Sustainable Campuses. Many student collectives across Australia are working on making their campus sustainable, campaigning for renewable energy, recycling, native trees, sustainable buildings and no research money from mining companies. Universities embody a great deal of power, they use a lot of energy, and can be model of a sustainable built complex that inspires the rest of the community. More importantly, research into energy is carried out at campuses, at the moment often funded by coal or nuclear industry – Oh No! ASEN empowers students to demand that their universities switch to clean energy and sustainable campuses. ASEN facilitates these campus campaigns by helping students to share resources and running training sessions to develop campaign skills.
Climate Change
Climate change is one of the most important social and environmental issues of our generation, and it’s happening now. We can already see the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather – the devastating floods in Queensland in 2010, the ongoing drought in Eastern Australia, melting polar caps and rising seas – and things are only going to get worse, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable communities and exacerbating oppression. Our state and federal governments are not committed to building alternatives, as they approve the expansion of coal mines, gas wells and coal-fired power stations around the country. We need to take action, because politicians and business aren’t going to do it for us!
University Renewable Energy Scorecard
In 2010, ASEN created a University Renewable Energy Scorecard. We had help from the NTEU and campus groups in collecting the data, and found that several University administrations do not publish any information on their energy use, contribution to climate change or even non-academic staff numbers! That means that our figures are not perfect, but they give a good indication of which Universities are taking climate change seriously. Contact: Contact Sally Stuart for more information on campus sustainability campaigns – sallystuart at asen dot org dot au. Links:
• Step It Up
• Climate Movement
• TheClimateHub
• Six Degrees
• Rising Tide
• Climate Action Monash
ASEN CAMPAIGN UPDATE – SUSTAINABLE UNIVERSITIES, MAY 20, 1998, NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS. UNIVERSITIES OF AUSTRALIA ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CHARTER & SUSTAINABLE UNIVERSITIES CAMPAIGN BRIEF, 1998 (some areas adapted from the University of Wollongong Non-Collegiate Accommodation Environmental Plan). Targeted Areas
1 Library/ Miscellaneous Photocopiers
2 University wide recycling systems
3 Catering outlets waste reduction
4 Energy Auditing
5 Ethical investment
These areas were prioritised for each for their specific reasons and due to the fact that it is these areas that contribute much of the waste and un-sustainability towards the operations in Australian universities.
1 JCU Townsville uses 124 tonnes of paper products annually at a cost of $221,000, + 1.5 million sheets of paper per annum in the Computer Centre. More often than not this paper is virgin and/ or pre consumer content recycled. This is a good figure to start at as JCU is one of the smaller campuses in the country. With there being over 160 student based organisation across a variety of Australian campuses, universities paper consumption would be in the order (this is a conservative ball park figure only) of around 1 million reams of paper per year. If 100% post consumer waste paper would be used it would result in much higher demand for this products therefore lower prices and also would result in the loss of much less native forest for paper usage purposes.
2 Waste from lecture handouts, glass in catering outlets, aluminium in catering outlets, and generic paper wastage is in the order of over 10 tonnes per month from a large university campus (RMIT, Newcastle, USA, Murdoch etc.) and about 2 tonnes per month from a small campus (Swinburne, SCU Lismore, ECU Bunbury, USA Whyalla etc.). Waste being shipped to landfill would be reduced, thereby reducing waste cost to the university and the catering facilities and the glass and aluminium can often be on-sold to a recycling facility thereby re-cooping some of the set up costs of the system. Thereby the system would, in many cases, pay for itself within or shortly after 12 months.
3 Catering outlets operate, on a majority of campuses around the country, as a monopoly providing food services for campuses. As such they often have little or no impetus to cut back on costs and wastes. Due to many students needing a quick lunch they also have to cater for an extraordinary high volume of take away meals and so are therefore ‘forced’ to consume large amounts of non-recyclable materials. Food scraps are also a large problem and the recycling of these products via organic waste systems is both a good environmental practice, putting nutrients back into the universities grounds, and a sound financial strategy, reduces waste being shipped off to landfill. Ideally these plans would need to be aimed at the university Building and Grounds Department and would also necessitate a timeline for implementation being placed on these various sustainable systems. The focus would therefore be on pitching this plan at both University Council and also to all faculty/department boards for, in the very least, implementation in various departments across the university. Therefore should the wide scale approach of university Council fail we can attack the problem on a smaller scale and simply work our way across the various departments. This would be a longer process but would also eventually see the same results should all departments agree to recycling, post consumer waste paper and waste minimisation practices.
The problems that are associated with trying to implement such a plan are the variety of waste generated by universities and the catering facilities, the need to establish a simple system that is cost effective in the long term and simple to set up in the short term. There is also the problem of ongoing education to ensure that the models that are put in place for sustainable practices are used effectively and in an on-going fashion.