Hart signs sustainability pact

President Ann Weaver Hart signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment at a ceremony held in Mitten Hall yesterday. In signing, Temple joins 521 other colleges and universities across the country that have expressed concern about climate change.

Representatives from the Sustainability Task Force and members of Students for Environmental Action were all in attendance for the signing yesterday.

Formers members of SEA who are now affiliated with the Sustainability Task Force proposed this step to the university numerous times before Temple agreed to it this year.

William Bergman, vice president of operations at Temple, spoke briefly about the commitment before introducing the Sustainability Task Force. Hart expressed a personal significance in signing the commitment at the ceremony.

Mathew Himmelein, president of Students for Environmental Action, introduced Hart at the ceremony. He also noted that universities and colleges are important in their ability to do research and implement new initiatives directly on their own campus.
“The youth voice is so huge right now,” Himmelein said.

Himmelein addressed a proposed petition where students, faculty and staff pay $25 for alternative energy purchases along with converting the school’s bus fleet from diesel to biodiesel.

The commitment aims to take on global warming by having college institutions pledge to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
The ACUPCC takes the position that colleges are the perfect setting for reaching the goal of climate neutrality because they house those who will be faced with this problem in their future.

As part of the agreement with ACUPCC, Temple must include topics on sustainability into the schools curriculum.

The involvement of students themselves is important to the ACUPCC. They state that educating students about climate sustainability will directly benefit them because of the steps they will take to solve this universal problem.

There are specific parameters and goals Temple must meet in accordance to the commitment. The school will create its own plan to follow and, within two years, will have designated a target date for achieving climate neutrality.

Himmelein said the next steps for Temple are clear.

“Work to save the planet,” he said.

Greg Adomaitis can be reached at greg.adomaitis@temple.edu

Recycling rocks Earth Day

This year’s Spring Fling was a sea of green: recycling boxes on almost every corner, recycled plastic Frisbee giveaways, and student organizations tying environmental issues into their activities throughout the day. Green awareness was everywhere.

One of the main reasons for this “green” theme for Spring Fling was because of a recent emphasis on recycling on campus. This semester was the first time that outdoor recycling bins on campus existed. And some say they were long overdue.

Without Temple’s recycling department, campus may not have recycling available to students at all.

“The recycling office oversees all recycling on campus, does research and organizes all recycling projects,” said Rita Burns, a sophomore environmental studies major and employee of the recycling department. “We oversaw all recycling during Spring Fling, too.”

The head of the recycling department, Marshall Budin, has taken it upon himself to handle all recycling on campus with the help of just four student-workers and is still trying to convince the university that students want more recycling.

“He’s basically a one-man show,” said Matt Himmelein, a senior environmental policy major and president of Students for Environmental Action. “He definitely does all that he can to expand and come up with new ideas for recycling on campus.”

Luckily for Budin, SEA attempts to coordinate with the recycling office as often as possible to raise awareness about recycling.

“We just had our ‘Bury the Bell Tower’ event, which was sponsored by the SEA and the recycling office,” Himmelein said. “It was the first time we had a big outdoor event to raise awareness about recycling on campus. We went trash can-diving and took recyclables out of trash cans all around campus. Then we piled up all the recyclables at the Bell Tower and put a sign on it that said, ‘Shame on you!’”

While the event showed that students were using the outdoor recycling bins, the outcome of the event just wasn’t specific enough. The trash in the parts of campus without recycling was filled with recyclable items.

“It was, like, 200 pounds of recycling in the first four hours of a Monday,” Himmelein said. “So you could only imagine what it’s like on a Thursday afternoon.”

Part of the reason why more students don’t recycle is because it’s not as easily accessible as some would like it to be. The new outdoor recycling bins are only located at some hotspots on campus, rather than every few feet like campus trash cans.

“Almost every day, I’m getting people that are saying, ‘Why don’t we have recycling at the Bell Tower? Why don’t we have paper recycling outside?’” Himmelein said. “The students want this. The planet needs this.”

The recycling center has a simple answer to these questions, and it is indeed a sad truth.

“It comes down to money,” Burns said. “How many outdoor recycling bins would we get? Who would empty them?”

Since the recycling department is so small, Temple’s bureaucracy doesn’t yet recognize recycling as a need for the university and the environment. However, many students are passionate about recycling, and are sure to be vocal about it.

“We recycle in our apartment, and if I don’t recycle, Ann is sure to yell at me,” said Courtney Clarahan, a sophomore tourism and hospitality major.

Clarahan’s roommate, Ann Cerruti, calls herself environmentally conscious, especially with recycling.

“Not having recycling in apartments around campus should be illegal,” the sophomore actuarial science major said.

Clarahan and Cerruti live in Temple Towers and are sure to use the recycling outlets, but said it isn’t as easy as it should be to recycle there.

“They could definitely be bigger,” Clarahan said. “They have some lids where you can only put something through the little opening, so when it gets full, it overflows through the top.”

As far as opening eyes around campus about recycling, Spring Fling was a success. However, it is up to the students to end their apathy for good and do whatever it takes to be good to the environment.

“I think the awareness part of Spring Fling is still working,” Himmelein said. “But too many people on campus just don’t know how their little bit that they give back actually makes a huge difference.”

Carlene Majorino can be reached at c.majorino@temple.edu.

Unearthed Promises: Hart’s garden still needs tending.

Happy Earth Day, Temple students! We thought you should know that Temple got a little overwhelmed with the anticipation and celebrated a bit early. Yesterday, President Ann Weaver Hart signed an important document that further sent the university down its lush, green path.

The American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment is a written agreement that dedicates Temple to making efforts to reduce the problem of global warming. We just joined more than 500 other colleges that have made the same promise.

This year, Hart established the Office of Sustainability, which is dedicated to keeping our institution on track with making environmentally friendly decisions. Signing this agreement just further establishes Hart’s determination to make Temple an example of “urban sustainability.” So far, she has been consistent in achieving this goal.

We believe Temple to be a forward-thinking university. We have greatly vocal student body, which can be seen with frequent on-campus demonstrations. We’re ranked by the Princeton Review as the No. 1 most-diverse campus in the country. And we’re artistically forward-thinking, as with the Temple Theater’s fall production of In Conflict, which has garnered national attention for its poignant representation of soldiers in the Iraq war.

Temple has potential to become an example of an urban institution that knows how to abide by environmentally sound rules, just like Hart wants.

Improvement is needed, and Temple knows where these areas are. In Temple Living this week, Carlene Majorino highlights the recycling department and its efforts to get the university community involved [“Recycling rocks Earth Day,” Carlene Majorino, April 22, 2008]. If you haven’t noticed lately, recycling bins on campus are sparse but growing slowly. And it’s no wonder – they function with merely four student employees.

Rita Burns, one of the four employees of the department, puts it plainly. It’s all about money. Temple hasn’t yet acknowledged recycling as a priority for the university.

True, all these green initiatives are relatively new. But the importance of recycling has been widely understood since the early ’90s. We don’t think Temple is that slow on the uptake.

In continuing to get the Office of Sustainability off the ground, Hart should also beef up the recycling department. After all, the two should go hand in hand.

With these green initiatives well underway, Temple is on the right track, and we commend that. Like John Winthrop said, Temple can be that city upon a hill. A nice, lush, green hill.

Pennsylvania’s nuclear energy should be model

We’ve heard the same question debated over and over again: how can the world reduce greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing the amount of energy we need?

Part of the answer lies in an energy source that we’ve been using for decades and is finally coming back into its much-deserved spotlight.

Nuclear energy.

It’s clean. It’s renewable. It’s responsible for 19.4 percent of the nation’s electricity. Though the United States shouldn’t rely primarily on nuclear energy, it should look toward Pennsylvania, which relies on nuclear power for nearly 35 percent of its electricity, as an indicator of the role nuclear energy should play.

Ryan Bechtel, a Temple graduate student in environmental engineering, said nuclear energy has its rightful place in the United States.

“There’s no other large-scale energy source that can produce electricity as clean as nuclear power,” Bechtel said. “For us to continue economic growth … we have to at least maintain 20 percent nuclear power, but we could go up to as high as 35 percent.”

In December 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law a bill that provides $18.5 billion in loans for the construction of new nuclear plants. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, 14 new plants are in the works. The last one built was in 1996 in Tennessee.

Several environmental groups, like Greenpeace and the Worldwatch Institute, doubt the benefits of nuclear energy while emphasizing the perils. Greenpeace’s Web site uses the words “high-risk,” “meltdown” and “catastrophe” to describe nuclear energy. But Greenpeace is wrong.

“There’s still the perception that nuclear energy is unsafe, expensive and does more damage to the environment than it helps,” Bechtel said. “The scientific community has largely rejected these ideas.”

The partial meltdown of a reactor at in Middletown, Pa., was due to a combination of equipment malfunctions, design problems and worker errors, and according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Web site, it led to “sweeping changes,” including upgrading plant equipment, more inspection programs and greater training.

“Nuclear energy has tougher standards than any other industry in the U.S. or probably the world,” Bechtel said. “Nuclear plants take more preventative measures now. Tolerance is small and adherence to the rules is great. Absolutely everything has to work.”

Though the cost and time involved to construct nuclear plants are higher and longer than coal or natural gas plants, operating costs are much lower, so the money is made up quickly. They also create jobs. The nuclear industry is currently experiencing a shortage of workers, as first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer last month.

Exelon Nuclear, an electric utility company that owns the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant in Montgomery County, is looking to hire 2,500 people in the next five years.

But the most important thing about nuclear energy is that it releases no greenhouse gases, contributing nothing to climate change. The amount of emissions prevented by nuclear plants in Pennsylvania alone is the amount released by 5.6 million passenger cars in one year. Nuclear plants are a major generator of energy in Pennsylvania, and it’s time the rest of the nation followed our lead.