Sustainability and environmental awareness groups on Grounds will host the seventh annual Campus Sustainability Day tomorrow.
Participating organizations desire to link up initiatives and promote their newest programs to the student body, said Andrew Greene, sustainability planner for the Office of the University Architect. The purpose of the day, he said, is to "keep [sustainability] on people's radars and get the community together to advance these projects forward."
The day will include promotions for Dining Services' latest waste-saving initiatives as well as an opportunity for student groups and members of the general public to pose questions to a panel of environmental education experts in a video-based webinar, Greene said.
The webinar, coordinated by the Society for College and University Planning, will occur on multiple college campuses across the country and will include a live video feed to a panel of experts, he said. These administrators and environmental leaders will answer questions submitted by students in real time and will allow student groups nationwide to share their ideas for new sustainable programs and find out what is working and what is not, Greene said.
The webinar, he said, "gives perspective on how to grow student involvement in sustainability."
Following the event, Greene will moderate a discussion among the attending groups to share what they learned. The groups also will attempt to coordinate future student educational efforts and seek to work together to promote common initiatives, he said.
"For people to hear each other out and associate names with faces can be almost as valuable as the information that's learned or things that have happened," he said.
Kendal Singleton, sustainability coordinator for Dining Services, said the webinar event will provide students and administrators with a chance to learn about other environmental programs that have already been instituted at colleges and universities nationwide and to avoid the mistakes others have made.
"We'll hear about the challenges, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of overlap between what we're doing and what other schools have already worked through, so I think that will be a very useful clearinghouse of information," she said.
Singleton said she also will launch a number of other sustainability initiatives from within Dining Services, including a new punch-card system to encourage students to use reusable mugs when purchasing coffee on Grounds. Each time a student uses a reusable container to fill up his coffee mug, the cashier will punch the card. After a student racks up eight punches, he can redeem the card for two free cups of coffee from any Dining Services location on Grounds.
The program, Singleton said, will "encourage students to be more proactive about not producing waste."
Dining Services also will host a theme dinner at Observatory Hill Dining Hall titled, "The Green Plate Special," which will feature local and organically grown foods, she added, serving to promote her office's relationships with local growers and producers.
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