ACUHO-I News Blog

The New York Times today picked up on the trend of campus dining halls ditching the previously-common place cafeteria trays. With their disappearance, campuses report a reduction in food waste as well as saving water and energy consumption.

The article quotes the Sustainabble Endowments Institute (which issues the College Sustainability Report Card) that says 126 of 300 tracked colleges and universities “had curtailed use of trays, some of them banishing trays only from certain dining halls, and some introducing, for example, ‘trayless Tuesdays.’”

The article also quotes Dr. Joseph H. Spina, executive director of the National Association of College and University Food Services, who explained that another benefit of going trayless is the, “preparation for the cocktail-party circuit. You eventually have to learn how to hold your hors d’oeuvre and cocktail in one hand while making animated conversation with the other. So it’s a life lesson.”

…Low on the food chain, that is. As environmental baddies go, it doesn’t get as much attention as SUVs or even computers left on overnight, but low-carbon eating is a great way to positively influence the environment. That means eating less animal-based, processed foods–meat and cheese–and more plant-based foods: vegetables, fruits, grains and beans. Fish and poultry are okay too, in moderation. When grain is fed to cattle, who are later slaughtered for food, it’s not as efficient a way of feeding humans as people eating the grain themselves. And of course, there’s the production costs involved: getting the grain to the cattle, the cattle to slaughter, the meat to stores, etc. Of course, any eating involves some transportation costs (unless you have amber waves of grain in your backyard, next to the Suncast garden shed) but those costs are usually lower.

On Wednesday, Earth Day, some college and corporate dining halls recognized the day by not serving beef or cheese. Others didn’t wait for Earth Day to show off low-carbon eating. Of course, many who advocate for low-carbon eating don’t expect complete abstinence from meat and cheese from most Americans. But if everyone treated meat as a special-occasion food, and ate locally when possible, it would make a difference. At least as much as powering down the laptop at the end of the day. And it makes a lot more sense than being a Level 5 Vegan.

Yesterday was Earth Day and ACUHO-I asked members to send in reports from their campus about programs and events that commemorated the day. We heard from a couple of you, and details are below. Feel free to use the comment feature to add reports from your own campus as well.

Penn State University: To commemorate Earth Day – and Earth Week here on campus – Penn State Housing and Residence Life partnered with the university’s Office of Physical Plant and the Environmental Stewardship Office as well as Eco Action and several other campus-based environmental groups to present the My 20 Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to get Penn State students, faculty, and staff to reduce their resource consumption by 20 percent during Earth Week by changing some of their every day habits. Penn Staters are encouraged to pledge their support for the initiative online. Our goal is  to collect 2,009 pledges by Saturday, April 25.

University of Florida: Along with many programs and lectures, the campus The University of Florida Office of Sustainability presented nine trophies and several honorable mentions to a wide variety of organizations and departments across campus for their contributions to sustainability at UF. The awards recognized staff and students in the categories of waste reduction, energy conservation and water conservation.  A complete listing of winners and honorable mentions, as well as detailed descriptions of each project, can be found online. Finally, the day also marked the beginning of the 19th year for the housing department’s Spring Check-out Recycling Program.

Everyone has seen it. Not just on campuses, but also at at airports, conference centers and about any place recycling bins stand next to trash bins. An observer can see harried people approaching the bins and stuffing a trash into the recycling and recyclables into the trash. It seems like there’s an obvious distinction between the two bins, but after several people make the same mistake within a few minutes, the observer might conclude that something is amiss, and it’s not necessarily the cognitive abilities of the passers-by.

This is the crux of what Southern Polytechnic State University, in Marietta, GA wrestled with when they took a sample of the waste generated in a week on campus, spread it out on the campus green and started sorting. Considerably more than half of the “trash” was not trash, but recyclables and compostables slipped in with the refuse. Now they’re trying to figure out what to do about it–how to change a pervasive mindset of “one bin for all purposes.”

Have you tackled this problem on your campus? How did you approach it?

There’s a lot of garbage being thrown around at a political convention. No, really. Actual garbage. Fortunately, as The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, more than 450 students, faculty, and staff from Colorado State University have volunteered to help sort mountains of garbage; separating plastic from paper and the compostables from the recyclables.

It’s commitment like this that help CSU get named as one of the country’s “greenest” campuses by Newsweek magazine. And, perhaps, some aspiring political science major will be able to add this experience to his or her resume as an introduction to the dirty business of politics.

Last week when Congress passed all the provisions of the Higher Education Sustainability Act (HESA), it opened the doors for a “University Sustainability Grants Program” that will be operated through the United States Department of Education. It currently awaits President Bush’s signature.

The program will make grants available to higher education institutions to develop, implement, and evaluate sustainability curricula, practices, and academic programs. It is the first new federal enviornmental education funding program authorized in 18 years. It also directs the DOE to hold a national summit of higher education sustainability experts, federal agency staff, and business leaders to identify best practices and opportunities collaboration. Background on the legislation can be found here.

Patty Murray, the democratic senator from Washington who sponsored the bill, said in a press release, “Colleges are a natural breeding ground for the kind of innovation we need to move to new enviornmentally-friendly energy sources… These grants will help college students take the reins of the govement to make energy last longer and have less of an impact on our environment.”

How would you utilize a grant on your campus? Hit the “comments” and share.

[Links]
Campaign for Environmental Literacy
National Council for Science and the Environment