Sustainable U

The way we live our lives is putting our environment and public health at risk. Global warming, caused largely by our reliance on fossil fuels, threatens to wreak havoc on our climate and way of life. Air pollution causes asthma and respiratory diseases. Mining and drilling continually threaten our oceans, waterways and landscapes. Trash pollutes our water and uses valuable land.

Fortunately, we both have solutions to these problems and have a long track record of being able to solve other environmental problems. While we don't have every solution we'll ever need to stop global warming, stop trashing our communities and stop destroying our forests, we have a lot of them right now. We can make plug-in hybrids that get more than 100 miles to the gallon and electric cars that use no gas. We can harness the power of the sun and wind across the country to get our power without the dangers of oil and gas drilling or the destruction of coal mining. And, we can make homes that are so efficient in how they use energy that they can produce everything they need on site. We can also re-use, re-cycle, compost or simply avoid using most of the trash that's being thrown in landfills, incinerated or floating away into the trash island by simply changing the way we create products and handle them after their first use.

We're working for a more sustainable campus by Banning Plastic Bags and promoting Recycling.

Banning Plastic Bags

Plastic bags are a nuisance – you see them stuck in the trees, caught in the bushes, and rolling down the street like tumbleweed. They also end up in our waterways and in our ocean – there is even a huge trash island twice the size of Texas floating out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Here at Rutgers, we use 19.5 million plastic bags per year – that’s 500 plastic bags per person.

We all get plastic bags when we buy our groceries, stop by the convenience store, and pick up takeout from the dining hall.  All of these plastic bags often end up as trash clogging up our landfill or as litter in the environment. Plastic bags are often used once for a few minutes but end up in our lasting in our environment for hundreds of years.

Of course, the companies that make and sell billions of plastic bags every year are fighting to maintain the status quo, fronted by the lobbying team from the American Chemistry Council. But we need to do what is best for the environment and our future.

We're going to lead the way by educating our community, putting the solutions into practice on campus and turning our campus into a sustainable university. Rutgers has already set a goal of zero waste by 2020. We can make a huge step towards this goal if we ban plastic bags here on campus. This will mean we will have to make some small changes to our daily routine and remember to use a reusable bag or throw our dining hall takeout into our bookbag, but it's a small change to make to protect the environment. We're working to eliminate plastic bags on campus by collecting thousands of petitions in favor of a bag-free campus while educating the Rutgers and New Brunswick community on the harmful and wasteful effects of using plastic bags.

The rest of the world is already taking action. California has already banned plastic bags in 17 cities and counties. More than 25 countries have plastic bag bans including India and China. It’s time for Rutgers to join the action!

Recycling

In 2007, we threw out 570 billion pounds of waste. What's terrible is that much of that waste could have been recycled, broken down and reused or simply didn't need to be there in the first place. We're working on campuses across the state to get our campuses to reduce, reuse and recycle while building long-term support for zero waste.

We're educating the campus community about recycling, working with facilities departments to improve the placement and signage of recycling bins, and increasing recycling on campus.