is nothing in particular that makes them more (or less) consumptive than most colleges in the U.S.

Another source of green house gas emissions from colleges is food. We all eat it, whether in our own rooms or in dining halls or restaurants, but we’ll focus on dining halls, since that is the food associated directly with the college. “The purchase of food at American universities is typically based on least-cost and convenience criteria, not on intelligent responses to ecological problems. Few significant measures are taken to address distances involved in food transport, unsustainable farming practices, excessive food packaging, unethical treatment of farm animals, and unjust labor practices, all of which must be considered in the promotion of a sustainable food system” (Uhl and Anderson 2001). Each dining hall buys thousands of dollars of food annually, which requires pound upon pound of pesticides and fertilizers, and has probably been shipped across the country, or even across the ocean. Then there’s all the energy and water that goes into cooking and cleaning associated with dining halls.

There are also problems with mindsets surrounding colleges and the way they are run. Most colleges are run with a system similar to that of our government—that is, a large bureaucracy. One college can employ hundreds of people (maybe even thousands), so it may be necessary to have a lot of people in charge. However, this system also causes many problems. Because so many people are in charge, it is often hard to reach any decisions. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants something slightly different. Having everything broken down into different departments also often makes it difficult to communicate and cooperate between departments, because each may have its own agenda, or things may get lost in translation. This can often result in a sense of disenfranchisement (yes, even in small bureaucracies like colleges!) In order to change or accomplish anything, a person has to get it approved by all their higher-ups first. In an extensive bureaucracy, this can be a lot of people, which makes it very difficult to find, and convince, every single one of them. This system often makes it so people don’t try to change things, because they know it will take months (or years…)

For specific effects of a too large bureaucracy on a school, I’m going to use the SUNY system as an example. At SUNY schools, they have wasteful spending habits because of the way their budget works. Each department is given a certain amount of money for the year that they can’t go over. But instead of trying to stay under, each department has to try to spend exactly that amount. This is because the way the budget works, if a department doesn’t spend all of its money, they won’t get the same amount back the next year. And what if they need it the next year? Because of this, departments are often not careful about how they spend their money, and near the end of a fiscal year, they go on spending sprees to make sure that all of their money is used up. In these spending sprees, most of the buying is wasteful, because none of this stuff is actually needed (hence the surplus money), and so a lot of it will not be actually used. SUNY schools are also notorious for hiring more people than they actually need. This leads to wasteful attitudes, because many people do very little actual work each day, and so they end up not caring as much about what they do actually end up doing. This is a waste of time, a waste of money, and a waste of these people’s minds. It’s also a waste of paper and a cause of frustration and anxiety, because people are constantly having to justify their jobs. Because of this, anytime anyone needs something done by some other department, they have to submit a work order (which is on paper—a lot of paper). That way the other department that comes to help can point to that piece of paper and say ‘see, we did work on this day over here.’ (Underwood 2010).

Another problem with college mindsets is the focus on ‘beautiful campuses.’ This results in large lawns (which use lots of water, fertilizer, and pesticides), gardens (which are usually composed of non-native plant life, and require a lot of maintenance), and of course, lots of unnecessary construction. Colleges are often what Rem Koolhaas designates ‘Junkspace,’ which are constantly under construction, and “ accommodates seeds of future perfection; a language of apology is woven through its texture of canned euphoria; "pardon our appearance" signs or miniature yellow "sorry" billboards mark ongoing patches of wetness, announce momentary discomfort in return for imminent shine, the allure of improvement.” Colleges want to seem perfect, in order to attract new students. In order to do so, they are constantly under construction, whether necessary or not. (Think about all the construction that’s happened here at RPI over the past few years—which projects were really necessary?) SUNY colleges, for example, will get $3,124,000,000 from the state this year. Now this seems like a lot, but it’s actually a decrease from the $3,243,000,000 they got last year. Yet, there is actually a $319,000,000 increase in the amount of money specifically designated for capital projects (a.k.a. construction) from last year (Paterson 2010)! This makes it clear how important they feel construction is. There is even subtle brainwashing about construction on students (and possible future students). The Princeton Review, which is one of the widest known, reputable sources for high school students trying to pick a good college, says on their website: “Take the campus tour… Although it’s the most obvious thing to do, the official campus tour //is// worth your while… It gives the school a chance to show its best face, like the spankin’ new theater or their rooftop planetarium… then venture out on your own. The official tour will probably steer you clear of the school’s less attractive features, like the shoddy dining hall or the tiny gymnasium.” This suggests that new things are better than old, and puts pressure on colleges to do more and more construction.

Colleges do not have to be like this though. College is a huge opportunity for either good or bad. Since it is such a huge concentration of young people, most of which are on their own for the first time and learning how to be independent, the habits we pick up in college could last a lifetime. As such, colleges have a huge opportunity to influence their students’ future behavior. Right now, “the prolific consumption of materials on our college campuses teaches (indirectly) that the Earth can supply our needs, however grand they may be; dining hall food grown or produced thousands of miles away signals that students need not be concerned about their food's origins or the loss of farmland close to home; and campus dumpsters overflowing with refuse suggest that resources are unlimited and need not be recycled” (Uhl and Anderson 2001). But we can change that. Colleges can instead reinforce other habits, more ‘Earth-friendly’ ones.

Some of the things we can change are the landscaping and its resource intensive planning, by “ ensur[ing] that the kind of plants that are planted in the campus are suited to the local conditions and do not require too much water” (Jain and Pant 2010). We can also ban things like bottled water and plastic bags. Colleges are also a great opportunity for research, which can be used to look at environmental issues. For example, “ scientists and engineers at Penn State developed an innovative way to discharge the university's wastewater in an approximation of this natural cycle. After wastewater is filtered and broken down, the effluent is sprayed onto fields and woods just north of campus. In this living filter system, the fields and crops in the sprayed area are fertilized with the effluent while the groundwater supply from which the university extracts its water is replenished… .they allow students to work on these as research projects, good for educating them about the importance of water” (Uhl and Anderson 2001). Other research projects like this also provide an opportunity to educate students, by having them research the problems with something that they take for granted, and also to help find solutions for some of the problems we are facing today. There is also the opportunity for colleges to make a difference ecologically by “ using their buying power to leverage their suppliers toward adoption of more responsible production technologies. Indeed, the considerable food budgets of universities could be applied to direct support of regional farm economies” (Uhl and Anderson 2010). Colleges could also make a difference in energy and resource consumption just by making simple changes within their dining halls, like not using trays. There has been a recent push for this, and in colleges that have participated, “taking away trays resulted in a 25 to 30 percent reduction in food waste per person [and]… saves 200 gallons of water for every 1,000 meals served” (Kroll 2008). This actually saves the college money, because “students are eating less, resulting in a $14,000 savings on food” at San Francisco State University, which recently banned trays (Saavedra 2008). Colleges could reinvest this money in other ‘green’ measures, which would probably also end up saving them money. But in order to do this, colleges first must change the way they do things. There needs to be a structural change in the administration. I see two possibilities for this—either cut down on the number of people in the administration so that everyone can be more aware of what is going on in the other departments and people are forced to work interdepartmentally, or create a new department, one that focuses on sustainability. For the later to work though, this new department must be given actual power. There should also be more selectivity in construction projects. Perhaps instead of always trying to have the newest, best campus, colleges would be better off investing in necessary repairs to the buildings they already have, and can brag about their beautiful historic buildings instead of their new, shiny sidewalks. These are just a few things that colleges could do, but the possibilities are essentially endless. Any change that an individual can make, a college can make on a wide scale, and it can also influence its students’ future habits, future willingness and desire to make a change, to research different things.

Links:

American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment []

Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education []

Clean Air Cool Planet []

Society for College and University Planning: Campus Sustainability Day []

Blueprint for a Green Campus: The Campus Earth Summit Initiatives for Higher Education []

Campaign for Environmental Literacy: The University Sustainability Program []

The Higher Education Sustainability Act of 2007 (just passed by Congress) []

Higher Education Associations' Sustainability Consortium []

Campus Green Builder []

The UN has declared 2005-2014 the 'Decade of Education for Sustainable Development' []

Sodexo http://www.multivu.com/players/English/45656-Sodexo-Food-Waste-Reduction/

101 Ways to Go Green in College http://www.online-college-reviews.com/index.php/101-ways-to-go-green-in-college/

EPA's WasteWise Program http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/partnerships/wastewise/index.htm

Princeton Review now has added a Green Honor Roll to their rankings http://www.princetonreview.com/green-honor-roll.aspx?uidbadge=%07

Talloires Declaration http://www.ulsf.org/programs_talloires.html

Works Cited: Jain, Suresh and Pallavi Pant. “Environmental management systems for educational institutions; a case study of TERI University, New Delhi.” __International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education__. Bradford: 2010. Volume 11, Issue 3: page 236. [] Koolhaas, Rem. __Junkspace__. Quodlibet; 2006. Kroll, John. “Cafeteria trays disappearing as colleges try to rein in dorm waste.” __Cleveland.com__. July 2008. [] Saavedra, Sherry. “College cafeterias look at ways to promote eco-friendly dining.” SignsOnSanDiego.com. San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC. February 2008. [] Sinha, Parikhit, William A. Schew, Aniket Sawant, Kyle J. Kolwaite, and Sarah A. Strode. “Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. institutions of higher education.” __Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association__. May 2010. [] Paterson, David A. “New York State 2010-11 Enacted Budget Financial Plan.” New York State 2010 [] The Princeton Review. “The College Visit.” The Princeton Review, INC. 2008. [] Uhl, Christopher and Amy Anderson. “Green Destiny: Universities Leading the Way to a Sustainable Future.” __Bioscience__. Volume 51, Issue 1 (January 2001): page 1. [] Underwood, Dorothy. Field notes on employment at SUNY Oneonta, Summer 2010.

Photo Sources:

college students [] construction [] food waste [] computers [] outlet [] board room []