Let's be honest here... 

How green, or sustainable is your campus? Probably not very, but I'm sure (or at least I hope) every campus is making an effort to be less impacting on the Earth! For this assignment I first had to decide what factors I would use to determine just how "green" my campus is. How a campus uses energy, commutes, and recycles are obvious factors, but here are others that I came up with;

There are campus sustainability efforts out there, however, most seem to be driven by profit more so than creating a smaller impact on the Earth. However, there are some campus out there who do want to overall be more "green", take Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for example.

Every year this university takes part in the STARS program. STARS stands for the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System. According to the STARS website (https://stars.aashe.org/), the program is a "self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance". Wake Forest University takes part in this program in order to track their progress each year to guide them in the right direction in becoming a sustainable campus.

The assessment is very detailed, covering everything from air travel and greenhouse emissions, to food purchasing and tray-less dining, to renewable energy. The campus is scored based on whether or not they are persuing the given "credit" on the assessement. For example, one "credit" is "LED Lighting", and since the university is persuing this, they recieved a score of 0.25/0.25. Kind of hard to understand so here's a screenshot of the actual report for Wake Forest in 2012;

 
You can check out this link to see the actual report from 2012:
https://stars.aashe.org/institutions/wake-forest-university-nc/report/2012-05-09/

So, if I could choose one of the factors I came up with above to assess at my campus I would choose: Are the buildings on campus LEED certified?. For those that do not know, LEED certified means that each building meets the standards of being sustainable. According to NRD.org, "The LEED green building rating system -- developed and administered by the U.S. Green Building Council... is designed to promote design and construction practices that increase profitability while reducing the negative environmental impacts of buildings and improving occupant health and well-being". Not only that, but there are benefits for being LEED certified! Buildings that do receive a Certified, Silver, Green, or Platinum LEED certificates get credits.

To start this assessment, I would first go to Dr. Edward Bush, Vice President of Student Servies and find out who it is I need to get permission from the assess each building. I would also write a detailed email to the RCC President, Dr. Cynthia Azari explaining to her why I am doing the assessment, as well as email her the results. I would then contact the Student Sustainability Collective and ask for their help in assessing each building.

In 2001, Emery built their first LEED certified builing, a "$95,000 project that paid for itself in less than a year through reduced energy bills". Why wouldn't we want to do this? Not only would we become a less environment impacting campus, we would also SAVE money. Most of the time the factors that keep a campus from becoming sustainable are lack of funds, lack of awareness, or lack of support from administrators. I'm pretty sure knowing the cost of becoming LEED certified would pay for itself in the first year, and continue to save us money afterwards would get administrators to be open to the idea!

Next, with the help of the Sustainability Collective I would research what the requirements are for being LEED certified and from there find out what standards the buildings meet and which they do not. I would then suggest getting assessed by the STARS AASHE assessment (that I mentioned above) to see where we stand in reference to electricty consumpion, etc. and to also show administrators just how poorly we are doing. I would have to get in touch with Dr. Cynthia Azari again and find out if this is okay to do. It would cost $1400 for the assessment, which I and the Student Sustainability club would have to raise. From there we would have the campus assessed, see what requirements are not met, and which ones are, and then pitch the idea to become LEED certified to the president of the school once again. This process (especially since I have to go through administrators and raise the money) would probably take a year or two.

It takes one person to make millions aware. Help make your campus sustainable.