The University of Idaho Argonaut

While sustainability efforts at the University of Idaho are growing, additional support from students, staff and faculty is needed.
The UI Sustainability Planning Committee is seeking more members. The group helps create sustainability efforts, such as the recent UI decision to no longer deliver junk mail.
Alecia Hoene, University of Idaho Sustainability Center director, is one of the few students on the committee.

“Students have a unique perspective and are the majority of the people on campus,” Hoene said. “It should be students who are shaping the direction of the sustainability programming.”
Sustainability affects things important to students, Hoene said, including campus dining.
“Students need to make their voices heard so people making these decisions can make them in a way congruent to what (students) want,” she said.

Involvement on a committee also provides students with professional experience, she said. 
“Students are going to be alive 50 years from now,” Hoene said. “Really, it is their world to shape.”
The eclectic committee plans and implements sustainability measures, policy changes and highlights resource needs. The committee meets every other Wednesday at 9 a.m.

This semester the committee is looking at waste minimization, recycling, emissions, energy and food systems, said Darin Saul, UI Sustainability coordinator. Transportation will be addressed soon, he said.
“(Sustainability) is about maintaining the resources and opportunities of the present for future generations,” Saul said. “But it is also about maintaining the resources and opportunities for ourselves and our lives.”

The planning committee is meant to incorporate the whole campus, Saul said.
Hoene and Saul have been working to knit together the faculty, student and staff efforts with UISC efforts, Saul said.

Saul’s position, established in the spring, came out of the Sustainable Idaho Initiative steering committee as part of efforts to focus on sustainability in all aspects across the campus, Saul said. He oversees and coordinates sustainability activities for the whole campus.

The UISC has a campus community advisory board that focuses on student involvement.
Being inclusive is part of what sustainability is about, Hoene said.
The UISC strives to be widely representative and develop a common vision toward the future of sustainability issues, Hoene said.

“The UISC has really developed some skills and the capacity for outreach,” Saul said. “We are really getting things done.”
The UISC is student run, with representatives from all three UI student governments —the Graduate and Professional Student Association, ASUI and the College of Law’s Student Bar Association.

Each semester the UISC funds sustainability projects created by students.
This semester’s projects are a composting project at the UI McCall field campus, an energy assessment and education plot and a move-out program to reduce student waste at the close of the school year.

UI is making some positive steps forward with sustainability, Hoene said.
“There is a lot of grass roots energy,” she said.
Sustainability is an ongoing cultural change, Saul said.
“We are leaders in higher education on some issues but we have a lot of work to do,” Saul said.