For an unofficial club, the Green Campus Initiative has a lot planned for this year.

The unofficial club at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry is trying to reduce waste and energy use and increase environmental awareness on campus.

The group hosted the first State of Our Planet forum Nov. 17 at ESF. The event featured six ESF professors discussing environmental issues in a timed question and answer format.

Fitting with the theme, the forum was a zero-waste event: all of the food scraps were composted and people brought their own utensils, plate and mugs, said Hannah Morgan, a senior environmental science major at ESF and member of the Green Campus Initiative.

This semester, Green Campus Initiative has gone through changes to become more organized and professional before it becomes an official club next semester, Morgan said.

Justin Heavey, a junior environmental studies major, hopes that becoming an official club will lead to better organization and a stronger presence on campus.

‘The more organized you are, the easier it is to pull things off,’ he said.

In addition to trying to become more visible on campus, the group is also initiating a number of environmental projects.

The group’s most difficult project has been trying to rid the campus of pesticides being used on the ESF Quad and surrounding areas. Their efforts have been hindered by SUNY mandates that require pesticide use to keep up the college’s appearance, said Andrew Dorr, a junior environmental studies major at ESF.

‘With what the campus stands for I don’t think we should be using them,’ he said. ‘It would be nice to stand behind the environmental part of what our school stands for.’

Members of the group, along with chemistry professor Dave Johnson, are working on a composting project. The team collects food and feeds it through a digester to produce methane gas, which can then be used as a fuel source, Morgan said.

‘The main thing this semester is composting,’ she said. ‘We got a proposal together and it got passed and so now we are going to have composting on campus near the greenhouses.’

The club plans to place collection bins in ESF buildings to collect food for composting.

‘It’s kind of like a pilot project,’ said Dorr, another group member. ‘If it works, we are going to try to get SU dining halls to do it.’

The group conducts waste audits where garbage produced on campus is sorted to see what could have been recycled. Meagan Pepper, a sophomore environmental studies major and group member, stressed the importance of continual improvement when talking about the audit.

‘It showed people that we aren’t as green as we say we are,’ Pepper said. ‘We can always improve.’

Along with waste audits, the group also conducts food audits by collecting all the food that people discard in the dining halls and weighing it, Morgan said.

‘We collected 312 pounds at one meal in one dining hall on one day,’ she said.

To discourage over-consumption, the group has a clothing drive every year. People bring in random articles of clothing that they don’t want and anything that isn’t used is given to the Salvation Army, Morgan said.

‘Instead of going out and buying new clothes, people can just trade them,’ Pepper said.

To celebrate Earth Week, and reduce energy consumption, the group plans to host Lights Out Week in the spring to help students and faculty become more aware of their energy use.

The group will encourage students and faculty to turn off lights in classrooms during the day to show that they aren’t necessary, Morgan said.

The group also encourages students to reduce their consumption by making notebooks out of recycled paper and cereal boxes. The notebooks are made from materials collected in bins in ESF buildings and sold at Small Stores, in the basement of Marshall Hall.

Pepper believes the group is important because although ESF is a green school, there is still room for more student involvement.

‘We try to encourage all students to join and bring their ideas to the table,’ Pepper said, ‘and from there organize them and make changes happen.’

jlsiart@syr.edu

Published on December 2, 2009 at 12:00 pm