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May 2010
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One of a billion green ways
On April 22, 2010, people in over 175 countries celebrated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Its theme, “A Billion acts of Green.” The following day, members of the Campus Environmental Committee gathered outside the food court, armed with plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes with which to christen the first plastic recycling bin on the St Augustine Campus. Campus Principal Professor Clement Sankat, present for the momentous occasion, was awarded the first throw. The Environmental Committee then added their loot to the fray and encouraged students passing by to join in, signifying the Campus’ commitment to the environment and marking The UWI’s addition to the “Billion Acts of Green” that this year’s Earth Day inspired around the world. “Earth Day was set up 40 years ago in response to concerns about pollution,” said Professor Andrew Lawrence, Chair of the Campus Environmental Committee. “It was set up with a goal of making students on campuses in universities in the United States become environmentally aware and begin to press for changes with regard to environment,” he continued. “It was driven by higher education in the US, so I think it’s really timely that we, as a higher education campus, should be starting to reduce our own pollution impact on Earth Day.” At its inception, Earth Day was designed to put the environment foremost on the US Government’s political agenda. Then US Senator for Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, designated April 22, 1970, to the cause—giving US citizens the floor to voice their concerns for the environment at environmental teach-ins held at universities across North America on that day. The event took on a life of its own and no one imagined that it would grow to such colossal proportions, immediately placing immense public pressure on the US Government to create a national environmental agenda and, 40 years later, highlighting April 22 as Earth Day on the calendars of nearly every country in the world. And the Environment Committee wants this one act to become a lifestyle; encouraging the campus community to make environmentally sound decisions in their everyday lives, so they’re placing 14 plastic recycling bins at strategic locations around the Campus. “We’re starting with the things we can achieve quite quickly, like recycling,” said Professor Lawrence. “They [members of the campus community] just need to hold on to their plastic bottle until they can drop it into one of them [the recycling bins] and hopefully what that does then is reduces litter on the campus. It reduces the amount of waste we put into landfill sites and it reduces plastics which are a big, big pollutant.” On the immediate agenda of the Campus Environmental Committee is the development of a “Campus-wide strategy for recycling,” said Professor Lawrence, whose area of research is environmental biology. He cited an estimate of almost 7000 cubic yards of garbage produced by the Campus each year, most of which are plastics and can easily be recycled. “We don’t need to be putting it into landfill sites,” he held. “What we’re trying to do is create systems whereby we do begin to recycle these things.” Professor Lawrence went on to explain that much of Trinidad’s flooding can be blamed on plastics being dumped into rivers, where they block the river systems. “Ultimately those plastics go out into the sea,” he said, “and it’s been estimated that there’s a pool of plastics in the North Atlantic that would stretch from Cuba to Washington DC. That’s how much rubbish there is in the sea and most of it is plastics. It’s a major problem and all that it requires is for us as individuals to put our bottles into the recycling bins.” The launch of the plastic recycling bins saw a positive response from students. “One guy came up to us and started talking about his concerns about plastics in particular,” said Professor Lawrence. “I think amongst these students there’s a lot of goodwill towards doing these things. What they need to know is that the things are there for them to do.” Established in May 2009, “with the remit of beginning to put environment on the agenda within the university and the wider country,” said Professor Lawrence, this is just the beginning of the Environmental Committee’s work. He lists the commitments made in the Campus’ Environmental Policy as working towards the sustainable use of resources and incorporating environmental issues into the mainstream business of the Campus, “so trying to include the environment in teaching, in research and in the overall management of the business that is the university.” “We want to try to reduce our footprint as much as possible,” he asserted, using the amount of travelling that happens at the Campus as an example. “You know, one of the bigger footprints as a Campus we probably make is the carbon footprint through travel, so if there are things that we can begin to do through video conferencing—all those are the things we should be looking at to try to work as sustainably as we can.” Ultimately, he said that the university hopes to become an example of good environmental practice to other companies in Trinidad and Tobago. “So hopefully we set initiatives in place that other people think ‘well that’s a good idea, we can do that’.” If each member of the Campus community, students, staff and faculty alike, adopts the simple practice of placing their plastic bottles, containers, wrappers and other paraphernalia, into the recycling bins, the Environmental Committee’s one act of making the bins available can easily be multiplied into a billion more. |
