Sustainability at USU

Lately one word has been going around campus: Sustainability. Everywhere students, teachers, administrators go, sustainability seems to be a great concern on Utah State University campus.

To Logan Christian, vice president of the Student Organization for Society and Natural Resources, or SOSNR, sustainability is “the notion or process of making all actions, whether individual or within a system, and looking at the energy — the production of energy, the source, and consumption of it — and it is saying how do we make it last for a very long time and make sure it doesn’t negatively impact other systems. Like recycling — you are looking at clean production of things and reducing them and then reusing them.”

There are many students involved in SOSNR who work to make USU a sustainable campus.

Anders Hart, a freshman majoring in conservation and restoration ecology and a member of SOSNR, said sustainability is “using natural resources wisely. It has to do with meeting current needs without compromising future resources and requires thinking beyond instant economic gratification. There’s also a moral orethical side to sustainability: we have an obligation to be good stewards of our resources for future generations and protect the amazing diversity of life on Earth.”

There are various efforts that USU students put forth to make the campus more sustainable. Christian was able to get a Blue Goes Green grant to put solar panels on the pumphouse that has a roof that faces southwards. The grant was for $10,000.

Another sustainability project was the water bottle refill stations that students can see everywhere around campus.

There are also things the average, everyday student on campus can do to aid in sustainability efforts.

“We have a great public transit system. It is going to be free for a long time. Just wherever you can, drive less, especially in the winter, thinking of air quality,” Christian said.

Gabriela Judd, a member of SOSNR, is very conscious in her everyday efforts to make USU a sustainable campus.

“Mostly, the way I am involved in sustainability on campus is through my daily choices. Like recycling my plastic containers from the Quadside Café or bringing a reusable container for triple-certified coffee I buy on campus, riding my bike or taking the bus and limiting the amount of waste I produce. Even small things like turning off lights of study rooms that aren’t being used counts,” Judd said.

Turning off lights, recycling, taking public transportation or a bike and not wasting food are just some of the solutions.

“The biggest one for Utah is to take shorter showers. We are the second driest state behind Nevada and the pricing of water doesn’t reflect how much water we have. It’s like six cents for a thousand gallons of water in Logan. That’s not even close to reflective of our watersheds and our snow pack has been decreasing drastically each year, which is even compounded further by the fact that there is so much pollution now, which makes it black and it’s absorbing more heat, which makes it melt faster,” Christian said.

Some of the solutions are not what one would expect; even through food choices people can be sustainable.

“Eat less meat. That is a hard thing for people to do. Some people only eat meat once or twice a day, others a few more times, others constantly. People can cut down to twice a week, and the reason is one quarter-pound burger takes 600 gallons of water to make because of all the forage for the cow, all the water they drink, even the gasoline used to bring the meat here,” Christian said.

There are so many things that people on campus can do to keep the resources used everyday around and make sure that everyone can use them.

“Sustainability is important on campus because students are starting their adult lives here, so we all need to learn how to be good stewards and get informed about environmental and social concerns,” Hart said. “Everyone has a responsibility to make positive changes, so why not here? USU is a prominent part of the community and state, so we should be good examples and show that we’re serious about doing the right thing.”

— roniastephen@gmail.com