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According to the Huffington Post, food waste on college campuses in the United States totalled 22 million pounds in 2015, and the average college student throws away 142 pounds of food per year. With those hefty numbers on the line, how is Grand View contributing to this issue, and how are we battling it?

GV’s dining service, Aramark, states on the corporate website that waste prevention is one of their goals for all locations. This initiative stated that several aspects of the dining experience have been conserved and have increased their sustainability practices within the company.

“Over the course of a year, just one large convention center can recycle more than 170 tons of cardboard; 2,400 pounds of aluminum cans; 3,300 gallons of kitchen oil; 180 tons of mixed paper, plastic and glass; 12 tons of scrap metal; and as many as 8,000 wood shipping pallets.”

However, when Viewfinder staff members reached out to GV’s Aramark location about campus food waste accumulation to confirm their adherence to this practice, William Grunow, the overseeing supervisor declined to make a comment due to lack of upper managerial disclosure to do so. 

Aside from the food waste issue, college campuses spent almost $10 billion each year on energy, cited in University Business calculations in 2011.

According to information disclosed by Allison Petersen, purchasing and office coordinator for the maintenance department, GV used 14.1 billion watts of electricity in our dormitories alone during the 2016-2017 school year. This energy usage totalled to around $90,651 dollars spent on electricity costs.

The GV maintenance staff stated that they are chipping away at the electricity usage issue. The team has been renovating the lab and classroom spaces for the past few years, and while doing so, replacing the current lighting fixtures with new bulbs. Last summer, they were also able to change the lighting within the hallways in the structure.

“We’re replacing the light fixtures with LED fixtures,” Petersen said.

The maintenance department also recently worked with The Energy Group of MidAmerican Energy to walk through the dormitories and Student Center to create a list of ways GV could be  more energy efficient, such as boiler replacements in Nielson and Knudsen. The group then created a projected budget, including rebates and yearly cost savings as well as the amount of time it would take to pay off those projects and sent it to the maintenance staff members for evaluation.

However, tight budgets mean there isn’t always excess funding for green initiatives.

Petersen’s team then puts the numbers into the “capital projects” plan to see what they can financially accomplish throughout the year. They prioritize these projects from one to 10 and reassess the initiatives each year.

“We can pick and choose whatever we want to (implement), what can fit into our budget,” Petersen said.

It is hard to see any full-fledged, environmental movements being established on campus. In fact, Grand View University didn’t even have an active environmental organization on campus until this year when senior Kate Crow decided that changes needed to be administered.

“I felt like we could be doing better,” Crow said.

This feeling led Crow and alumnus Pedro Cardoso to re-establish the idea of environmental conversation in the spring of 2017. The group started as a casual discussion in which interested parties met on Sunday nights to talk about global and environmental issues. Those who attended were actually part of an optional recreational class entitled “Pachamama,” named after the goddess of fertility in harvest, also known as Earth Mother.

After the class finished, the group continued to get together and talk, and Cardoso encouraged them to start an environmental organization on campus GVEco was officially formed.

Crow, a soon-to-be senior, took the reins and served as president immediately. As a child from an environmentally conscious family, she saw this as an opportunity to expand what she already believed in.

“When I added political science as a major, I became aware of the environmental issues,” Crow said. “I took environmental literature with Dr. (Paul) Brooke, and I was just aware of this problem that it doesn’t seem like we’re doing much to fix.”

As Grand View begins to explore how we can be more environmentally friendly, could we take notes from other universities dealing with this issue?

Several colleges have created environmental statements and initiatives related to  eco-friendliness. For example, Cornell University in New York has built an entire webpage that lays out all its initiatives, from renewable energy to waste conservation.

The campus also has specific administrative teams that have been created for each initiative, such as the Waste Focus Team, which develops the waste reduction strategy and plan for each year. They have seen results from these actions, with Cornell’s waste production falling 74 precent in 2014.

Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Michigan has an Office of Sustainability website that leads students to resources about how to recycle on campus and offers them 10 steps for how they  can lead more eco-friendly lives on campus. These ideas range from using public transportation to joining clubs and organizations created to preserve an environmentally friendly campus.

The website also leads students through a sustainability tour of the campus, where visitors can see how specific areas of the campus are contributing to a greener, more efficient climate at the university. The school has been on the Princeton Review’s Most Environmentally Responsible campus list for the past six years and has been promoted as one of the United States’ greenest universities for three years in a row.

Given that Cornell has approximately 23,000 students and Grand Valley has around 25,000, the comparisons in between them and GV aren’t apples to apples and many factors, such as financial ability.

Aside from  the Elings project, there haven’t been many initiatives put on the budget

comparisons in between them and GV aren’t apples to apples and many facets, such as financial ability.

Aside from the Elings project, there haven’t been many initiatives put on the budget, and there hasn’t been another grant since Petersen has been at GV. Although there is small progress being made, there hasn’t been a cosmic shift, and what has been done hasn’t been disclosed to students and faculty. Peterson said that the department hasn’t promoted its work to others, which unintentionally makes anyone interested in this information have to seek it out on their own.

Although sustainability and eco-consciousness are on the minds of Peterson and her team, when it comes to more targeted environmental initiatives, Petersen said it is often up to the community and students, like the GVEco club to begin these projects.

The student-led group is still relatively small, with 10 formal members, including art major Jose Sanchez. Sanchez said his interest in the group came from an understanding of how his passion affects the environment.

“As an artist, we waste.” Sanchez said. “We go through a lot of wasteful things, and I just wanted to do my part.”

Even with its small size, the club of dedicated people has been able to make an impact.

“One of our goals in the beginning of the year was recycling and trying to improve recycling,” Crow said. “There’s the big blue recycling bins, but a lot of the time students will just throw whatever away in whatever container.”

Crow explained that when students contaminate the recycling units, the cleaning staff are obligated to throw everything in the container in the trash. In response, the group connected with RESlife to create resources for the students so that they use their recycling bins more effectively, with a “how-to” laminated guide placed above them.

However this isn’t the only project GVEco has taken on. They have also created a Meatless Monday campaign to encourage students to watch their meat intake. According to Time Magazine,  2006 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that livestock were also responsible for almost 18 percent of human-caused greenhouse gases. GVEco’s small campaign allows those who participate to enter a drawing by sending in a photo of their meatless plate every Monday.

Finally, the group has initiated a water conservation challenge within the dormitories during February and March. GVEco has connected with the university business office to track each building’s use of water each month. However, results from this campaign were released this week and the final count was disheartening. In an email by Linda McKinnon, it was revealed that every housing complex ended up going up in water usage during the month.

The students in GVEco haven’t seen a large amount of support from the student population, with the majority of supporters just sending emails and others not taking the time to actually look at the elements they are trying to implement.

Even with the creation of student-led initiatives in progress, there are several aspects that could be improved upon for GV’s environmental efforts in the coming years. With the collaboration of administration and student organizations, GV could be on the forefront of creating a new way of looking at the environment if the the campus allows for these acts to be utilized and publicized.

Impacting the environment could be easily done on that individual level. According to a list on HerCampus.com, simple tasks like using a reusable water bottle and investing in reusable bags could be a step in the right direction. It all depends on if we act upon the resources and organizations available to all of us.