How Green is Your College, Really?

On MNN.com there was an article titled "Are Green College Really Green?" by Siel Ju of MNN.com (Mother Nature Network) and she featured my alma mater, UCLA which ranked #9 in Sierra Club's Third Annual Cool Schools for Greenest College. I was suprised that some of the colleges didn't make it to the list such as Humboldt State and Loyola Marymont University in Los Angeles. I am going to discuss my opinion about how green UCLA really is and what I feel they need to work on.

How Sierra determined these rankings was by e-mailing a lengthy questionnaire to sustainability experts at hundreds of schools. The survey covered eight categories: efficiency, energy, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management and administration.

As a recent graduate from UCLA, I feel that they could do a lot better. According to Siel Ju of MNN.COM - the college itself recycles less the city it's located in. On campus we do have a lot of recycling bins and mix paper bins scattered around campus--it's the easiest way to be environmentally friendly. But with all these recycling bins around campus we don't recycle as much as the city of Los Angeles. In UCLA's office of media relations, they bragged about the school's" current 60% waste diversion rate". But according to L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti's blog, "Los Angeles has the highest recycling rate out of the 10 largest U.S. cities. The recycling rate here is 65 percent."

Also from my personal experience, last year there was a campaign to push this fund called the TGIF (The Green Initiative Fund) which meant every student at UCLA would pay a 4 dollar fee every quarter to fund sustainability projects at UCLA. Even though I grew up from a household to be eco-friendly and taught about reducing waste, I voted "No" on that initiative because they didn't specify what potential projects they wanted to for the future and it was four more dollars on top of a tuition that also was increasing that coming fall. Just because your school is prides itself in being green and wants to take on more sustainability projects doesn't mean it is going to change a one's lifestyle in being green. Just because there are a lot of recycling bins for cans and mixed papers on campus doesn't mean they're going to carry that practice at home. Though I would think it's nice to have more eco-friendly and sustainable facilities to help have an institution reduce its carbon footprint, I feel it is more important to teach a person in being green first. I think UCLA (and other schools as well) instead of creating projects and facilities that are meant to eco-friendly and sustainable, instead why don't they educate students in being eco-friendly. For examples, hold a Sustainability Fair for a week once a year on campus and each day would teach about recycling one day and reducing waste the next day, and another where using energy appliances etc.

Source: Sierra Club Cool Schools

Siel Ju's "Are Green Colleges Really Green?"