REBECCA GARNER
Contributor
The Sustainable Endowments Institute has put out a report card grading colleges across North America. The report, called the 2008 College Sustainability Report Card, has placed Pepperdine at the bottom of the pack with a definitive D-.
Just like a bad grade is supposed to be an incentive for a student to increase effort, those universities receiving less-than-stellar grades are expected to work harder to increase their campus’ sustainability, defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” which basically means being environmentally friendly and using resources wisely.
The report focuses on eight main categories: administration, which looks at how much attention is being paid to being green and if there is any management hired to look into the issue, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green buildings, transportation, endowment transparency, investment priorities and shareholder engagement. Now in its second year, the College Sustainability Report Card covers the colleges and universities with the 200 largest endowments in the United States and Canada, representing more than $343 billion in endowment assets.
Pepperdine’s detailed report card was pitiful with an F in administration, climate change and energy, green building, transportation, endowment transparency and shareholder engagement. The school managed to earn a D in food and recycling, where the report states that the school does not offer any notable amount of local or organic food and only recycles 40 percent of its waste. The highest grade was a C in investment priorities, that is to say: prioritizing return on investment, investing in renewable energy funds, and investing in community development loan funds.
This is undeniably embarrassing for the school. No schools earned lower than a D-, which puts Pepperdine, along with other schools such as Trinity University Texas, Lafayette College and Gettysburg College, in a similar situation at the bottom of the barrel.
The report – all 200-plus pages of it – seems pretty legitimate. Plowing through the thesaurus-plagued explanations of each category and grade, it’s easy enough to see research has been done and information is presumably accurate. The material is summarized and includes easily background-checked information. It is far from obscure. So where does this leave Pepperdine?
Even if the report has a slight bias, that wouldn’t account for Pepperdine being so low below most other schools across North America. Any Pepperdine student can see that the school is not making a huge proactive effort to make our school green – unless you count watering the plants and keeping the fields fluorescent.
According to an article published in the Online Graphic last semester, Pepperdine claims that Crown Disposal, the company the school uses to sort trash and take out recyclable materials, recycles 80 percent of the waste that goes through their system, although this information could not be found on their Web site. However, this report says the amount recycled is half of that. Pepperdine clearly needs to show its students that the recycling program is working if they are not going to use recycling bins around campus.
Speaking of recycling bins, even if this company Pep uses is legitimate, there should still be bins around campus for the pure sake of raising consciousness and building good habits. People need to get used to putting their bottles, cans and papers in a recycling bin so that they will continue to do so when they leave the school. Bright blue (or green, or yellow) bins around campus also raise awareness to recycling.
Pepperdine needs to hire administration dedicated solely to the increase of sustainability and eco-friendly practices on campus. With a committee whose job it is to be concerned with making Pepperdine more green, more will get done, and faster.
Pepperdine has made some baby steps toward being environmentally friendly, such as the installation of toilets that use less water, but this is not all around campus, and it’s not enough. Pepperdine needs to take a few leaps, or else be fated to lag behind.
The school can offer more incentive for carpoolers, introduce new shuttles that run on compressed natural gas (CNG), waste vegetable oil or biodiesel, buy more locally grown food produce, and introduce more effective ways of producing energy such as solar, wind or thermal. There are a thousand and one ways to increase sustainability and reduce waste on campus. Some are small, and some are large and would require a lot of money, but the point is that Pepperdine needs to start thinking about how it can set an example.
02-14-2008