By Katie Koenig
Introduction
Emerson has plenty of sustainability programs itself, least of which is Griff Gives, our end-of-semester dorm donation drive. However, what sustainable services are other colleges offering their students? How does Emerson compare?
My fellow Sustainability Fellow, Lizzie, and I will highlight other colleges’ efforts to support their students in living more sustainable lives, from unique donation drives to sustainably constructed buildings and more.
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
There are dozens of different sustainability metrics that you can use to rank colleges and other institutions. Sustainability is a vague term that’s often used as a catch-all. Although it helps identify general efforts to be environmentally and socially considerate, comparing sustainability efforts requires more specific metrics.
One example of a college sustainability ranking system is Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings: Sustainability. It has a list of items, which they call indicators, that show outward commitment and actual impact towards improving their sustainability efforts. They categorize these indicators by three large categories: environmental impact, social impact, and good governance.
Environmental impact means just that—the impact the university has on the environment, from educating students on the topic, researching ways to halt climate change, to a net zero commitment, like Emerson has. Social impact relates to coordinated efforts between the university and industry, local community, and among alumni. Good governance covers student and staff representation in policy-making and priorities within the institution.
University of Toronto (U of T), out of every ranked university in the world, ranks first. In the U.S., UC Berkeley ties for third with Lund University in Sweden. Like many universities, U of T has public goals to become more sustainable in the future. These goals go beyond net neutral carbon emissions, and include goals to fully divest its endowment from fossil fuel companies, to make their St. George campus carbon positive by 2050, and to invest in low-emissions investments, to incorporate the “living lab” system on their three campuses.
Their carbon positive plan includes reducing their emissions by 37% relative to 1990 levels across the university, and making their St. George campus actually take away carbon emissions from the atmosphere, beyond neutral emissions.
The “living lab” structure incorporates student efforts and innovations towards low-emissions and sustainable initiatives into the university itself. Students are given the time, materials, and resources to establish group projects to combat sustainable topics and issues in the world. They test out and implement these projects to see how they work in the real-world, not just in the classroom.
They also have plans to build a building that integrates vertical farming so as to implement local food and increase carbon capture on their campuses.
Implementation
Although not all of U of T’s plans can be implemented at every college campus, their divestment plan and living lab structure create immediate change in the institution. Particularly for large colleges with equally large endowments, it’s important to be conscientious about where that money is invested, since the impacts from those funds affect well beyond the campus.
The living lab structure also supports student initiatives and ideas and encourages students to consider and enact real-world change even before they graduate. It is hard to measure students’ impacts on sustainability efforts once they graduate. With living labs, students look at what they can do now to change their own lives and the structures in their community, not just in the nebulous future.