Campus Sustainability Fund Promotes
May 2010
Sometimes the smallest choices make a big difference. Marissa Wnuk, a soon-to-be junior in the School of Nursing, discovered this recently while checking out at the UConn Co-op.
“Would you like a bag?” the cashier asked her. Wnuk said no, received a wooden nickel for her decision, then placed the nickel in one of four boxes at the Co-op exit, each targeted for a different campus initiative. Her single gesture had a twofold impact—she stopped another plastic bag from entering the waste stream, and she made a contribution that will help UConn’s sustainability efforts.
Every day, members of the campus community make similar contributions to UConn’s goal of becoming a ‘greener’ campus. They ride the campus shuttle, fueled with biodiesel made from vegetable oil used in campus dining facilities, and processed at the School of Engineering’s biodiesel lab. They use their recycling bins for paper, plastic, glass and metal waste. They say no to the plastic bag at the Co-op. If they want to feel like they are making a difference, they just need to review the numbers at the Co-op. Use of plastic bags there has decreased more than 50 percent in the two years since the program began, says Bill Simpson, the Co-op’s president and general manager.
There is another way to help those efforts. UConn’s new Campus Sustainability Fund (www.ecohusky.uconn.edu; click on the fund on the right) will provide support to a broad range of campus programs. That includes the recent Give & Go program, which encouraged students moving out of residence halls for the summer to drop off any reusable goods to 15 collection sites on campus. Give & Go netted seven tons—seven tons!—of recyclable materials that would otherwise have become trash. Instead, the goods were distributed to more than 20 local non-profits and town agencies.
The Campus Sustainability Fund will support those efforts and incorporates all previous green campus initiatives, including the Green Campus fund. “We are hoping some day to have an endowed program – one that is run off-budget – which would be supported by donors,” says Rich Miller, director of Environmental Policy for the University.
Visit the OEP’s Web site to learn of more sustainability initiatives, including a groundbreaking new housing option for students, the Department of Residential Life’s organic farmhouse. The option requires that students live at the house and farm on the property. “Change is slow at institutions, but the world is changing very fast,” says Phoebe Godfrey, an assistant professor-in-residence of sociology at UConn who first introduced the farmhouse concept.
UConn is trying to keep up, with large innovations such as the residence hall concept and the new Climate Action Plan, and small, simple steps, such as the Co-op Cares Bag Program. The Campus Sustainability Fund will make a difference to each of those programs, by raising money and awareness among the campus community. Wnuk’s experience is one example.
“The other thing I do is recycle,” Wnuk says. “It’s really easy to do here at UConn.”
