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Media Credit: Clay Adamczyk

Media Credit: Clay Adamczyk

It is no secret by now that Suffolk University has been making giant leaps towards becoming more environmentally friendly. There are energy efficient light bulbs throughout the campus, censors have been installed in classrooms so that lights automatically shut off when not in use, and recycling bins can be found everywhere. In the last two years, the university has made considerable progress in the way they manage waste.
Last week, Suffolk University was awarded a Green Award from the city. Mayor Thomas M. Menino commended all winners last week saying, "The breadth of winners is only surpassed by the range of actions you are taking to mitigate climate change. From renewable energy to recycling, to green design, you are demonstrating that we can all do our part to make Boston more sustainable."
More facts of Suffolk's "green" achievements were on display at Suffolk's Earth Day Extravaganza at David J. Sargent Hall at Suffolk Law School. For the fiscal year of 2006, Suffolk recorded a total of just under 450 tons of waste with less than five percent being recycled. Now for the fiscal year of 2008, the university recorded nearly 300 tons of waste with an outstanding third of that being recycled.
Suffolk placed 17th overall of around 80 schools in Recycle Mania, a competition among college and university recycling programs across the United States. The university placed 20th in the category of waste management citing an overall decrease in waste production. In addition, this year, 10 West earned a green rating from the Green Round Table, Boston's division of the Green Building Committee. With all these achievements, manager of Facilities Planning Gordon King, and the special projects coordinator for Campus Sustainability Erica Mattison still want to create environmental awareness on a larger scale, and to show that none of these goals could have been met with out the support of the Suffolk community and student-run groups.
These on-campus groups, along with groups off campus like MassRecycle and MassBike, came out in support of Suffolk's Earth Day Extravaganza. This public event aimed to teach the community about local environmental efforts and ways to get involved. Suffolk groups, S.O.U.L.S, Career Services, and students from environmental studies, physics, and electrical engineering, and Suffolk Recyclers, circulated petition to bring clean energy choice to Suffolk.
For each dollar contributed by students, be it personal funds or unexpired Ram points, the Massachusetts Technology Program will donate two dollars. All the donations would be split up equally for new sources of clean electricity on campus, in the city of Boston, and in low-income communities throughout Massachusetts.
The Environmental Engineering department say they have begun to work on energy-renewable tools that will hopefully be set up by the fall semester.
"We are working with Ameresco to put solar panels on the roof tops of Suffolk," said Chuck King, environmental engineering student and son of Gordon King. "Micro wind turbines will probably be set up this summer." The Sawyer building is lined up as the first location of these turbines, and would provide over two percent of all the building's energy needs.
Sodexo Campus Services are also upping the recycling efforts. Sodexo has kitchen can/bottle recycling Donahue, cardboard and paper recycling in each dining location as well as organic food recycling in the Sargent Law kitchen.
"[This year] we switched over to all paper products except for forks and knives," said Sodexo general manager Tom Fuller. They are currently waiting on the better development of corn syrup-derived utensils that are fully compostable. "We tried them already at MIT," said Fuller. "but they didn't work. They broke way too easily." Sodexo also currently has compostable plates and will be switching over to corn syrup-based cups next semester.
The Earth Day Extravaganza also sought to build support for the second annual Dump and Run program through the residence halls. Instead of throwing out used school supplies, cloths, unopened toiletries, food, and cleaning products or books, students can just drop them off to the appropriate bins in dorm lobbies.
This year, Suffolk University has truly made great progress to make the community a more environmentally active and aware place.
For a university, Suffolk is ahead of environmental trends and plans to do even better next year. Through these achievements, they are combining their colors of blue and yellow to show their true shade of green.

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