As if they weren’t already busy enough trying to attract new students, deal with budget cutbacks and stay out of the red, today’s institutions of higher learning are finding it necessary to go green, too.
"The environmental problems we are facing are becoming blatantly obvious to almost everyone," says David Barnhill, director of environmental studies for the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. "We need to take care of the environment and the way we use it in a more careful way, both for ourselves and for future generations."
UW–Oshkosh drew national attention in 2008 when it became the first Fair Trade University in the country. To earn the designation, UW–Oshkosh had to commit to using fair trade-certified coffee, tea and chocolate in its facilities and to offering fair trade-certified products in its stores.
Ripon College turned heads in 2008 as well, when it struck a no-car deal with incoming freshmen. The Class of 2012 had to agree to not bring a car to campus, and in return, they received brand-new Trek bicycles to keep.
More than half (54 percent) the eligible class signed the agreement, called the Ripon Velorution Program, says Ric Damm, one of the directors of the program. The program continues this fall, with Cannondale bicycles for members of the Class of 2013.
Barnhill calls global warming a "stark reality" that will continue to get worse. "This is not a temporary crisis that can be resolved by more oil flow," he says. "I don’t think this is a buzzword that is going to last a few years and go away."
Green, green: What’s it all mean?
Going green means lots of things to different people, and it’s no different in the world of higher education. The term "sustainable" can have different meanings, as well — from promoting viability of a company to recycling soda cans.
Other definitions of "sustainable" may deal with cutting operating costs, improving work conditions, improving air quality, promoting environmental stewardship or a culture of thoughtfulness for nature, reducing one’s carbon footprint by using less fossil-based energy, reducing landfill waste, or teaching environmental sciences to the next generation. Or all of the above.
"We want students who can recognize all of those dimensions and treat [the environment] holistically, rather than someone who can just talk about the environment in terms of science, or the environment in terms of economics," says Barnhill.
UW–Oshkosh is one of 15 Wisconsin institutions of higher education to have signed the American University Presidents Climate Commitment. Schools that sign the pact agree to adopt green building standards, use Energy Star products, offset carbon emissions from air travel, encourage people to use public transportation, buy renewable energy and reduce waste.
More than 600 universities or colleges have signed the pact, including UWO, UW–Green Bay, St. Norbert College in De Pere and Lakeshore Technical College in Manitowoc.
A few years ago, some students at Bergstrom Hall at St. Norbert College in De Pere put an egg timer in their shower room — not to enforce time limits, but to promote awareness. Along with the timer, they also put a chart calculating how much their showers cost per minute in water usage and costs to heat the water, according to Lewis Pullen, SNC’s director of mechanical services at SNC.
"They came up with this on their own," says Pullen of the students. "It helped them to get a better picture of the impact they have on the world’s resources."
To these colleges, green isn’t just the latest style.
"We would be doing this even if we knew it would have no impact on the number of students or type of students we would attract," says Barnhill.
Other schools, public and private, have been quietly moving toward more environmental-friendly policies for the last several years, even decades.
FVTC and food
Fox Valley Technical College has adopted many of Grandma’s wise ways: composting kitchen waste, eating leftovers and washing dishes instead of throwing them away.
Composting — that big, weird-looking heap of kitchen scraps your grandmother harbored out behind her garage — was one of the first moves FVTC made in 2007 that got the earth-friendly ball rolling, according to Mike Ciske, FVTC’s food service director.
"All of the vegetable peelings, egg shells, paper, cardboard egg cartons that would have been sent to the landfill is taken out and composted and used in the horticulture program as fertilizer," he says.
The composting program FVTC’s food service and horticulture departments embarked on saves 75 pounds of garbage from going into a landfill every day, Ciske says.
Rather than the school’s food service department throwing out its leftovers, FVTC has opened up a night-time food dispensary, selling reduced-rate meal entrees.
"It always happens that you have five of this and six of that — say lasagna — and we pack it up, put it in the blast chiller and label it," says Ciske.
A blast chiller freezes food extremely quickly. The items can be popped in the microwave.
"It’s really appreciated by the staff here in the evening, the students appreciate it, and we like it because we are not throwing things away," he says.
Like many institutions, the FVTC food service is reducing its use of disposable and foam plates, cups and glasses. They’re substituting old-fashioned alternatives that don’t have to be thrown out — replacing paper plates with reusable containers and using reusable plastic drink tumblers instead of disposable glasses.
Even though it means washing more dishes — and a fulltime dishwashing crew now needs to be on duty — it still ends up saving money and landfill space, Ciske says.
"All I’d have to do is use one of those hard Pepsi cups six times before they pay for themselves and end up making money," he says.
The food service passes its savings on to students and faculty — those who bring in their own coffee or beverage containers pay less for their hot drinks, regardless of the containers’ size.
"The discount is equal to what we would have paid for the cup," says Ciske.
What disposables the food service can’t avoid are compostable — beverage containers made of corn resin that biodegrades into corn starch, for example. "Those are almost mainstream now," says Ciske.
