Today is Earth Day, and people all over the world are taking time to focus on the environment and particularly our effect on the natural world. To mark the day, West Virginia University has announced a comprehensive set of 20-plus sustainability goals, to attain significant environmental improvements across the university’s campus by 2035.
Traci Knabenshue is the director of sustainability at WVU, and spoke with reporter Chris Schulz about the need to focus and act on sustainability now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Schulz: Tell me what it is that your office does?
Knabenshue: The Sustainability Office is part of facilities operations, so we focus on the physical sustainability of campus. So we’re not teaching faculty, we’re not setting curriculum around sustainability. We are solely focused on how we’re operating our buildings and our grounds, and how we’re doing that in a more sustainable way.
Schulz: The big news for your office this week is that you published about 20 sustainability goals. What are those goals?
Knabenshue: We published a list of 24 goals, and they’re in a plan that will accomplish these goals over a 10 year time period. They focus on three main areas, which are reducing waste, protecting land and water, and lowering emissions. We’re really excited to do that during Earth Week this week, because we have never published formal sustainability goals as an institution. Many other universities have had these for several years now, so it’s an exciting day for us to be able to set forth these priorities and work on accomplishing them over the next 10 years.
Schulz: Why was it important to do this now? Why has this not been done before?
Knabenshue: We’ve had a sustainability office working on this for several years, but it’s really important for us to publish a formal list of goals because it gives us a direction for everyone to rally around. All of our faculty staff and students can know at any given time what direction we’re headed in, which sustainability activities are our priorities.
It also is something that can make sustainability a little more tangible. People can see recycling bins in a hallway and understand that easily, but there are other things like the energy that we’re consuming, or how many fleet vehicles we have that do cause emissions that are a little harder to see. It gives everybody a better sense of those areas, and then it also gives us some specific targets so we can measure how we’re doing in moving down the line over these 10 years, and see that progress through numbers every year.
Schulz: Why is sustainability so important to a university?
Knabenshue: Why it’s important for us to do this is: WVU is a large institution, so we have a large impact on the environment. We’re almost like a community unto ourselves. We’re doing a lot of research. We consume a lot of power. We provide transportation. There’s a lot of activities that we’re doing that have an impact, so it’s important for us to be good stewards of those resources and of the environment that we’re responsible for.
We’re also educating the generation of students who will have to deal with sustainability in their jobs, no matter what career they’re choosing, sustainability is going to be an issue in their future professions. We also want to make sure that our campus is a safe, clean and pleasant place to learn and focusing on those three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) and reducing waste and protecting our land and water all play into what our campus environment is like. Sustainability, also in different areas, can positively impact our bottom line. So if we’re talking about reducing an amount of energy that we’re using, or reducing our fleet vehicles, that’s going to lower our emissions, but it’s also going to save the university money.
Schulz: Why is there such a specific focus on the reduction aspect of sustainability in these new goals?
Knabenshue: The reducing portion also, I think, goes into us being a large institution. We consume a lot of resources, whether that’s paper we’re using for printing, or talking about composting food waste from our dining halls. Even down to our diversion rate. A diversion rate is everything that we throw away at the end of its useful life. How much is that diverted away from landfills? So the goals that are in that reduced waste category all play into that diversion rate. And it’s not only about what we do with something at the end of its usable life, whether that’s equipment or furniture or PCs that our employees use, but how do we use less of it to begin with.
Schulz: Is there any particular goal that jumps out at you or that you’re perhaps most excited about?
Knabenshue: I’m really excited about the goal to establish a composting program at the university, because it’s something that we hear a lot about from our students. We also see that any university that has a composting program has a higher diversion rate, so is able to divert more waste away from landfill. Another one that’s in that same category of reducing waste is to reduce the amount of single use plastics that we are using, particularly in dining. We hear from students about that one a lot.
Schulz: Is there any type of healthy inter-collegiate competition between the universities in the state or in the region around this issue?
Knabenshue: Actually, around sustainability among universities in the state, we try to share best practices and help each other out. I talk to the Marshall sustainability director occasionally to kind of compare notes on where we’re having successes and challenges. And it’s really about collaboration as far as sustainability goals, because we are in the same region, we do have a lot of the same challenges, so it’s really about helping each other establish new programs or processes that we can all get on board with.
Schulz: This release was planned to coincide with Earth Day, one single day where people tend to focus on the Earth. With that idea that this is a 365 day a year objective, something that you’re always working towards, what would you say is the importance of Earth Day.
Knabenshue: I think the importance of Earth Day is not anything that’s new. I think it’s about using our resources wisely, not using more than we need. Those concepts are not new. Those are things that we can all understand and we can all practice, whether we’re on campus, at WVU, or in our homes, or just out in our own towns and communities. Really basic things like don’t litter. Recycle your waste that’s able to be recycled. Don’t buy more than you need. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Some really basic things, but basic things that, if everybody does them, do have a magnified impact.
Schulz: Is there anything else about your new goals, about Earth Day, whatever may come to mind that I haven’t given you a chance to discuss with me?
Knabenshue: I just also want to mention that obviously Earth Day is tomorrow (Tuesday, April 22), the 55th Earth Day since it began being celebrated in 1970, and we have a whole slate of activities here on campus that you can see on the sustainability website. We also have, coming up, the annual Blue and Gold Mine sale, which is our student move out sale, where we have students and community members donate usable items, like clothing, sporting goods, small appliances. We take it all over to the football stadium and set up a giant yard sale like event, and all of the proceeds from that go to the United Way. Annually, we divert about 25 tons of goods from landfills through that sale, and we’ve raised over $200,000 since we’ve been doing the sale for our local United Way chapter. So it’s a great diversion event for us and a fun event to go to, and that is on May 17.
