In the few years I’ve been enrolled at Wooster, I’ve seen some pretty radical changes to our campus. Babcock was remodeled. We were issued new COW cards that distinguish between over- and underage students. The cards are also brighter ó and therefore harder to lose. Holden Annex was finally closed, then reopened again. Our PEC is transitioning from the 1800s into the new millennium. We now have the C-Store, the Sub Stop, and the somewhat unusual Scot Dog cart. The list goes on.
But some of the most significant changes to date have been those that move our school into a greener future. Hardworking individuals and groups such as dining service, Greenhouse and Peace by Peace have been working their butts off to initiate campus-wide change –ó and they’ve been succeeding. Below are 12 ways COW students can be green:
1. We now have single stream recycling. Instead of having to separate the paper from the plastics and the number one plastics from the number three plastics, we can now shove any recyclable items into those blue bins we see around campus, which brings me to my next point:
2. There are recycling containers in the hallways! Instead of having to lug your bags out to the nearest recycling dumpster ó which indeed may not be near at all ó you can just stumble out of your room with your blue bin and dump it into the hall’s larger container. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
3. I once scared off a guy by telling him the utensils at Mom’s were edible. But it’s true. Those yellow-tinted utensils you pick up with your Lowry to-go box or Mom’s order are “Cornware” and therefore not only compostable but actually edible (Caution: I don’t actually recommend eating them in large quantities unless you want to do a bit of research first. Just because they happen to be edible doesn’t mean they’re supposed to be eaten).
4. Bottled water has been moved behind the counter at Mom’s, which reduces usage. Some people have taken pledges to stop using plastic bottles at all, and instead use reusable containers. And if you bring a reusable mug to the C-store, Mom’s, or Old Main, you get a discount on your drink. If saving money is not enough incentive to stop using one-time bottles and coffee cups, then I don’t know what is.
5. Lowry and Kittredge have become mostly trayless. The option is still there for people who really want it, but the vast majority of diners have taken it in stride and learned to balance their cups, plate, bowl and silverware while navigating the mealtime rush at Lowry.
6. This year, dining services have started pushing the local and organic foods in earnest. A lot of our food in Lowry and especially in Kittredge comes from local growers and is raised without pesticides, which cuts down on transportation costs and boosts the local economy.
7. To go along with the local food push, the “Cow Patch” garden started a few years ago, and raises vegetables for our dining halls. As President Cornwell pointed out at the ëGreen Contract Signing’ on Monday, it really doesn’t get any more local than that.
8. Transportation on campus is going green as well. You can rent a bike for the day through the community bike program. We also have Dollar Shuttles that go to and from downtown and take students en masse to the Cleveland and Akron airports (a double bonus since not only are we reducing pollution, this also prevents those of us with cars from having to drive friends back and forth from the airport).
9. When you’re tired of your old clothes or the “freshman 15” forces you to stop wearing them, clothing exchanges sponsored by Greenhouse let you hand off your rejects and browse through the rejects of others. Hey, one person’s trash is someone else’s treasure!
10. All of our efforts and cooperation have raised the College’s rating in the Campus Sustainability Report Card. Enough said.
11. In case you couldn’t make the actual event and/or somehow managed to miss all the advertising that went along with it, our new PEC will have the largest solar roof of any college in the country. It will generate enough energy to power an entire dorm on campus.
12. The only way these initiatives become effective is if students actually take advantage of them. And for the most part I think we’ve done a good job of doing that. Number 12 should be the easiest and most obvious thing to do. But I still see plastic bottles and paper in trash cans and ó worst of all ó regular trash in the recycling bins. I see people getting tons of food in to-go boxes and throwing away half of it when they get full. It’s really not hard. So many people have been putting forth such an effort to bring our campus into the future. Don’t let laziness or ignorance drag it back into the past.