Sustainability movement needs change in youth

November 4, 2009
By Benjamin Voloshin
Columnist

Benjamin Voloshin

Here at UIS we have our “Green Roof” insulating FRH, our motion-sensor activated lights with eco-friendly light bulbs, and our numerous cigarette receptacles and recycling bins.

These parts of our campus create the illusion of a community with environmentally conscious students and faculty alike. Yet a closer look reveals our campus is composed of students who feel they are exempt from the administration’s conservationist effort.

This renders the concept of conservationism fruitless, unless it becomes a collective effort.

Cigarette depositories and recycling bins become reminders of how little the student body has done to discourage waste production. They underscore the minimal scrutiny the students have emplaced upon themselves to be responsible for the environmentalist campaign.

For example, students continue to live in the shadow of the smoke stacks from City Water Light and Power’s (CWLP) iconic Dallman Power Plant, which burns coal just down the lake from campus. We continue to see our campus as a separate entity from our surrounding community, but in order to be green efficiently, we must come together with the rest of Springfield.  

Just days ago, POWER Magazine awarded the Dallman 4 Power Plant the Power Plant of the Year Award, beating out 400 other plants from around the world. The article commended Dallman on “perfectly balancing the city's environmental goals with reliable and economic electricity supplies." CWLP recently went through negotiations with the Illinois Sierra Club, an organization endorsing a “Clean Air Campaign”, to use the latest technology to reduce carbon emissions, lowering the plant’s contribution to global warming.

The partnership between CWLP and the Sierra Club was then an unprecedented achievement for environmentalists and represents the difference we as a community can make towards the improvement of our living conditions if we were to make appropriate changes.

Dallman may portray itself as the future of clean coal burning, but it still burns a nonrenewable resource. Cheaper alternatives like wind, hydroelectric, and solar power seem much more desirable by comparison, but few in Springfield have advocated for them.

This debate in our town’s recent history is appropriately set in the capital, where changes for the state are made. And while our administration at UIS is making changes to adhere to the green movement, it is the students who have failed to do their part.

Our consumption of Styrofoam has brought in the demand (from Jan. 1 to Oct. 13) for 28,800 “to-go” containers for a low approximate cost of $2000. This figure depicts a campus concerned more with personal convenience than with individual responsibility for the stewardship of our planet. We must take it upon ourselves to introduce changes that will benefit the Earth.

We can start on our campus. Students can start new organizations focused on building gardens of vegetables or plants or composts in each hall wing and in the townhouses, or raise awareness of the small steps the administration has taken to foster a greener student body (like the discount a customer at the Capital Grille may receive for their drinks if they bring eco-friendly cups).

Other universities have already taken the green initiative. Both Yale and Brown University have outsourced their garbage to local piggeries where livestock eat the waste. Tufts University composts nearly a ton of food each day from its cafeterias in addition to offering students the option of fitting their dorms to only use wind energy at an expense of $15 a semester. To raise awareness, Carleton College’s graduate students publish a local environmental newsletter entitled The Green Bean.

The College of the Atlantic has just over three hundred undergraduates, yet its dorms are equipped with composting toilets, while a wood burning pellet boiler produces all the dorms’ energy. CoA serves only local organic food in their tray-less Styrofoam-free cafeteria, and after meals they either compost or give away any leftover food.

An entire student body devoted to this cause should not be perceived as a chore, but rather as an opportunity. Students can branch out and start grassroots efforts in the community. We can unite the town and our campus against such injustices to the environment, while becoming pioneers in a greener future. Right now, in our formative years, UIS has the potential to lead by example, and to become one of the most environmentally conscious campuses in the state.