During my shifts working as a cashier at Josiah's, my heart swells with joy every time a customer asks for a reusable green canvas bag or water bottle to be added to his or her purchase of mozzarella sticks. Each student I see getting a mug refill or drinking tap water (especially without taking the unnecessary soda cup lid) deserves an extra-friendly cashier smile.
I'd like congratulate Brown Dining Services for taking new and viable measures to match up to its reputation of being environmentally friendly. Of course, Dining Services is not the perfect example of an environmentally friendly institution just yet — the plastic syrup cups at the Ratty are hardly efficient — but we have definitely seen some changes in our dining halls and eateries.
It is also a positive sign to see further student group involvement in making some sustainable changes happen. I was particularly impressed by the Beyond the Bottle campaign at the on-campus dining venues, initiated by the Brown EcoReps and emPOWER, as I do harbor a personal vendetta against the necessity of bottled water.
The changes Dining Services and its administrators, professionals and students have been implementing are positive steps towards that "Brown is Green" image that we would all like to have. After all, it is an important part of our liberal and progressive institution to not only be concerned with ourselves as privileged students, but also to take a substantial step towards proving that we are responsible and caring members of a sustainable world.
The requests from student customers for paper bags and takeout containers, however, still come in as frequently as ever. Toward the end of the semester, students buying twelve dollars' worth of bottled water at each on-campus eatery, per day, is still the norm, to try to "get rid of" all those unused meal credits. The condiment station at Jo's is a mess even at its best, with piles of unused napkins, straw wrappers and paper plates lying in multicolored pools of condiments. Just from dirtied paper napkins, utensils, spilled condiments and the extra equipment needed to clean things up, the amount of unrecyclable waste that Jo's and other Dining Services locations produce per day is alarming.
Brown students, for all our supposed intelligence and world-improvement capabilities, can frankly be absolute pigs. We seem to be simultaneously preaching the rhetoric of greenness while perpetuating a rather irresponsible practice that shouldn't be acceptable for college-aged human beings. And I never even got any e-mails after signing up for the Beyond the Bottle mailing list during a visit to Jo's last spring.
So how do we align the good intentions of reusable bags, mugs and bottles — the well-meaning framework for helping the environment — with the uncaring attitude of students toward helping this process along? To have an effective and functional environmentally friendly system in our University, there needs to be a partnership of available structures and resources and the attitude of community members.
Not only do we need to have access to things like environmentally friendly reusable bags, recycling bins and clean, drinkable tap water, we also have to, more importantly, take enough care to use these resources properly. It is not enough to buy a reusable bag or two with meal credits we don't need, but it takes a much deeper commitment to understand and adhere to the implications and the larger scope of using them.
Brown managed to score an "A" on the College Sustainability Report Card's criterion on Student Involvement, giving a thumbs up to our initiatives and opportunities for student participation, yet the assessment criteria doesn't quite mention anything about how these
ideals have filtered into the psychology and attitudes of individual students.
The next step toward sustainability needs to be up to Brown students. We are not lacking in ideals based on the big picture, and I'd like to believe that making positive change is a widely accepted concept within our student body. However, before we can have the ability or attain the positions and influence we would need to make a difference, we must first learn the fundamental basics of cleaning up after ourselves. Something as simple as intentionally using the condiments station at Jo's with responsibility can go a long way in ensuring that our words of sustainability and action are actually aligned. If being a part of the Brown community means that community members have some degree of responsibility to maintain that our campus is sustainable, then it is first necessary for Brown students to understand that environmental concerns are most easily solved when individuals make it a personal concern to care.
On-campus dining venues are a good place to start. Next time you're at Jo's, please refrain from testing the ketchup dispenser directly onto the counter and from placing a large wad of paper towels on top of a puddle to make it look like you attempted to clean it up.
Sarah Yu '11 can be frequently seen scrubbing down the condiments table on weeknights.
