Green Colleges vs. Green College Curriculum

Today I’ve had a great lesson in green and how long the path is to making real progress. First, you have to accept that our company has gone ALL GREEN which is not just recycling paper and bottles or turning off the lights when we leave the room. We’ve chosen to reconsider everything and ONLY pursue best eco-practices with all of the output of our Company, and our supply chain as well. That means we ONLY print catalogs or sales materials, business cards, etc. on recycled content stock. We embed eco-practices in the materials we use for producing our products. We ship in cartons from recycled content. We use way less packing materials and almost no plastics, etc. To me and to us, it’s the only way to be consistent to our message. How can we make green products and not use recycled content card stock for the hang tags on the product? How can we simply continue the way it’s “always been”. This effort goes beyond just us which was our objective. We’ve now embedded our questioning thought processes in our supply chain. Our printers “get it” now. Our Asia suppliers “get it” now. And as a result, they are teaching other customers of theirs about these principals.

Today,I read at Time online [article source], that the National Wildlife Federation has recently graded colleges on their collective pursuit of green curriculum and unfortunately. It gave them a C-. Actually it has declined since last reviewed by the NWF in 2001 when the colleges collectively receive a straight C. At the same time as the curriculum has not changed, the physical facilities have. Many more colleges are building green buildings or purchasing renewable power. Heck, little Colby College (1900 students in Waterville ME, annual tuition $48,000) [article source] is offsetting 115% of its energy needs with renewable power. An admirable commitment to be sure.

But, with curriculum not being created to match the message, what has been accomplished. Wouldn’t one expect there to be dozens of colleges with “sustainable architecture” courses? Wouldn’t one expect there to be lots of interdisciplinary engineering and chemistry? Wouldn’t one expect the entire plastics education at the college level to start to see a groundswell of “do it differently”? Certainly wouldn’t one expect there be ag schools with huge sustainability movements and thus programs? If the professors aren’t “thinking differently” how can they bring green curriculum to the institution?

I don’t have the answer, but, I was pretty shocked to think that our Bottles 2 Bags program might be way, way more progressive than I thought. If Coca Cola is now in the recycling business, Patagonia accomplishes what it does taking back its garments for recycling, are those to continue to be exceptions. Some 70% of college graduates use eco corporate principals as a measure of the firms they’re willing to work for when they graduate from college. If the colleges aren’t actually impressing it upon these students, where is it being instilled? Is it sustainable or will it be abandoned at the first sign of opportunity?

At last week’s Caltopia event in Berkeley (the largest experiential College Lifestyle Festival in the nation, 36,000 attendees), we were very gratified to have students actually thank us for what we are doing. It was clear to them what was different. At some point, I hope more colleges will step up to the curriculum necessary to create change. It was instilled in me at Berkeley to “question everything”. I thought that was a universal college education practice. Boy, am I naïve!

Next week I’ll finish the nylon vs. polyester awareness.