While an immediate goal is to reduce energy consumption during the hot summer months, a long-term goal is to reduce energy usage permanently.
Need Some Environmentally Friendly Printing Done?
Vanderbilt Printing Services offers several green options.
Sustainable Course Offerings for the Class of 2012
Seminars in The Commons include sustainability-related course offerings for first-year students.
Find a CarPool Partner Through VMCRideMatch.com
Vanderbilt Medical Center created a ride-match web site that facilitates the identification of potential carpool partners. Faculty, staff, and students are eligible to register.
SPEAR Cardboard Crew
At 8:00 a.m on a sleepy Saturday morning in mid-August, Vanderbilt's campus was already buzzing with activity as 1,600 new freshmen moved into their new dorms, bringing with them thousands of suitcases, crates, duffel bags, and cardboard boxes stuffed to the brim with a year's worth of belongings. While the new arrivals chatted with parents and new friends and focused on the challenge of fitting their possessions into a dorm-sized room, a group of students from Vanderbilt SPEAR (Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Recycling) had a different mission: reaching out to as many freshmen as possible about the campus recycling program and recycling as many of those cardboard boxes as possible over the next seven hours.
Launched in fall 2004 in partnership with Plant Operations, SPEAR's Cardboard Crew program has helped to recycle several tons of cardboard and provided a "green" welcome to thousands of incoming freshman and their parents on Freshman Move-in Day. The program began with six volunteers but has doubled in size and continues to grow, and SPEAR members are assisted by several Plant Operations employees. Dressed in bright green "Cardboard Crew" shirts and outfitted with boxcutters and walkie-talkies, SPEAR volunteers spend the day collecting and breaking down boxes, taking them to recycling dumpsters, checking around the dorm areas for renegade dumping locations, talking to new students, and passing out magnets with information about recycling on campus. The humid August weather ensures that they will end the day sweaty and tired, but the effort is well worth the connection that is built by introducing new students to SPEAR and, more importantly, to a Vanderbilt community ethic of conservation and active involvement. The results are easy to appreciate: Recycling one ton of cardboard saves 46 gallons of oil and 3 tons of wood pulp from virgin trees, and talking with each freshman builds a new relationship and helps to ensure the success of recycling and sustainability efforts on campus.
