Oswego State students and faculty are contributing to sustainability initiatives on campus with new projects and campaigns.

The Office of Sustainability runs many campaigns to help reduce the campus’s carbon footprint. According to Sustainability Planning Coordinator Jamie Adams, sustainability is about more than just the environment.

“Sustainability goes beyond environmentalism,” Adams said. “We’re really focusing on things like the economy and social justice and how our consumption specifically here in America has impacted our environment in a broader scope.”

The office will be promoting some of its current projects at this year’s Earth Week, beginning on Monday, April 22 until Friday, April 26 at Marano Campus Center, according to Adams. The office will be tabling all week to inform students of programs such as BikeShare and BusShare, as well as letting the campus community know the results of reduction through executing such programs.

There will also be a panel of faculty members across the curriculum discussing potential solutions to climate change and the impact we have had on the environment, Adams said. A new water reduction project that a student has been working on will be displayed on the last day of the event. For his project, Director of Sustainability for the Student Association Lucas Grove has been using 3D printers to turn plastic cups into water faucet aerators.

“We take the plastic cup, woodchip it down into less than 5 millimeters on any sides that then goes down into a filastruder,” Grove explained. “The filastruder basically melts it and pushes it out a small nozzle, which will then make a long string, and that string is then used in 3D printing.”

Grove’s interest in 3D printing combined with his knowledge of plastic from other sustainability efforts led to his idea for the project. The faucet aerators made from the 3D printer will be given out during Earth Week, Grove said.

“We are 8,000 students, both on campus and off campus,” Grove said. “If we all have a sustainability mindset, then it will push us out into the world to be more sustainable.”

Another recent sustainability initiative is the “Leave Your Mark” campaign, a recycling program for writing utensils started by Math Specialist for the Office of Learning Services Kate Spector. While teaching math classes and working in the tutoring center, Spector noticed that she was going through a lot of dry erase markers from writing on the whiteboard and wanted to find a way to recycle them.

Spector said she initially placed bins for recycling writing utensils in the tutoring center and the main office of the math department, and due to their success, she wanted to expand the recycling program campus wide. 

“I wanted to offer this opportunity to the students to be able to be responsible about their use with these markers,” Spector said.

As a result, the campus partnered with Terracycle, a company that recycles the “non-recyclable,” according to its website. 

Spector then collaborated with Daniel Tryon and his students in his manufacturing systems technology class to make the recycling boxes. The students chose to use wood from the old bleachers in the Swetman Gym to make the 200 recycling boxes and came up with the name for the campaign, according to Spector.

“The team that worked on this spent a long time thinking not just how to build the box or what to build it out of, but they spent a significant amount of time thinking about how to make this box, so it would really get used and so it would be obvious what it’s for,” Spector said. “They really did a great job. I’m really impressed by their work.”

The boxes can be found in classrooms throughout all academic buildings on campus, along with a large central recycling bin in Marano Campus Center, according to Spector.

For students that are interested in getting involved in sustainability, there are many opportunities to, according to Assistant Director of Sustainability for the Student Association Ceseley Mulligan. 

Students can go into the Office of Sustainability at 126A Hewitt Union and get involved in current projects, visit the office’s tables at Marano Campus Center on Tuesdays or download the Fill it Forward app.

The campus partnered with Cupanion to participate in using the Fill it Forward app, which lets users track how many plastic bottles they are saving from going into a landfill by using reusable bottles instead, according to Mulligan. Students can go into the office to get a free reusable bottle that is scannable on the app, and users would scan their bottle every time they refill it. 

“It tracks how much as a campus we’re doing for the earth, how much we’re saving from being in a landfill or lake,” Mulligan said. 

Mulligan is currently working to form a Oswego State campus chapter of the Food Recovery Network. The Food Recovery Network is a not-for-profit organization started by students. 

“[It] works with a food needy-partner such as Salvation Army, food pantries and soup kitchens in the local communities and takes food that would otherwise be thrown out by the dining halls and donates it to those food-needy partners so that it can be distributed throughout the community,” Mulligan said.

Mulligan has been working toward this goal since Earth Day of last year, but she is still not discouraged.

“As students, our voice is so powerful. Being in leadership positions showed me how powerful our voices are,” Mulligan said. 

Mulligan urged students to get involved in sustainability efforts on campus.

“I would like students to learn that even the smallest things they can do make a huge impact, especially when it catches on and more than one person is doing that small thing, and  we’re just thinking about ways that we can be more environmentally conscious all the time,” Mulligan said.

Photo by Maria Pericozzi | The Oswegonian