A Starter Guide to Sustainability in College

by Karlie Hayes

A year and a half ago, I found myself perched at a desk chair in my freshman dorm with two strangers, a stack of club fliers, and some newly-bought college merch. Somehow, I’d relocated 300 miles away from my hometown and all that I had ever known. That time was a landslide of new experiences, and I faced decisions that I’d never considered, such as how to move around, what food to buy, and what businesses to support.

College is busy, and it can be tough to have sustainability on the mind. However, at the same time, this landslide of new experiences can be a great opportunity—as we young adults live on our own for the first time, we are forming life-long habits. And learning green habits now can allow us to incorporate sustainability into our lives for the future—so a few years down the line, we won’t even think twice about choosing paper packaging over plastic.

As a college student, I have learned that incorporating green habits can be simple and can even save some money. If you are a college student looking to incorporate some more sustainable habits into your life, I hope you find this guide helpful!

EATING

Choose more vegetarian and vegan meals in the dining hall

Most dining halls offer plant-based foods, and you don’t need to be 100% vegan or vegetarian to take advantage of them! If you get your meals from the dining hall, try choosing more plant-based options, which have a lower carbon footprint than animal-based products. The more you eat these options, the more your campus will produce them.

Don’t take a tray in the dining hall

Strangely, I first heard this tip from my freshman orientation leader, who warned us that only new students took trays in the dining hall. Little did I know the environmental benefits of this advice: by opting out of a tray, we can save unnecessary dishwasher water and energy, and we can avoid taking too much food.

Compost

This tip might be tough to incorporate in the dorms, but if you live in an apartment, composting can be a great way to divert your food waste from the landfill! I recommend checking if your apartment building or local farmer’s market has a compost drop-off center or program. There are also several online articles which give tips about how to start composting at home, including this one from SUSTAIN!

Resist the vending machines

I know that on my campus, there are plenty of vending machines with all sorts of tempting snacks (anything with chocolate and it’s over!). But vending machine snacks are often packaged individually in plastic or foil wrappings that cannot be recycled or composted. To avoid extra waste, I recommend buying the snack in a larger package or making a homemade snack instead!

TRAVELING

Don’t bring a car to campus

According to the EPA, an average passenger vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. With this in mind, one great way to decrease our carbon emissions is to simply not bring a car to school. And oftentimes, making do without a car is easy - campuses and surrounding areas are usually easy to navigate by foot, bike, or public transit.

When traveling home, carpool or take public transit

Considering how you travel home is another opportunity to reduce emissions. Instead of driving alone, you can take the train or carpool with hometown friends or people who you find on a college rideshare Facebook group. Personally, I take the Flixbus home, and the ride is a great chance to read, listen to music, or catch up on homework!

Reduce the number of times you fly home

Trust me, I know homesickness can be tough. But unfortunately, more flights can be bad news for the environment—in 2018, flights were responsible for 2.4 percent of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. One way to play our part is to limit the number of flights that we take, including flights home.

STUDYING

Get textbooks electronically, used, or from the library

Producing new books can be resource-intensive because they require energy and raw materials, such as paper. With this in mind, swapping new books for electronic or used books can be a great option to decrease our consumption. Choosing these book versions can also allow us to save some money!

Take notes electronically

Over the years, stacks of old binders, notebooks, and papers have somehow piled up in my closet. This reveals a few things—first, I get a bit too attached to things, and second, the amount of paper we use over the years can really add up. One way to decrease our paper use is to take notes electronically. There are many electronic note taking apps out there. I recently started using the app Notion: it allows me to take notes quickly and get creative!

Avoid Amazon

Amazon can be incredibly convenient. However, between its packaging and the transportation of those packages, this company unfortunately has a large carbon footprint. Avoiding Amazon can help us reduce our waste, and it provides an opportunity to support our campus store or local stores instead!

MOVING IN & OUT

See if there is a charity drive when you are moving out

Many colleges and universities have a charity drive at the end of the semester to collect old eyeglasses, cell phones, school supplies, and more. If you don’t plan on continuing to use these items, I recommend donating them to these drives—this can extend the life of the item, reducing waste to landfill and preventing extraction of new resources.

Reuse tubs and trunks

As we move in and out of dorms and apartments, we have to haul a lot of things. One simple way to reduce waste is to reuse the tubs and trunks that you use to move your belongings.

In your packaging, avoid plastic

Sometimes, when we are moving, packaging is unavoidable. However, we can manage that packaging in a sustainable way by recycling cardboard boxes and forgoing bubble wrap or foam pellets.

Consider on-campus storage

As mentioned above, travel—by car or by plane—can consume a lot of fuel and emit carbon into the atmosphere. To minimize this, you can opt to store your items in on-campus storage during the summer. I know that my campus has some affordable options, and if we don’t need certain items during the summer, this storage can allow us to avoid extra shipping!

OTHER

Air-dry your clothes

One simple way to save energy is to air-dry your clothes. This can be as easy as investing in a drying rack and laying out your clothes once per week. Also, like a lot of green tips, this one has some other perks too. Air drying can lengthen the lives of our clothes by saving them from the friction and heat of machine dryers. And it is also a great way to save money- that $2.50 per week can add up!

Buy clothes second-hand

One important way to decrease our carbon footprint is to buy clothes second-hand. The fast fashion industry provides clothes cheaply through shorter fashion cycles. This process is resource-intensive and can create enormous waste: according to the World Resources Institute, discarded clothing can sit in landfills for up to 200 years. And on top of this, the fast fashion industry often values profits more than human welfare: garment workers in Bangladesh make about $96 per month, far below a living wage. One way to do our part is to maximize the life of our clothes—wear our current clothes as long as possible, minimize our consumption of new clothes, and purchase clothes second-hand.

Go without dorm appliances

When we live in the dorms, we are admittedly limited in what we can control. However, one thing we can control is our use of appliances. Microwaves and refrigerators can consume a lot of energy—and in the dorms, it can be easy to live without them! When I lived in the dorms my freshman year, my microwave collected dust except for when my roommate microwaved popcorn. And I only stored a few items in the fridge. That year, I definitely could have lived without a microwave, and it would have been possible to make do without a fridge.

Unplug appliances

Related to the previous tip, if you do have appliances, one way to save energy is to unplug them when you are not using them. Some appliances (such as refrigerators) should stay plugged in, but you can easily unplug microwaves, coffeemakers, or phone chargers—saving on energy and the electricity bill.

Reducing our carbon footprint is a journey, and it’s certainly a journey that I am still on. You definitely don’t have to adopt all of these habits to move towards more sustainable living. But I hope you have found a few tips from this list that would work well for you!