Resolved: We are living in a new decade

Copenhagen sucked. Climategate was humiliating. Glenn Beck is still on TV.

Nonetheless, we’re closer than ever to a meaningful climate agreement. Evidence demonstrating man-made (and thus man-preventable) climate change has proven impervious to scientists’ rare improprieties. And Glenn Beck’s fabrications have recently cost him the support of 80 advertisers.

It’s going to be a great decade.

Or, rather, we’re going to make it one. But we have a lot of ground to cover if we want to do it sustainably, since right here at Columbia we ended the decade by receiving the lowest grade of all Ivy League schools on the prestigious College Sustainability Report Card—and that was after grade inflation.

So what’s your New Year’s resolution? Go to the gym? Turn assignments in early?

Students should start the 2010s right by challenging themselves to lower their environmental impact.

One of the best ways students do this is by simply changing their laundry habits. Laundry machines’ hot water is only needed to kill extremely rare bed bugs, not disinfect, and choosing cold water saves up to 95% of its electricity usage while making clothes last longer. Also, clothes drying racks may be unfamiliar, but it’s usually worth five minutes of effort to hang up laundry—they cost nothing to use, protect clothes’ fabric and color, prevent shrinkage, and eliminate the need for electric dryers that single-handedly account for over 10 percent of domestic energy usage.

Secondly, students need to become more aware and mindful of the university’s recycling system. A recent audit conducted by the Columbia Eco-Reps shockingly revealed that over 95 percent of recycling bins’ contents had to be thrown away because their bags were contaminated with garbage. Learning the woefully misunderstood basics of recycling at Columbia and being unafraid to remove a stray piece of trash from a recycling bin both have a large and immediate impact on students’ environmental footprint. Both actions save not only recyclable resources, but avoid unnecessarily dooming sorted recyclables for landfills as far away as Ohio.

While there is usually not much that Facilities can do to help students if their room is drafty, most students do not realize that they have other options. Insulating windows with a clear plastic sheet will increase your room’s heat retention up to 90% and keep your room comfortable more effectively than a space heater, and at a fraction of the cost (four dollars per sheet at University Hardware).

If students enabled their laptops’ energy-saving power settings, they could avoid 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Instead, inefficient laptop use costs the University an estimated $50,000 annually—money that could be better spent on pizza or more financial aid.

One final way to make a big impact on sustainability is for students to find out how their clubs can reduce their environmental footprint, primarily by cutting down on the use of disposable dishware, unnecessary giveaways and by improving their recycling practices. Too few groups take heed of Activities Board at Columbia’s and Student Governing Board’s recommendations to make clubs more sustainable, like SGB’s “Guide to Greening your Group.”

These small efforts make a big difference. Without them, the university’s top-down sustainability efforts will slip.

Columbia has institutionally transformed into a foremost center for environmental conscientiousness over the last decade, but its students continue to lag behind those at peer institutions rather than seizing the opportunity for leadership. Acaemically, Columbia established the renowned Earth Institute and now offers over 30 environmental and sustainable development programs. Administratively, it created a permanent Office of Environmental Stewardship and sponsored a group of student employees as environmental liaisons to Housing and Dining, called EcoReps. Additionally, Columbia has committed to Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC “30 in 10 Challenge” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2017. The university has made great progress and met goals, but we’ll continue to fall short of the other seven Ivy League schools without continued support, involvement and pressure from students.

We have the endowment. We have the faculty. We have the technology. What’s the missing ingredient? Student leadership. And Glenn Beck’s sanity, but what are you gonna do?

Zac Accuardi is a junior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in Earth and Environmental Engineering. Brenden Cline is a Columbia College junior majoring in Economics an Political Science with a concentration in Sustainable Development.