life’s not a paragraph

i think i may have mentioned this before, but i am not quite sure so i’ll explain it again. part of my work study this year is working with molly (our front desk coordinator and resident photographer!) and courtney, another student, on the nesad green team. clever name right? here at suffolk, and now the new england school of art and design, we are trying to become a sustainable university.

this is a subject near and dear to my heart. i personally try to live as sustainable a life as possible. i eat low on the food chain (lots of veggies and grains. no meat), i recycle (well my building doesn’t have recycling so i save it up and then give it to my parents to bring home to recycle haha), i walk practically everywhere (i’m logging 2 to 4 miles a day), and i research what i buy before i buy it (i find out the company’s values, research the chemicals in the product, etc). i am hardly perfect. money is a limiting factor, but i think i do pretty well for myself. i think that my carbon footprint is pretty light. whenever i can change something in my life to make it better, i try to do so.

so now at school, i am trying to change a lot of things. unfortunately, nesad isn’t very sustainable. it’s a bit more difficult at an art school than a regular university. it’s not impossible, but it takes a lot more work to change peoples habits. the biggest issue is paper. last year we used enough paper to cover 89% of the base of the great pyramid at giza. that’s 529,152 sq feet! do you have any idea of how much that is? take a look at a picture of the great pyramid and you get it. obviously, we’d love to reduce that amount, but the problem is we have to use paper. for projects, for sketches, for tests. paper is essential to our majors. we can certainly reduce the amount of paper we use (there’s always a stack of wasted paper by the printers), but we can never eliminate it all together.

in order to help with our paper issues, we are going to hold a better printing practices workshop for students so that they can learn how to print better and more efficiently. i think this is something that will help us over all because it won’t only save paper but ink as well, meaning more $$$ in nesad’s pockets to do cool other things (like get us food! hehe).

we are also working on a ton of other initiatives like getting nesad reusable water bottles, making signage to stop people from pouring paint and other toxic stuff down the drain, holding recycling audits to tell students what they need to do better, and sending out a monthly email bulletin to inform faculty and students about what we are doing and what is going on in the sustainable world around them. i am really excited that i get to be apart of this. i’m hoping that this is just the beginning of a beautiful friendship between nesad and the environment.

here’s our link: nesad green team