Sustainability Beyond Borders: A Student-run effort to Green NYU’s Global Sites
“Today, NYU is the first truly global network university [with] academic sites for teaching and research throughout the world, and the largest number of students studying abroad of any U.S. college or university.” These are the words of New York University’s President John Sexton, who signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), pledging to make the university carbon neutral by 2040.
It seemed as though the university had reached an impasse; how can NYU continue to hold its much coveted title as a global network university, sending more students to study abroad than any US college or university, while also living up to its promise to achieve carbon neutrality?
The NYU Sustainability Office has taken many steps toward greening the New York campus, including lowering emissions by 20% in three years, increasing campus recycling to 30%, installing composting in some of its dining halls, and starting a university bike share program.
However, global sites have yet to be incorporated into the equation. Part of the reason is that the diversity of projects on the home campus demands full attention, thereby tabling the development of a concerted study abroad greening campaign. Thus, the onus falls on students to initiate a program that will expand the vision of sustainability beyond the parent campus.
As Environmental Studies students with diverse and relevant experiences that include extensive research for NYU’s Climate Action Plan as well as a field survey of NYU’s satellite campus in Shanghai, we are attempting to answer the fundamental question: How does such a university most effectively cope with a highly decentralized global network that is diverse in its cultural, political, and infrastructural contexts?
Our approach is to launch a two-pronged pilot program in NYU-Shanghai with an eco-audit of the facilities as well as a series of educational initiatives, in order to ultimately create a template for study abroad greening at all NYU sites.
We have been met with several unique barriers and obstacles, including the difficulty of communication across time zones and catalyzing student involvement without direct contact with them. However, by utilizing resources such as faculty and staff in the NYU administration – both on campus and abroad – we have been able to successfully lay the groundwork for this project.
Having established a relationship with the Global Studies Office and the NYU-Shanghai administration, we are able to electronically reach out to students studying in Shanghai during Fall 2010. We are using this point of contact as a launching pad for both the educational and technical aspects of our project. We have developed two types of informational flyers. The first one outlines a carbon offset opportunity for the air travel emissions in which the students can participate. The second is a Shanghai-specific compilation of various ways students can lead low-impact lifestyles during their semester abroad, based on our research into the environmental nuances of the NYU-Shanghai site. With respect to the technical facet, we have collaborated with Shanghai’s largest NGO, Roots and Shoots, to provide the resources and training for the execution of eco-audits at the NYU-Shanghai site.
Additionally, we are assessing the potential for an event that places students’ discarded, usable goods in the hands of local charities upon the close of the semester. This is modeled after the Green Apple Move-out, an initiative orchestrated by NYU’s Sustainability Office. The first few months have been a testament to the unavoidable realities of such a massive undertaking. Brows are raised when we describe our project to students, professors, and environmental leaders: But how, if NYU does leases its buildings? Will the emissions cut be so significant? Why do you care?
It is the answer to this last question that is oxygen for the conflagration of change we hope to ignite. The university is but a microcosm of society, but for students it is the space in which they are constantly engaged, challenged, and empowered; it is where they, we, transform from students to intellectuals. And as borders increasingly blend together, dissolve, and conflate, students are not only the future leaders of their respective countries, but of the world. We thus have a responsibility as global ambassadors to expand our and NYU’s vision of campus-wide sustainability beyond New York to the rest of the world.
