Ideas for the Sustainability Conference in October
By Daniel Bachhuber for the Advisers, Community, Partners, Team on 27 June 2008
Tags: campus, CASL, policy, sustainability, Whitman Direct Action
On the UO Sustainability list serv this week, Emmalyn Garrett of the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Living forwarded an email from Steve Mital, Sustainability Director at the University of Oregon. His email outlines a Sustainability Conference, tentatively scheduled for October 23rd and 24th, 2008, and requests ideas for its components:
We need your help designing a one-day leadership development conference for college students in the Oregon University System who are interested in making their campuses more sustainable. What are your needs? What should the day’s agenda be? What kinds of workshops should we develop? Who should we ask to come and speak?
In the spirit of opening discussion on the event, I thought I might blog my ideas.
To start off, I think it could be quite powerful to put all the documents related to planning online and editable by the community in a wiki-like format. I know there are numbers of students passionate about sustainability on campus; connecting digitally would be a manageable way of allowing everyone to get involved. This PBWiki for the 2008 Netsquared Conference is one example we could follow.
Secondly, with Oregon Direct Action in mind, it would be useful to us to have an international component to the conference. I’m not exactly sure what this would be at the moment, but one thing we’re seriously trying to consider is connecting the international development we would like to do with initiatives at home. For instance, if our project for this year were decentralised wind energy, it might be useful to build and maintain a wind turbine in Eugene as a part of the beta testing. We’ll have a better idea of what exactly we will be doing internationally in the next month, after we’ve decided on which project(s) we’re going forward with.
Having sustainability non-profits from the community at the conference, in terms of networking, would be an added bonus.
The last idea I have is one that’s been floating around in my head for a while. Last fall, in working with the WDA team, I thought there might be potential benefits in developing a sustainability policy for the organization. Sure, WDA is an organization all about promoting “economically and environmentally sustainable community development,” but what does that mean if the organization itself isn’t sustainable? Unfortunately, I don’t have many definitive answers on what this means at the moment. In specific terms, a sustainable organization or student club could be one that minimizes its use of paper by advertising online, instead of using flyers, and either buys renewable energy or offsets transportation by carbon credits. This type of discussion, and the possible drawing up of a charter, might be relevant at the conference.
What do you think?
27. June 2008 at 03:17
[...] to students and sustainability.” My suggestions for the conference, written in full on the Oregon Direct Action blog, revolve around these [...]
28. June 2008 at 00:28
One last idea on my part: a “This is What You Can Do” component.
In the fall, I’ll be living with the Student Cooperative Association in the Campbell Club where there are many students interested in bringing sustainability home. Of the many ideas on the table, including a green roof and grey water recycling system, I think two things are lacking: the appropriate leadership to make it happen, and the connections made with knowledgeable people on campus to help fill in resources holes. Both can be satisfied in partnerships.
With the “This is What You Can Do” component to the conference, we, as students, would submit ideas on what we would like to learn how to do in the lead up to the conference. In the sessions, we would then learn how to do it and where we can go for more information. Follow up would be an integral component dependent on what exactly the material of the conference is. Submitting and voting on ideas could be accomplished easily now that Reddit has “open-sourced” its code.
4. July 2008 at 09:27
This might be a really obvious and already thought of idea, but it seems that schools in general have a lot of paper waste. Handing out papers, printing papers, fliers…I think it be easy to be less wasteful if everything was offered online like you already said. If all handouts were on blackboard a lot less students would print them. If essays were submitted online, teachers could add comments on word and send them back without involving paper. It seems like all schools could benefit from using online resources.
In terms of energy, one small thing to help save energy is to replace light bulbs. I know that the campus is old and there are a lot of energy wasting light bulbs being used. Those could all be replaced for a fairly cheap cost.
Also the campus has a lot of electronics that run all the time. There should be a way to cut that down using sustainable practices, although I don’t know what they are. Also old electronics often get thrown away because people don’t know how to recycle them. Maybe a bigger effort to educate people on what to recycle and how would be really helpful. Often times people throw stuff away because they are lazy or ignorant. If you make sustainable practices really easy and convenient they can’t really opt out.
Lastly, I know there are a lot of companies out there who produce products using sustainable methods (such as only using recycled paper). We as a campus could choose to only support companies who produce those kind of goods, because increasing the demand for those products will really help their business and will get students accustomed to using certain brands. If we can’t cancel out all other brands, then make it popular to choose them like making people feeling guilty for choosing the brand that doesn’t say, “yay for helping the environment.” The book store could put a big sign that says: environmentally friendly products this way, non-environmentally friendly products the other way. People walking towards the second sign might feel guilty?
6. July 2008 at 20:42
My main point of feedback is that if UO really wants to create a sustainable sustainability movement, they need to support networking among students who share these interests. Beyond the conference, your “This is What You Can Do” Q&A model should be expanded to be a permanent feature of the school. Students should have a forum in which they can post projects they would like to undertake, along with a description of the expertise or materials they need. Students can also simply post their expertise and interests and the app could notify project intiators and site users when their interests/needs overlap. Sort of like an Alibaba for student human resources. I’m working with an entrepreneurship institute at USC (the one working with us and Deshpande) to create a more general version of this idea for any students interested in starting their own projects or businesses. They key is making it easily accessible, which I’ve concluded currently means either linking it to your university portal (if you have one) or creating a Facebook app.