Sustainability initiatives on campus take a variety of forms, but the student body often lets them go unnoticed and unsupported. Senior Annie Carforo, the chair of Vanderbilt Student Government’s Residential and Environmental Affairs Committee, described a variety of ideas that need student support to be implemented effectively.

Carforo’s committee works with both Campus Dining and campus development teams to make Vanderbilt a more sustainable campus. Many initiatives counter the environmental impact of food waste and other dining issues. Carforo’s committee works directly with construction teams to avoid mistakes like the ones that were made when building Kissam. For example, Kissam doesn’t have a dishwasher, which means that all plates and utensils from the Kissam Kitchen must be disposable. VSG’s Sustainability Committee works extensively with Campus Dining on sustainability initiatives, but many of these ideas are still in the process of being approved and cannot be published. However, Carforo emphasized just how large an effect dining has on campus sustainability.

While VSG’s role is extremely important, they are not alone in their efforts to effect environmental change at Vanderbilt. Suzanne Herron, the Sustainability Coordinator at Vanderbilt Campus Dining, explained that Campus Dining also works to make Vanderbilt a sustainable campus. Some of Campus Dining’s most important initiatives involve using more locally sourced food, decreasing use of disposable containers, and investing in an Orca food digester to decrease food waste.

Beyond dining initiatives, Carforo detailed some of VSG’s plans to make Vanderbilt more eco-friendly. One of the most noticeable changes may take place in the campus recycling program. Carforo’s team is currently working on implementing a plastic bag recycling plan.

This VSG committee works closely with administration to allocate funding for environmental initiatives. They play a crucial role in the Land Use Plan (Future VU), which aims to make the campus more sustainable while also building an environment conducive to a diverse student body. The Land Use Plan may help create a campus greenway.

Carforo’s team has also been successful in allocating resources to encourage biking on campus. VSG supports bike fixing stations around campus at places like Blakemore and Kissam. A paid bike mechanic works in the Rand VanderBikes office on Saturdays from 12 to 4 and will fix any bike for no charge. Many of the Sustainability Committee’s initiatives stretch across a broad range of campus organizations and work to make an impact on every level of campus life.

Unfortunately, initiatives stagnate without support from the student body. Carforo acknowledged that sustainability support at Vanderbilt seems “kind of embarrassing” when compared to other top twenty schools.

Suzanne Herron also emphasized the need for student support in all possible initiatives. Student use of to-go containers at Rand has a massive impact on the environment. Although some students may be dining in, they still use disposable containers. The Rand cup size change reflects Campus Dining’s efforts to encourage environmentally-friendly behavior on campus. SPEAR tried to pilot a program for reusable to-go containers in the past, but it failed without student support. Herron described an initiative in which both SPEAR and Campus Dining worked together to raise awareness about excess waste from food containers.

“We got lots and lots of plastic garbage bags and put the to-go containers in those bags, lined them up and down the hallways to illustrate how much waste is going into the waste stream on a daily basis,” Herron said.

Both Herron and Carforo cited a lack of awareness from the student body as a reason for stagnancy in environmental initiatives. Vanderbilt students can take initiative individually in order to make our campus more sustainable. Vanderbilt provides free filtered water to students in dining halls and at hydration stations in buildings throughout campus. Students can use reusable water bottles and fill up at these locations. Herron also encouraged students to bring their own containers to Rand and use those instead of the disposable ones. For health code reasons, students cannot hand the containers directly to servers, but they can put the food on a plate and scrape it into their own containers after they have paid. Furthermore, both SPEAR and the Sustainability Committee need student support in order to make their ideas a reality. Simply attending their events and supporting their initiatives improves their success rates and makes our campus more sustainable.