Getting Back to Eco-U

The University of Wisconsin – Green Bay’s campus sits isolated from the city it calls home – surrounded by a vast network of trees that make up the campus’ arboretum.  This setting is no accident, as from the very beginning, UWGB has strived to be “green” in more ways than one.

Since it opened its doors in 1965, the university has held the nickname “Eco U” because of its efforts towards environmental friendliness, according to the university’s sustainability website.

And while UWGB continues to receive national recognition for its efforts, it is failing to effectively communicate and engage with its students who aren’t already inclined to participate in sustainable practices. 

One of the major sustainability focuses for the university is recycling.  The abundance of well-advertised recycling bins, with complete descriptions of what should and shouldn’t be recycled, has made it convenient for students to recycle no matter where they are on campus.  But the Student Government Association’s Environmental Affairs Committee chair, Anthony Sirianni, JR’s recalls a classroom demonstration that suggests the university’s sustainability mission might not be getting through to its students.

“Georjeanna Wilson, a statistics professor, instead of using raw numbers, she went out in the hallway and grabbed a recycling bin and dumped it on the table and they counted what was supposed to be in there and what was not supposed to be in there… They realized that there was a large percentage of stuff that shouldn’t have been in there and when looking in the garbage can, there was a lot of stuff that could have been recycled,” said Sirianni.

It would be difficult to determine every UWGB student’s practices in sustainability and their reasoning behind their practices (or lack thereof), but SGA President Vanya Koepke believes it comes down to lack of education on what is and isn’t considered environmentally-friendly living.

“If students are not aware of what sustainability is, they may be thinking recycling but it’s so much more than that – measuring how much time you take in the shower, turning the lights off when they leave, composting - once students are educated…that’s when they can understand better what sustainability is, otherwise it may just be a word to them,” said Koepke.

Educating students on how and why to practice sustainable living is an important first step towards linking UWGB’s students with its “Eco U” mission.  The next step needs to be increasing students awareness of activities and projects in order to increase participation.

"It’s hard for me to speak since I’m around people with the same ideas as me… but for example, when we surveyed students on the Eco U part, overwhelming the freshman course, they didn’t know over half the questions we asked them, which were basically are you aware of the environmental organizations on campus… of all the things we do on campus to be sustainable.  They weren’t aware of half of it,” said Sirianni.

For the students’ part, this lack of awareness may have something to do with finding this information easily online.  In the age of the Internet, if information can’t be found quickly, it probably won’t be found at all.  The various organizations and sustainability websites are not linked, not easily found, and often have outdated or missing information.

For example, if a student was interested in seeing the minutes from the last Environmental Affairs meeting, looking on the EA’s page on the UWGB SGA website wouldn’t help them, the most recent minutes are from 2012.  Their Facebook page is no better, with the most recent minutes post from 2011 – and that link doesn’t even work.

If UWGB wants to continue its goal of sustainability, it needs to do a better job of getting its students to have the same goal.  Whether its lack of education or lack of communication, UWGB students just aren’t on the same page of environmental friendliness as their university is.