By
Chris Bernstein
“The goal of
sustainability is to leave future generations with more opportunities and fewer
problems,” says Ximing Cai, associate director for the Institute for
Sustainability, Energy and Environment at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. This is
something that needs to be understood at all U.S. colleges and universities.
Luckily, there are universities like this that are making major advancements in
the field of sustainability on campus that teach students why protecting the
environment matters.
The University of Illinois is known as a gold-level
sustainability campus. This means that they not only teach the importance of
sustainability, they practice it too. Examples include promoting the use of
biking and using solar energy. The university understands that sustainability
goes beyond recycling, which, according to the article, Future of sustainability on campus appears positive, provides
students access to recycling bins across the campus, which sits on 1,783 acres.
The university puts a strong focus on sustainability because they believe that students
who are taught these important values will have the potential to make a
positive impact on the environment beyond college.
“By making sustainability a part of students’
experience at this school, it may be considered in the influential decisions
that they make in their professional life. In this way, the University can
foster long-term change,” says Nick Heyek, a junior at the University of
Illinois and chair of the Student Sustainability Committee.
This sentiment is something that all colleges and
universities need to understand. It’s about more than getting students to realize
what trash is and what recyclables are, it’s about fostering a deep and
meaningful understanding of why it’s important to care for the Earth. The University
of Illinois program is just an example of how to create positive, sustainable
change in the world. As mentioned in the article in the campus newspaper,
colleges and universities aren’t the biggest contributors to environmental
damage, but after doing simple research one can learn that they certainly
create a large amount of waste.
According to a piece written on Boston College’s
sustainability website called Know Your Facts, “The average
college student produces 640 pounds of solid waste each year, including 500
disposable cups and 320 pounds of paper.” Imagine an average college that
enrolls thousands of students each year—that’s a lot of waste, isn’t it?
Morgan White, the associate director at Facilities and
Services for Sustainability at the University of Illinois, says “Really, it’s
about finding solutions, using the resources here that can be implemented and
trying to spread that awareness not only to neighbor organizations, but also to
the students and instill in our graduates the understanding of how this is
important.”
It’s a great step in the right direction—using their
own resources to teach students skills and practices that can be used no matter
where they end up in life. It’s important for colleges to acknowledge the
environmental impact that they have and try to come up with ways to reduce that
impact while teaching students valuable sustainable lessons. Sustainability is
only going to become more important in the next few years, so looking at
examples such as the University of Illinois is a great first step to making positive
environmental change at other universities and colleges across the United
States.
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