Maryland Day: what an event! Over 100,000 visitors come to our university to learn about academic programs, explore the campus farm, eat delicious ice cream from the dairy, and so much more. These visitors - parents and siblings of current and past students, UMD alumni, College Park community members, prospective students – come to enjoy all that our great university has to offer, and we do have quite a bit to offer. One thing in particular that we are proud to offer at our campus is sustainability.
In fact, for the second straight year, Sierra Club ranked UMD the 13th greenest school in the country! Contributing to that ranking are campus goals such as carbon neutrality by 2050, 20% “real food” in campus diners by 2020, having a zero waste athletics program, and the list goes on and on. We’re doing a lot as a university, and we deserve that ranking for 13th greenest school, but we can certainly do more. Let’s go back to Maryland Day and ask ourselves the question: how sustainable is UMD’s biggest event of the year?
This past year at Maryland Day there were 9,000 volunteers who helped make the event happen, which is fantastic. But, consider this: each one of those volunteers was given a lunch delivered in a plastic bag, containing a single use plastic water bottle, a sandwich wrapped in plastic, and plastic packaged snacks. Additionally, each volunteer is given a cotton t-shirt as a thank you for their work. According to National Geographic, it takes 700 gallons of water to grow the cotton, process, and manufacture a single cotton t-shirt. That means there are 9,000 single use plastic bottles used, and 6.3 million gallons of water spent on just the volunteers alone. Can you imagine the impact that the 100,000+ attendees have as well in terms of waste generation, water consumption, and beyond?
Well you don’t have to imagine it! In 2010, former President Mote sent out an email following Maryland Day indicating that 5 tons, FIVE TONS, of recycled materials were collected during the event. That’s 2/3 the weight of a full grown male African Elephant! He regarded such news as a success, and while it is certainly better that these materials were recycled rather than thrown out, it is still an immense amount of waste created in one day, and it is far from a success. That is only recyclables too; who knows how much waste went to the landfill during that event. Maryland Day has made big strides in the past few years and certainly has reduced that number since then, but it is still an outrageous amount of waste created for one day.
And what about the waste that we don’t pick up in our own waste sort stations? There were about 400 vendors/exhibits at Maryland Day this past year, and nearly every single one of those has handouts, pamphlets, and cheap, unrelated prizes to give out. I know that BSOS flashlight or that set of headphones from the Health Center is incredibly enticing, but where are those things now? Most likely broken and thrown away, or stashed in a drawer somewhere playing with dust bunnies and your random collection of tangled wires and pens. These booths are giving out so many products that no one needs, and are very frequently unrelated to the work that the department does! All in all there are probably thousands of pounds of plastic and paper wasted on these products, and again, this is just one day.
So yeah, we rank 13th in the Sierra Club’s Greenest Schools rankings, but on our school’s biggest day of the year where we show off everything our campus has to offer, we seem to be sweeping sustainability under the rug. That is not to say we are doing nothing for sustainability on that day – we do have the Office of Sustainability’s tent and we do have waste sort stations and water filling stations set up around campus - but it’s not nearly enough. If we want to pride ourselves in saying we are a “green school” or as our university’s 10 year strategic plan states, become “widely recognized as a national model for a green university,” we NEED to be doing more to support that message on our most important day of the year.
What if we eliminated the sale of plastic water bottles during Maryland Day and required people to bring their own reusable water bottles? What if Maryland Day shirts were made out of a sustainable material such as bamboo, hemp, recycled plastics, etc? What if vendors gave out prizes that were relevant to their mission and were built to last or didn’t give anything out at all? What if volunteers got a free meal at the diner rather than a packaged lunch? What if there was sustainable messaging all across campus on signs, at each table, in the programs, on the posters, and on the Maryland Day website? The possibilities to enhance the sustainability of this day go on and on.
This is an issue that SSC cares about and we want to help change. We drafted 5 recommendations and delivered them to the Maryland Day Steering Committee, which is led by Vice President of University Relations, Peter Weiler, to help make this day’s environmental footprint that much smaller. Click HERE to take a look at what we suggested, and let us know what you think. Do you think we should ask for more? Is there anything you can think of that could make Maryland Day more sustainable? Is this issue important to you? We want to hear your opinions and your thoughts. Thus far, we have met with Cheryl Plainte who is on the steering committee as well, and discussed these suggestions. She reacted positively to most of the recommendations and promised that she would see what could be done. We will keep in touch with her regarding this issue and will keep pushing until positive changes have been made.
One final thought: thousands of prospective students come to UMD on Maryland Day to learn about our school and question whether they’d like to attend. Well, the Princeton Review conducted a study asking high school students, “If you had a way to compare colleges based on their commitment to environmental issues (from academic offerings to practices concerning energy use, recycling, etc.), how much would this contribute to your decision to apply to or attend a school?” 61% of high school students responded saying yes, that this information would contribute to their decision. So, not only is increasing the sustainability of Maryland Day a way to reduce our environmental footprint, but it’s a way to attract more students to our campus. The Ohio State University and all of the Big 10 schools attract students with their football and athletics, but lets make UMD the school that attracts students because of our commitment to a better planet. Thats a school I'd be proud to attend and show off on Maryland Day.
This blog post was written by SSC Chair, Ori Gutin. If you are interested in this issue please contact him at omgutin@gmail.com or 240-778-4587.