Editorial: CMU demonstrates campus-wide environmentalism

As an institution, CMU has always been dedicated to preserving the environment. The university has a strong recycling program and has incorporated resource-saving fixtures (such as waterless, no-flush urinals) across campus. Adminsitration has kept a keen eye on how it uses the earth’s resources, and the students have reacted positively.

Now, the students are at the forefront of campus environmentalism.

Sustainability Council recently began construction on a bevy of composting bins at WCCC that will be finished by Sept. 19. These bins will redirect 200 pounds of campus food waste per week — waste that would otherwise head straight to the landfill.

Over a 30-week school year, that’s six thousand pounds of food waste that will be composted and re-used to benefit the campus and the community. The venture will pay for itself, eliminating the school’s composting costs.

And the whole idea came from the students.

Environmentalism at CMU isn’t an administrative initiative with student cheerleaders anymore — it’s a campus-wide cooperative, headed by a soon-to-be campus organization, the Sustainability Council. These students are volunteering their time to construct these composting bins. They don’t earn paychecks like employees of other campus orgs — in fact, they don’t even have an office. But they’re making an enormous enivronmental impact with the limited resources that they have.

If this group of environmentalists can save six thousand pounds of food waste with limited staff and a chump change budget, think of what they could do as an organization with substantial funding. If they could compost all 14 thousand pounds of food waste per week, they could compost nearly half a million pounds of food waste per year. That’s bound to benefit the campus, the community and the earth.

Categorised in: Editorial, Opinions

This post was written by critedev