Emily Brown is involved in the Office of Environmental Sustainability (OES) this semester, which some people may not know much about. As a freshman she was an Early Childhood Education major, and just this semester, now a sophomore, she switched her major to Environmental Science and Policy with the option in Community and Environment. Although she has only been familiar with OES for a few weeks, she has become more aware and excited about the number of projects the OES is working on to make a more sustainable PSU campus and community.
The OES office is based out of the EcoHouse, which is the white building located “on the roundabout” in Plymouth. The mission of the Plymouth State University EcoHouse is to demonstrate environmentally sustainable technology in a residential setting, to provide hands-on experiential learning opportunities to PSU students and the surrounding region, to collect and disseminate information about sustainability, and to help others live in more sustainable ways. The EcoHouse is home to Common Ground, a student-run environmental and social justice organization on campus. It also provides a home to nine PSU students to enhance education in environmental programs and activities like sustainable design, alternative energy sources in addition to other technologies and ways of living.
To get the student body involved we table in HUB every Tuesday and Thursday from 11:30 to 1:30 to promote sustainability across campus. We have also been promoting RecycleMania at these tabling events for the past three weeks. RecycleMania is a national recycling competition where colleges and universities compete against one another to promote waste-reduction across their campuses. The PSU standings were amazing for the first week of this competition. We are the first NH college/university to place in these competitions. We are ranked 5th out of 206 colleges/universities for the percent of total waste that is recycled, which is the best Plymouth State University have ever done. Keep on recycling, Plymouth! This makes us proud to say that our effort at OES has made such a difference.
When we table, we try to get Plymouth students and faculty involved in small activities like asking them trivia questions and having them play games to win reusable water bottles. Whenever Emily is tabling she learns more and more about sustainability and recycling across campus. For example, she had no idea what Fair Trade meant when we were promoting Fair Trade chocolate for Valentine’s Day last week, but then quickly learned that these products are environmentally and economically sustainable practices that support developing countries to make better trading and farming conditions.
She also enjoys learning from students and faculty members when they stop by at the tabling stand in the HUB and give us their knowledge on recycling and sustainability on and off campus. It all very interesting to her because it connects with her new environmental major. So, since everything is quite new to her in this field, she continues to learn a lot about her major just by being involved in OES, as well as creating future ideas and events to promote sustainability more and more here at Plymouth State University.