The Campus Community Working Towards Sustainability

Being a green campus is cool these days. If your campus isn’t green, you are the odd one out.

Often, other communities follow suite after a University in their region takes the first steps to being green. Royal Roads University is exploring many avenues to become more environmentally friendly. These include efforts such as composting used paper towels in bathrooms, placing compost bins in hallways and classrooms, and even encouraging cafeteria users to leave the food on their plates so it can be properly sorted to the compost bin. The Universities' cafeteria, Habitat Café, uses biodegradable take-out containers, as well as utensils and "plastic" containers made out of corn, so those too can be composted. Coffee cups and lids purchased from the Habitat café are also compostable. Not only are the coffee cups and lids environmentally friendly, but so is the coffee the café sells – Frog Friendly coffee, that is harvested by hand, and is economically, socially, and environmentally friendly, meeting the triple bottom line.

Aside from the Habitat Café on campus, Royal Roads University plans on building The Robert Bateman Art and Environmental Education Centre – a ‘living’ building that exceeds LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, and is designed to take RRU off the grid. Not only will the Bateman centre provide the energy to power the rest of campus, but will also be able to contribute energy back into the grid, essentially having a positive impact on the environment.

Royal Roads University also takes other steps to up it’s green, including charging for parking to discourage people from driving/parking on campus, using unbleached products when appropriate (such as paper towel), and placing reminders on light switches to turn off unused lights.

The Royal Roads University community has, from what I have seen, become accustomed to and participates in green living/working methods.

Other Universities, such as University of Victoria, use some other methods that Royal Roads University does not have available to students, such as the use of a bike rental throughout the school year for a small maintenance fee. By having this service available, students who are only temporarily living in Victoria do not need to shell out the dough to ride an emissions-free bicycle to and from campus. Rather, they can rent one, and then not have to worry about what to do with it other than returning it after the school year is over.

From another course in the previous quarter, we looked into the book titled Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University, written by Michael M'Gonigle and Justine Starke. Planet U is focused around the University as a catalyst for sustainable actions in the community. If sustainability is to be pushed to the fore-front of citizens’ minds, the University must initiate sustainable communities by becoming its own sustainable community. "Planet U places the university at the forefront of the sustainability movement. Questioning the university's ability to equip society to deal with today's serious challenges such as economic growth, democratic citizenship and planetary survival, it calls for a new social movement to take a lead in reforming the university - the world's largest industry." Because the University is a community, engagement techniques still apply – even to this type of community.

At Royal Roads University, students in the B.Sc. Environmental Science 2009 cohort were engaged to participate in sustainable actions through a variety of instructors and guest speakers, aiming to educate the students about specific sustainability practices on campus. A representative from Habitat Café told the students about all their fabulous biodegradable products, and how these fabulous products contribute to the price of food sold in the café. Darren Gardham, Custodial and Housekeeping Supervisor at Royal Roads University, informed the students on the practice of chemical free cleaning at RRU by using micro-fibre cloths and water. In addition, the custodial crew purchased a front-loading washer to decrease the amount of water used for washing laundry. And a year later, as part of the University community, University of Victoria took a page out of RRU’s book and purchased their own front-loading washing machine.

One of the gardeners from Royal Roads University did a quick presentation on sustainable gardening using indigenous plant species, and the removal of invasive species such as scotch broom, as well as the use of community gardens on campus available on a first-come-first-served basis. This year, all of the community garden plots were claimed – a testament to sustainable behaviour in the Royal Roads community.

All in all, the University community is becoming a leader in the green movement. With Universities taking on the challenge of becoming more sustainable, other communities will follow suite, creating a domino effect of sustainable communities!

For more information on the book Planet U, please visit: http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3922

A website that may be of interest in regards to this blog:
http://frontiers.ucdavis.edu/9b.html and http://www.ucdavis.edu/spotlight/1007/green.html