As Boston University’s President Robert Brown’s Sustainability Committee becomes a reality with a Steering Committee and four working groups, the plan to tackle the daunting task of greening BU’s campus is slowly becoming feasible.
Since Brown appointed Dennis Carlberg as sustainability director this semester as part of his $1 million sustainability initiative, Carlberg has created four groups ‘- energy efficiency, buildings and operations, recycling and waste management and communications and outreach ‘- that report to the Steering Committee.
‘We are making terrific progress within all the working groups, but are not yet at a stage of completion,’ Carlberg said in an email.
So far, the committee has implemented clean fuel conversions and building technology upgrades, such as installing more energy-efficient lighting fixtures in Mugar Memorial Library, Carlberg said.
Although the committee has yet to finalize its structure, Carlberg said he expects members do so by the start of next semester.
He said the projects for next semester include setting concrete goals, one of which will be improving communication. To meet this goal, the committee will launch a new sustainability website.
Carlberg said he has also worked with environmental groups on campus such as the Environmental Student Organization, BU Bikes and Slow Foods.
‘We’re very fortunate that Boston University students have a real interest in reducing the environmental footprint,’ Carlberg said.
Doug Ely, the student representative for Buildings and Operations, said although the group is still working on creating a mission statement, its focus will be on ‘day-to-day operations,’ including making sure campus reconstruction meets the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards. LEED is a green rating system, developed by the United States Green Building Council.
‘The working groups are to evaluate their areas of expertise and look at what the best ways are to move forward and make sure BU is as sustainable as possible,’ Ely, a College of Arts and Sciences senior, said.
As a member of the recycling and waste management group, Dining Hall Sustainability coordinator Kelly Dunn said her primary concern this semester was improving communication with the student body. She said a lot of Dining Services sustainability projects were already up and running, such as composting in the dining halls, but students were simply not aware of them.
‘Probably the biggest [priority this semester] was communications, just getting the word out about our sustainability programs and all our initiatives,’ she said.
Dunn said she is trying to make Dining Services’ operations ‘more transparent’ and hopes to ‘bridge the gap’ between food in the dining halls and where it comes from.
‘We just want to show how our efforts our impacting the environment,’ Dunn said.
As part of Earth Week, Dining Services put up ‘sustainability boards,’ which remain in the dining halls and the George Sherman Union. The boards contain information regarding how much each dining facility has collected in terms of recycling. They also list information about new programs, local foods and environmental impact reduction.
In a Dining Services’ survey sent out earlier this semester, 80 percent of students said they would be willing to sort their trash for recycling. Students said they see recycling as the number one sustainability concern on campus.
Dunn said next semester’s projects include energy management and an evaluation of dining hall equipment, more local food suppliers and recycling improvements.
She is also continuing to evaluate the possibility of GSU composting. GSU Dining Services employees already compost, but Dunn said she hopes to have students composting at some point next year.
‘We’re hoping that we get there sooner than later,’ Dunn said. ‘We just really need to make sure we’re in a place where we feel comfortable about the whole operation.’
Slow Foods President Dory Dinoto, who is also a member of the recycling and waste management group, said the group has worked with Dunn on improving BU’s farmer’s market and looking for local vendors. Dinoto emphasized the need for students to continue to call for sustainability improvements.
‘If the requests aren’t coming for change, nothing’s going to change that much,’ Dinoto, a College of Arts and Sciences junior, said.
Dinoto said when she came back from studying abroad, she was impressed to find how big sustainability had become on campus this semester.
‘ ‘I sense that there’s an ideological change at this school,’ she said.
However, College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Peter Mason said he thinks BU can still improve its recycling efforts by putting bins on all the dormitory floors next to the trashcans.
‘They have recycling available, but it’s still not a very integral part of college society,’ Mason said. ‘I still see countless people throwing [recyclables] in the trash.’
CAS sophomore Madilyn Robinson said she recycles more this year because to do so has become much easier.
‘They provide you with the bags and basically all you have to do is walk downstairs,’ Robinson said. ‘It almost makes you think if a school this big can recycle, why can’t I just throw this bottle in a bin?’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
