Imagine waking up to a front-page headline that reads “U.S. Runs Out of Trash.”
This might sound like an impossible goal for the U.S., a country that generated 250 million tons of trash in 2010, but impossible goals are what make metamorphoses possible.
And Sweden, who has done this seemingly impossible thing (run out of trash), did so with a well-researched framework and a concept called backcasting.
Backcasting means taking a lofty goal, like eliminating our excessive trash and to look backwards and dissect what can be done to reach that goal.
Sustainable goals haven’t been a hot topic lately in mainstream media.
Presidential candidates didn’t focus on it during their campaigns.
Across the world, though, sustainability is becoming more prevalent.
Like Sweden, Germany too has built a sustainability program into their government structure.
Renewable energy is the biggest contributor to Germany’s electricity supply as of 2014 and it is the biggest and strongest economy in Europe.
Nationally, we are a long way from becoming a totally green country, but implementing small-scale change, proving that it works, and then expanding gradually is the way to go.
This can be the role of San José State University.
Definitions of sustainability are ranging, but two are important to highlight.
The definition from Our Common Future, or the Brundtland Report says, "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
The second definition says sustainability is based on three E’s: equity, ecology, and economy.
It says sustainability should encompass social equity, the world’s ecology and the economy.
SJSU has received several CSU grants called Campus as a Living Lab for sustainability (CALL).
The programs implemented using these grants are educational and persuasive ones.
SJSU Librarian, Peggy Cabrera spearheaded classroom modules to teach sustainability.
One of the modules at SJSU has students tour the library and asks them to look at it from a lens of sustainable design.
Another one tours the SJSU cogeneration plant, where the high-tech cogeneration mechanism is explained and students are given the chance to understand the system and see it in action.
Cabrera has seen these courses influence “students’ awareness of their choices, habits and behaviors” and says that individual lifestyles will lead the way by creating leaders who “don’t tell me what to do; show me.”
Another CALL grant recipient is DBH Agency, the on-campus PR and Marketing agency, where a student-led team called Green Initiative has represented Facilities Development & Operations (FD&O) to raise awareness of SJSU’s green pursuits.
For instance, FD&O was of the first customers of South Bay Water Recycling (SBWR).
Debbie Andres, FD&O Sustainability Analyst says “now we’re using 20 million gallons more of recycled water than when I started.”
The SJSU website touts that the University has reduced potable water consumption by 45% in 2011.
When I asked Andres how long the university has been pursuing sustainability goals, she said, “we always have.”
San Jose State has indeed had a long tradition of interest in the environment.
The creator of Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson, was an SJSU alumnus.
Additionally, in 1970, the year Earth Day was created, SJSU hosted a “Survival Faire” to advocate for the longevity of the environment.
The crowning event was the burial of a brand new Ford Maverick.
To organizers, this symbolized the much-needed death of the combustion engine.
A Spartan Daily article from the day of the fair on February 20, 1970 says, “For much more than a Ford Maverick will be buried today.
A whole life style will be dropped into that pit.”
Though the combustion engine has yet to perish from existence, the rising production of environmentally friendly cars, energy sources and goods has become a standard around the world.
Spartan Daily writer Geoff Eastman says in the same Spartan Daily, “In a sense man is the biggest contributor to his own doom.
Man’s self destructive nature as evidenced in one’s daily routine, is something all awe inspiring.”
Andres tells me how she is working on a thirty-year plan to become a carbon-neutral campus.
Some obstacles occur in simply conveying the importance and far-sighted nature of this issue.
For instance, a Spartan Golf Complex is being built.
Andres wants it to be net zero, meaning totally carbon-neutral.
The additional cost to build a net zero golf complex is $400,000, a fraction of the whole project ($10.2 million).
The net gain in terms of energy and carbon emissions saved will eventually recover that cost.
But, Andres has faced resistance from her peers.
She says that if students, community, faculty and staff demand accountability for issues such as this one, the tide will be swayed and the Golf Complex will indeed be net zero.
A strong chorus of voices from the SJSU community is a desired echoed not only by Andres, but by other advocates for sustainability on campus.
Kristen Wonder, Sustainability Coordinator at Spartan Shops, says “when you have a university where students are demanding change, so much more can happen.”
At Spartan Shops, progress on using sustainable food has been one of Wonder’s main projects.
The beef in the Dining Commons comes from Silver Fern Farms in New Zealand, where the cattle is grass-fed, and given room to roam.
This company was even named Most Trusted Meat Brand by a 2016 Reader’s Digest Survey.
Wonder explained that the meat is among the most highly regarded in terms of humaneness and quality, and the distance it travels via packing ship actually has less environmental impact than beef travelling from the Midwest on a truck or plane.
Wonder was also excited to announce that starting in Spring, Spartan Shops Catering can donate all their leftover food.
After extensive research into her options, she contracted with Peninsula Food Runners, who will take frozen leftovers to shelters.
Wonder has taken initiative to create more sustainable food options on campus and to reduce waste by implementing campaigns to encourage conservation behavior.
The California State University system began issuing executive orders to become more environmentally friendly in the 1970’s and every decade or so they issue a new decree.
The 2014 decree was the first one to use the term “sustainability” and Andres and the University has been pursuing the goals set by the CSU and finding innovative ways to exceed them.
Andres also says what inspires her to work on making sustainable development happen is her children.
“Will they have clean water?”
The agenda at SJSU is tilted toward sustainability, but support is not where it needs to be.
When President Mohammad Qayoumi began his career in 2011, he stopped funding the position of Director of Sustainability.
Katherine Cushing was the person in that position.
Ever dedicated, when her original role dissolved, Cushing became a full-time teacher at SJSU and now leads the Sustainability Board in tandem with Andres.
For her, this is a labor of love.
Cushing previously implemented a project where students tracked their ecological footprint at the beginning of the semester and then could retake the test at the end of the semester
750-800 people returned and were able to reduce their usage by 10%.
Another project she began was called Green Wave.
Green Wave trained students to conduct energy efficiency audits and assess single-family homes for their solar capacity, enabling students to become more aware of the principles of sustainability and households to get an unbiased assessment of their capability for solar.
Cushing hopes that students who graduate from SJSU can “see how everything connected and feel empowered” to be advocates for the earth.
These programs have lapsed, but with the new president, Mary Papazian, things are looking greener already.
Papazian told me that sustainability is one of her main priorities, and that it should be a long-term plan that involves people beyond the bounds of SJSU’s campus.
FD&O is hiring a Sustainability Coordinator, according to Andres.
Additionally, Cushing seems hopeful that Papazian will reinstate the Director of Sustainability role.
Whether or not the position will become official again, SJSU is full of dedicated students and staff who are giving their time and energy to advance the cause of sustainability.
Every month, students, faculty and staff meet for the Sustainability Board, where they discuss various facets of sustainability.
This board was founded by Cushing and Andres after the dissolution of the Director of Sustainability role.
Another advocate for sustainability is Community Garden Manager Mark Batcheler.
Located on San Salvador and Eighth Street, the Community Garden began in 2014.
From the garden’s opening in June to December of that year, it had 60 student visitors.
In 2015, 250 students visited and in 2016, 1800 students have come to the garden so far and Batcheler estimates 2500 by the end of the year.
Batcheler’s mission in the garden is tri-fold: to educate, provide service learning, and provide free food.
“We started by growing strawberries.
They were our gateway drug.”
Mark tries to keep a mix of diverse food growing in the garden, asking students what they’d like to grow and growing vegetables and fruits some students may have never seen before, such as bok choy.
Batcheler says the mission of the garden, like the mission of a great university is “not just teaching people to type faster, you’re teaching people to be better human beings.”
Batcheler argues that a sense of social capital is what’s missing in making our campus community a more vibrant one.
“We’re investing in the land, the land’s investing in us… it’s a reciprocal process. … there’s a sense of ownership that goes beyond the fence.”
The community formed by the shared work done in the Community Garden is an example of students from many disciplines with a common goal using their collective energies to sustain one cause.
The Environmental Resource Center (ERC) is full of passionate students for the environment.
It has been around since 1967.
Student director, Derrick Aribol has been a working in the ERC a year and a half.
Aribol has helped students in the ERC to organize bike to school days, including free bike tune-ups, a Take Back the Tap event (where students could blindly taste-test bottled, tap and filtered water) and the Locavore Fair.
Earth Day is also being planned by the ERC for April 20, 2017.
The work of the ERC is one aspect that brings student involvement and awareness to the campus, but it is particularly siloed.
As recommended by Bosselmann’s paper, University and Sustainability: compatible agendas?, sustainability can be most effectively used as an all-encompassing framework, as opposed to a single discipline.
The Natural Step, a non-profit based in Sweden, created a framework for analyzing the current situation of any organization and devising clever solutions to reach a sustainable end.
It’s like signage and laws on a highway.
The highway may take you anywhere, but the posted rules simply guide the driver to responsibly tackling the road.
A holistic approach to sustainability is a win-win situation for all those involved, creating an element of social capital that comes from working together on an issue as important as survival.
Useful frameworks for defining and testing sustainability put everyone on the same page and allow for a bigger discussion on something of great importance: the conservation of the world in which we live.
SJSU can lead the way by being a first organization to adopt The Natural Step system, or at least to start a campus-wide discussion on what sustainability looks like at the University.
Cushing says that more support and funding of sustainability is what will push us to the next level.
As of 2016, the University received Gold in a sustainability tracking, rating and assessment system.
Platinum is the next-highest level, and that requires a campus-wide effort to be sustainable.
With a more backcasting approach, the University could be a leader in technology in this all-important way.
SJSU has the opportunity to be a green campus.
The key ingredients are advocacy and imagination.
Works Cited
5 Countries Leading the Way Toward 100% Renewable Energy. EcoWatch. Web. 1 November
2016. <http://www.ecowatch.com/5-countries-leading-the-way-toward-100-renewable-energy-1881999459.html>
Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and
Figures for 2010. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 1 November 2016. <https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/pdf/msw_2010_rev_factsheet.pdf>
Our Common Future. UN Documents. Web. 1 November 2016.
<http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm>
The World’s Top 10 Economies. Investopedia. Web. 1 November 2016.
<http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022415/worlds-top-10-economies.asp>
