It's the little actions that make a difference...

In order to achieve our sustainability goals, we need everyone doing both big and little things.  The big things include our heating plant upgrade, renovating our buildings to achieve LEED certification, advancing sustainability in our curriculum, operating our campus compost facility, and running our 0.5 acre community vegetable garden.  The little things include turning lights off in unoccupied rooms, taking shorter showers, eating more healthy and locally produced food, and recycling.  The cumulative result of hundreds of Colgate community members doing small actions makes a big difference.  This is a big reason why the university has significantly reduced our energy consumption, water use, landfill waste, and paper use over the past few years.

Maureen McKinnon (Senior AA to the VP for Finance and Administration), for example, is helping to reduce our waste stream by taking one small action.  Whenever Maureen has work done through our Print Shop, she receives the copies in a cardboard box wrapped in twine.  After removing the contents, Maureen folds the box and sends it back to the Print Shop for reuse.  This saves the Print Shop money in materials, energy to cut and process trees to make the boxes, and fuel and carbon emissions to deliver them to campus.  Imagine if we all took small actions such as this!

Even the birds appreciate Maureen's effort as she takes the twine home because the birds will use it this spring for building their nests.

Thank you Maureen!

Let us know the big and little things you do to advance sustainability on campus!
Email: sustainability@colgate.edu.