By Hanifah Jones, Staff Writer
Susquehanna welcomes a new addition to its Sustainability Group, increasing its efforts to make campus more environmentally friendly.
Derek Martin was hired as Susquehanna’s new Sustainability Coordinator at the Center for Environmental Education and Research in early January. Martin’s new position reflects the University’s dedication to improving sustainability on campus. “SU is trying to invest heavily in sustainability around campus,” Martin said.
“Our mission for sustainability right now I would say, is to increase education for sustainability,” said Jennie Lien, a junior environmental studies major who works as a student coordinator for the Sustainability Group. “Our definition of that is being more environmentally friendly and more environmentally conscious on campus.”
The Sustainability Group consists of a Sustainability Committee, which includes a diverse group of people across campus with many areas of interest that come together for a common cause: keeping our campus environmentally friendly. “There’s admin staff, like myself, there’s faculty on it from earth and environmental sciences, physics and English,” said Martin, “Then there’s also a student, someone from housing, the IT director and other types of people are all involved in this group.”
The Sustainability Group is working on many projects to increase sustainable habits within the campus. “For example, right now we are really trying to push recycling,” said Lien. “My main project is to improve recycling on campus because it isn’t really solid right now, a lot of students don’t even think to recycle. So, we’re really trying to push that in terms of education.
Lien and another Student Coordinator, junior Ryan Carter, are working on what they are calling a “waste audit.” This waste audit will help measure the amount of waste students generate and the cross contamination between recyclables and garbage.
“We are using Reed and Aikens and for this past week we have been collecting the garbage and the recycling from both of those buildings,” said Lien. “We’ve been digging through the trash and taking out all of the recyclables, and then digging through the recycling and taking out everything that should have been put in the trash. So, then we’re weighing it and we’re seeing how much cross-contamination is happening”
Cross-contamination is a very big issue concerning how Susquehanna separates the waste from our recyclables. When trash is included with recyclables it often results in the entire batch being thrown away. Many people are unaware of these consequences, which the Sustainability Group hopes to educate the community on.
“Once that is done we’re going to gather the data and then we’re going to put up new posters in Reed and Aikens about recycling” said Lien. “We’re going to leave them up for a week and then after that we’re going to do another waste audit to see how that has improved, to see if the posters are actually helping and if having these posters up are going to make students recycle more.”
“So that’s one of the roles of my job,” said Martin in regard to educating the campus on sustainability. “To make the operations of [Susquehanna] as environmentally friendly as possible. But also to engage as many students as possible in that process. And so, providing hands on learning opportunities so that students can learn about what sustainability is, how we can become better at using our resources, etc.”
The Sustainability Group is also working towards creating a solar farm in the campus garden. “The Sustainability Group as a whole is also doing the solar farm that is being put in, so that is another great stride towards sustainability on campus” said Lien. “The solar farm, I believe, is a three-megawatt solar ray which is going to ultimately account for roughly thirty percent of the energy on campus, such as electricity. It’s [located] back, behind the baseball fields, behind the cemetery, near the Sass parking lot.”
“I think that we’re all realizing nowadays that we have a duty to try to use as few resources as we can in our operations.” said Martin.
Carter said,” The school hired a full-time position, so I’m happy with our progress.”