By Nicholas Proch
For ecologists, biologists and environmentalists there is a sense of urgency to take care of our planet. They are pleading with the public to recycle, use less energy and be mindful of their carbon footprint. Some individuals have taken it upon themselves to do so, but they can only do so much by themselves. When an institution, such as our university, decides to adopt their own ‘green’ initiative this can have a huge impact on our environment.
Our campus has begun to push for sustainability. This has been embraced by most campus officials and students, knowing their is a greater good to the minor inconveniences they might undertake. For instance, our cafeteria has gone tray-less, eliminating vast amounts of wasted food and lowering the amount of water needed to clean these trays.
According to Carl Lovitt, the University Provost, CCSU will save a staggering $43,000 this year from its conversion to LED lighting systems in the parking lots and around campus. Based upon information gathered from Connecticut Light and Power, these lighting systems should save well over 350,000 kilowatt hours this year alone. With less power being drawn their is less of a need to be burning through resources creating this energy.
With all that the university is doing to become ‘greener’ it has not used its resources to reduce the amount of paper that we use. Teachers, administrators, and students do not take into account the copious volume of paper that is used on a daily basis on this campus. While Blackboard Vista does exist, only a fraction of instructors use it. Instead of printing syllabi and assigned readings, it should be mandated that they are using their paperless online resource.
On the students end, they should be encouraged to use eBook readers for their text books and use laptops to take notes. While some professors will argue that the use of technology in the classroom will take away from the interaction and attentiveness that the student needs, this should not be the responsibility of the instructor to make sure you are not missing anything. There can be systems installed to limit the websites the students can access from their own machines as to prevent internet surfing during the lectures.
The use of an eBook reader is by far the most logical way to limit the use of paper. Besides saving money on physical copies of your books each semester, you also can carry all of your texts on one machine. Having a promotion through the bookstore to save money on the purchase of a Kindle or iPad would certainly kick start this initiative.
While this will certainly be an ongoing issue on campus, environmental sustainability is something that our university needs to tackle completely before boasting about its light bulbs. There are many other issues which get overlooked in this matter and should no longer be.
