1. Campus Rooftops
One thing all college campuses have is buildings: libraries, dorms, students centers, dining halls and classroom buildings. Probably the buildings on your campus aren’t doing much to help the environment and are using fossil fuels instead.
Your group can approach the university officials with a request to install solar panels on campus. The request may be better received if you have done some homework ahead of time.
Find a company in your area with the best solar panels and service ratings and provide this information. Right away, someone is going to tell you that this will never happen because of the grand historical campus buildings, so tweak your request to reflect this.
Ask that solar panels be installed on the plainer campus buildings so nothing will detract from the architecture of the buildings that most represent the university.
2. Investments
Try to find out if your university invests money in fossil fuels. Investments made by public schools are readily available for anyone to see. If you attend a private college, it may be harder to find this information, but not impossible.
If your college is heavily invested in fossil fuels, encourage those who make money decisions to divest from fossil fuels.
If you publicize this information, the college may eventually decide to do the right thing and change to green investments.
3. Dining Halls
Many things can be done in the dining halls to make your campus greener. See if the cafeterias can start using more sustainable take out containers and if they are willing to begin a waste composting program.
Partnering with local farms is also a great idea for many reasons. The farm will sell more produce and can even hold farmers markets on campus.
It might be a smart idea for you to reach out to the farms first so you can present the dining halls with the farm contacts who are willing to give collaboration a try.
This can be more easily done if your school is in a rural area and if there is an agriculture major so interested students can help get it going. However, even in the city there may still be farms not too far away.
4. Discourage Car Ownership
Whether your campus is in the city or country, you can work to make it easier for students to do without cars. If you live near public transportation, see if your group can sell passes at a discount to students. Ask your university to purchase a membership to a carsharing company to help students who need to go where public transportation doesn’t.
Partner with a sports or exercise club on campus and purchase bicycles, helmets and locks. Once students go through some training, they can check out keys to the bikes’ locks and borrow helmets at the campus library.
5. Expel Plastic Bottles
Ask the university to install bottle filling stations in the dining halls and in high use buildings like the library. Some dispensers have a display that shows how many water bottles have been saved from the trash due to use of the station. When that happens, the cafeterias should immediately stop selling plastic bottles of water.
other valuable tips:
At the same time, talk to the college bookstore and ask if they can offer high quality reusable water bottles at a reasonable price.
If you don’t like some things you see when you arrive on campus, don’t just spend the next four years being bothered by them and wishing for change. As soon as you can, find some like-minded students, get organized and try to get results.
Work on the easiest targets first so that by the time you get to something big like solar panels, you will be more organized and experienced. You can make greener changes happen.
Image Credit: make your campus greener by twenty20.com
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