What's Up At Elon?

Going Green is hard for a large population. A lot of the time, it can mean spending money to change habits, some habits that have been around and embedded in our population for years, throwing away trash for example. In designing a green community around the Elon area and Burlington, I wanted to first look at what specifically Elon University is doing to “go green”.


Initiatives On Campus: Problems and Praise

Real Time Electricity Monitoring: It is good that our campus wants to gauge how much electricity we are using. However, these are not hooked up to see what Danieley Center uses and that area contains over 500 Elon Freshman and Sophomores. Last month RSA had a “lights out bingo” in which they encouraged all students to turn out their lights for that night. But what could have happened if instead of turning out all their lights campus wide initiatives to ban incandescent light bulbs were made? What is being done to promote these one time opportunities into changing habits?

Print Management Systems: This initiative is one that is really effective in my opinion. From 2005 – 2009 Elon has reduced its paper usage in the library from 10 million sheets of paper to 1.9 million sheets of paper, talk about reduction. Now whether this has all been a shift to home printers I don’t know, but now documents are printed on Energy Star approved ink and paper saving printers. These printers are designed to print two sided documents so that you can print a 3-page paper now in 2. If a document is over 3 pages long students must then swipe to print a document with preloaded “printing cash” already loaded on your phoenix card and in your tuition.

Green Building Policy: Elon has just build Linder Hall which is the first LEED approved building on campus. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is something that I think all buildings in a green community should strive for, but I’ll discuss LEED in a later post. While Linder is equipped with great environmental options and many other buildings (Newer) have been built with sustainability in mind. What does this leave for the older buildings that we have on campus? Do we tear them down and start over or try to renovate? Will every new building made be LEED certified? Should it be discussed or even and issue if the building is not?

Transportation: So another environmental issue here at Elon is how we get around. We have a biobus that transports students to a local shopping center and that definitely saves a lot on carpooling. But these buses also run to transport students to class even late at night when few use them, they are still running. To me this is a waste of gas and they should maximize time schedules so that students know when they are coming and can plan accordingly. But another great plan they offer is zip car. For those students who do not have access to a car, or even those who could bring their car zip car is an affordable way to “rent” a car. These cars are also ALL hybrids! Which is so much better for the environment.


These are the issues that Elon has highilighted in our effort towards sustainability and reducing our impact.  I think that many of these things are great but there are a lot of other areas to explore.  While Elon does have other efforts I can't help but wondering if they are highlighting these issues for a certain purpose.  Why would recyling not be a highlighted issue when 2 of our dining halls compost and there are recyling portals virtually everwhere all over campus?  I don't know but its certainly something to think about.  How do we deem one part of "going green" more imperative than the other and who makes these decisions on campus?  Do students have a say in building a better campus for the future?

Singing Off!

Janice Spearbeck