Environmental Education

ENVIRONMENTAL
EDUCATION
according to Tony Cortese, cofounder of
the 15-year-old sustainability advocacy
group Second Nature, which helped establish
the Association for the Advancement
of Sustainability in Higher Education and
the American College and University
Presidents Climate Commitment.
(Second Nature is also the current
coordinator of HEASC.) “When a college
CIRCLE 36 ON REPLY CARD
TRASH WALK
SSU students
survey the
school’s
recycling
plant
48 ATHLETIC BUSINESS APRIL 2008 ATHLETICBUSINESS.COM
There are some
people who are
hitting their heads
against a wall
because they
don’t even have
a recycling
program.
decides to do something, unless it puts
out a press release, nobody’s going to
find out about it. There’s no entity out
there that has the resources to collect
this information right now,” Cortese
says. “AASHE hopes to do that on a
pretty large scale in the future, because
one of its primary purposes is to be able
to help people share best practices.”
At schools like Washington State,
where a student fee increase is being
proposed to fund the appointment of
an on-campus sustainability coordinator
(Oregon already has one), the recreation
department is — to recycle a worn
phrase — pushing the green envelope.
“I would like to say we’re brilliant, but
we aren’t,” says Hatch. “It’s really in
response to our student audience.
We’re working with our global citizens
of tomorrow. The consciousness has
been raised in this generation, and so
these students are coming here expecting
us not to practice in our old way. If
we want to continue to have as strong
a profile as we’ve had in the past, our
leadership is needed in this new,
green way.” Ω
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY