Going Green-A Positive Change for the Future
630 tons recycled last year. 267,200 individual plastic bottles recycled at sporting events. 140,000 tons recycled this year from January to May. The numbers speak for themselves—Baylor is serious about sustainability.But why? Going green has only positive results—an immediate impact on the community without negatively affecting day-to-day life. To educate the Baylor family and facilitate ways for everyone to be proactive, Baylor recently instated an official Sustainability Coordinator, Smith Getterman.
"Going green is important because we're changing the world for the better, leading the way to making sure that our earth and our natural resources—the awesome things that God blessed us with—are there for our great-grandchildren and in the same beautiful condition that they're here while we're on campus," Smith commented.
With more than 700 recycling containers around Baylor campus, recycling is simply a choice to look for the "Baylor reNEW-reduce, reuse, recycle" logo before discarding plastic, cardboard, aluminum or paper. Other strides Baylor has taken to promote a proactive green culture on campus include:
- 630 duplex printers that conserve thousands of pages by printing two-sided;
- trolleys scheduled to stop at several off-campus apartment complexes in 15-minute intervals;
- newsletters such as Parents League Perspectives have moved online; and
- 5,000 stickers that say "Last Out, Lights Out" will be popping up all over campus giving students the freedom to turn off the lights after class.
On an even larger scale, Baylor was the first university to earn LEED certification, a prestigious environmental rating, for an existing building. Revamping the George W. Truett Theological Seminary with energy star appliances, light sensors, automatic hand dryers and other environmentally-friendly attributes, the seminary offers students and faculty a healthier environment because there are less unnatural chemicals and pesticides in the air.
"LEED certification helps reduce our footprint on the community, positions us as a leader in green construction and shows people that we're serious about our sustainability efforts and about being the Christian leaders and stewards we need to be, not just from the bottom-level recycling, but all the way up to big-level construction," Smith said.
Going green (and gold) never meant more—as we look toward the future for our children and grandchildren, we can know we are making a positive change. We hope you enjoy our first edition of Perspectives online as we do our part to be sustainable.
Baylor Alumni Network- Longview Spring Event (5/23)