Katelynn McGinley
Staff Reporter
Lately, it seems that everywhere you look; there is evidence of someone or something going green. The 90’s may have been all about excess and extravagance, but now Hollywood is encouraging us to ditch our Hummer’s and $20 bottles of Evian in favor of Honda Fits and a Brita water filter. Environmental issues like clean-coal technology and ‘green’ energy have played a crucial role in the presidential elections. In other words: going green isn’t just a trend ? it’s a new way of life.
The United States is taking steps to move in a more ‘green’ environmentally conscious direction, and colleges are also getting in on the act.
The College Sustainability Report Card (greenreportcard.org) is a website that rates how environmentally friendly or ‘green’ college campuses across the country are. The rating given to each school is based on a variety of categories, including:
? Climate change and energy
? Food and recycling
? Green buildings on campus
? Administrative and student
involvement
? Transportation
Dickinson College, the University of New Hampshire, and Oberlin College all have overall ratings of A-, landing them spots in the top five most environmentally friendly colleges in the country.
While McDaniel College does not currently meet the endowment requirement necessary to be evaluated on the website, that doesn’t mean that the school doesn’t meet some of the criteria that makes a ‘green’ college.
In May 2007 President Coley signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which pledges to take a leadership role in addressing global warming. Following this move, the Green Terra committee ? which is made up of faculty, staff, and students looking for ways to measure and reduce the college’s carbon footprint ? was formed with the goal of McDaniel being carbon-neutral by 2009. Student led organizations like the Environmental Action Club (EAC) are also prevalent forces around campus.
Recycling is an issue that McDaniel has struggled with over the past few years. Though there are trash cans specifically for recyclable materials, they are placed sporadically around the campus, and even when students do take the time to recycle, trash collectors oftentimes just dump the recyclables in with the regular trash. One suggestion for recycling is to have a separate trash receptacle in your own dorm room for plastics and other recyclables.
“The [cleaning] staff is ordered to throw away any recycling that has trash in it,” explains Ember Fleming ’09, president of the EAC, “so if there is a bag full of recycling and there is one banana peel tossed in there, the whole bag gets thrown out.”
The issue here is two-fold. On one hand, it is important that students take it upon themselves to pay more attention to where they put their trash, and that they are actually recycling. On the other hand, as Fleming says, “there seems to be something lost in communication,” between the students and the administration on this issue.
Another way that McDaniel could improve its ‘green-ness’ would be to make some changes to Englar Dining Hall. Dickinson College’s dining services buys vegetables from the Dickinson College Organic Farm. Purchasing from the farm enables the college to save on costs for food and transportation. In the past year alone, $6,500 has been reinvested into the college farm instead of being paid to outside suppliers. The dining hall also has a goal of composting 100% of food waste.
The notoriously finicky Glar dish-washer (which, as of print time, was again on the fritz) doesn’t help matters either, because when the dish-washer is broken, like it was for the majority of the 2007 school year, students eat off of non-bio degradable Styrofoam plates, and use plastic silverware?which is typically not recycled.
Something as simple as eating healthier while in Glar is beneficial to the environment; a diet based in whole-grains, fruits, and vegetables, and lean proteins from plant sources (beans and nuts), reduces your carbon footprint while helping you keep off the dreaded freshman 15.
While McDaniel has made noble efforts in its attempt to be an attempt to be a completely environmentally friendly campus, if we really want to live up to our name as the Green Terrors, there is still some work to be done.