This document discusses rethinking sustainability on college campuses. It suggests that while many campuses focus on green buildings and recycling, true sustainability requires a more fundamental rethinking of how to build a sustainable society and address social and environmental justice issues. The document advocates shifting focus outward to projects connecting with the natural world like campus treescapes, community gardens, and sustainable agriculture programs. It argues this type of reframing is needed since sustainability challenges existing worldviews and requires new strategies rather than just reducing unsustainability.

1. NEON GREEN or
What shade of green should a college be?
A new way to think about Sustainability
Jeremy King
Campus Sustainability Coordinator
Denison University

2. Environmentalists
What comes to mind?

3. What do we relate to?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml54UuAoLSo

5. Oberlin College’s Environmental Center

6. Sustainability on most Campuses
• LEED Buildings • Low VOC paints
• Energy-Efficient Lighting • Composting Programs
Upgrades • Renewable Energy
• Recycling Programs • “Green-Vehicle” Parking Spaces
• Trayless Dining •
• Local Foods Initiatives • Reduction of printed materials
• Recycled Paper Purchasing • RecycleMania
• Duplex Printing • Waste Reduction Programs
• Use of “Green” cleaning • Bike Share & Car Share
supplies
• Water conservation
• Tree Campus USA
• Eco-Reps Program
• Campus Gardens/Farms
• Green Office Certification

7. What’s Happening on Your Campus?
What are the big projects?
Who’s supporting them?
What impact are you having?

8. Why are we Doing This?
Marketing
Remember… NEON or
It saves money and resources
Everyone else is doing it
It is the “right” thing to do

9. Talloires
Declaration

10. Do we want to be Neon? Like
Pomona, Oberlin, Middlebury…..
Do we just want to blend in?
I’M NOT SURE IT MATTERS UNLESS WE RETHINK SUSTAINABILITY

11. What is Sustainability
The capacity to endure and/or remain in balance
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use
that aims to meet human needs while preserving the
environment so that these needs can be met not only
in the present, but also for future generations.
-Brudntland Commission 1987

13. In order to build a sustainable society, diverse groups will need to
be able to come together and work collaboratively to address
sustainability challenges. People of color and low-income
communities tend to suffer disproportionate exposure to
environmental problems. This environmental injustice happens as a
result of unequal and segregated communities. To achieve
environmental and social justice, society must work to address
discrimination and promote equality. The historical legacy and
persistence of discrimination based on racial, gender, religious, and
other differences makes a proactive approach to promoting a
culture of inclusiveness an important component of creating an
equitable society. Higher education opens doors to opportunities
that can help create a more equitable world.
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education - AASHE

14. Sustainability is NOT a normal
problem, it is a game changer
Normal Problem: can be addressed with familiar tools
and strategies because it does not call into question
fundamental assumptions (e.g. DDT)
Game Changer: questions fundamental
assumptions, institutions, and cultural values
(worldview), and so requires very different tools and
strategies

15. A Hard Truth
“Almost everything being done in the
name of sustainable development
addresses and attempts to reduce
unsustainability. But reducing
unsustainability, although critical, does
not and will not create sustainability”
--John R. Ehrenfeld, Sustainability by Design

16. Green Roof atSomeFord Plant in Michigan
a Problems
Deliberate worldview change is
1) Unprecedented
2) Not widely desired
3) Fraught with paradoxes
Less Unsustainable

23. Our students and our society as a whole recognize these curves

24. Keeling Curve
Less than 5% of our students recognize this curve

25. CIRP DATAEducational Research Institute
Cooperative Institutional Research Program – Higher
Anecdotal Evidence: Students in the FYS Class Energy and the Environment
admitted that they didn’t know what petroleum was used for

26. How in Tune are Your Students?
Do your students connect with your sustainability efforts?
What projects and activities resonate well with them?
Do they relate well with outdoor sustainability themes?
What are some of those outdoor initiatives?

29. Where to?
Because sustainability is a fundamentally different kind
of challenge, it requires a very different strategy with a
different objective. Our aim is not to win the old
game, but rather, to help catalyze a new game and
culture. To get off track!
While progress in institutionalizing sustainability is
satisfying, these “little successes” risk distracting attention
from the primary conundrum: Reducing unsustainability will
never create sustainability.
- Dr. Paul Morgan – West Chester University

30. A creative leap?

31. What better place to begin to address the
complex issues surrounding sustainability than
on college campuses?

32. NEON or Camo ?
At Denison we are trying to find a different path

33. Shifting the Focus
Tree Campus USA
Native Plants
Building partnerships with the local
community to promote and protect trees
Campus Arboretum
Local CO2 Offset Program  goes directly to our trees
Campus Community Garden
The Denison Homestead – Alternative living community
Developing Sustainable Agriculture programs and experiences

34. Denison in the early days
1880s - 1890s

35. Building a Treescape

36. Losing our trees

37. A New Legacy of Trees

38. Campus Arboretum
http://www.denison.edu/sustainability/denison_university_arboretum.html
Strategic Native Plantings
Memorial Trees
Educational Resource
Environmental Attributes
CO2 Offsets
Comprehensive Inventory to track our trees
The Arboretum is creating a buzz both on and off campus

39. Community Garden

40. The Denison Homestead

41. How to Move Sustainability Outside –
Reconnecting with the Natural World
• Sustainable Sites Initiative
• Finding friends in unfamiliar places
• Connect with teaching faculty
• Alumni love preserving the college “look”
• Strategic planning that allows for
multipurpose use of spaces and places

42. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos

43. By Joel Pett, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate, for USA TODAY

44. Jeremy King
Campus Sustainability Coordinator
Denison University
kingje@denison.edu
740-587-8680