Investment

As listed on page 104, there are multiple different types of capital involved in the university setting.  These include financial, human, natural, social and intellectual and they are all key aspects to the university.  However, there are strengths and weaknesses to each and every one of them that the university possesses.  According to the text, “If you measure a campus’s capital assets in exclusively financial terms, you overlook other forms of wealth that are additional prospects for sustainable investment” (105).  What are some of the internal strengths involved with these different types of capital? First starting with financial capital, the University of New England has financial employees that can depict the operating costs that the school bares, giving them an idea for what they can use for sustainability improvements.  When it comes to intellectual capital, they describe sustainability as “sustainability as knowledge production” (105). This is one of our strengths at UNE because we have a knowledgeable sustainability director who can easily assist the school in initiatives that should be taken. We have done some surveys about how individuals asking about their thoughts of sustainability and climate issues, giving us a head start on making change.   Our strengths in social capital are easily seen when we do social experiments and community based discussions about the schools sustainability. Getting people involved is one of the easiest ways to promote a sustainable lifestyle. Some of the schools social strengths is the involvement in “recycling, energy efficiency, collaborative research efforts, and service projects” (106). UNE exhibits all of these examples making the social capital a strong part of our initiatives.  Next up is natural capital, which is the “visual appeal of a campus’s landscape”. Campuses have “assets” that are scattered all over. These include energy assets, ecological assets, and wildlife assets. They all have their own individual services that they offer that can and oftentimes do help provide a sustainable environment. For example, the university can regulate “carbon sequestration, waste decomposition, air and water purification, crop pollination) and many more (106).  By regulating these aspects, we can provide a sustainable school environment.  

Now what about opportunities and strengths from outside of the school. For the financial side of capital, schools and universities can work with external partners to help focus on what they want to accomplish in terms of sustainability.  Financial opportunities are some of the most important when it comes to achieving goals simply because money is such a massive part of everyday life. Thomashaw explains this on page 113 when he says “develop greater collaboration between research, academic and operations of the university to increase our competitive advantage for public and private funding opportunities’ ‘ (113).  This shows that financials and external opportunities work both ways to help each other improve. When it comes to intellectual capital, it comes back to our sustainability coordinator and everything she does to work with outside sources to improve on the schools sustainable lifestyle. This in a way ties into the social aspect of capital because communication and cooperation between people outside of the school is key to any sort of improvement.  Knowing how people around the community feel about sustainable living helps the school relate that to their own initiatives. By communicating with outside sources, they can help use external ideas as opportunities to make improvements. Lastly natural capital is very easy to relate to external opportunities, simply because we can model how and what we want to be doing off of other schools. Not only schools, but other very sustainable organizations can be a guide to what we should be doing.  There are opportunities all over, both within and outside of the school setting. It is important that we take advantage of those and do everything in our power to produce the most sustainable version of ourselves as we can.

Materials

Being a responsible environmental steward is a very important part of the journey to becoming environmentally friendly.  It is defined as “responsible use and protection of the natural environment through conservation and sustainable practices”.  This means changing the ways that you go about your life to make it a more environmentally friendly and sustainable lifestyle.  What does it mean to go without? Well going without is in a way giving up certain things or every day items in order to make your lifestyle more sustainable.  This is something that everyone can do, the lack of something is something that everyone can do, it doesn’t have to be big. There are a lot of things that we could give up that would make a big impact and a lot of progress towards living more sustainably.  UNE’s ‘Makerspace’ is a great way to help produce sustainable projects and tools. We will be able to create simple yet effective tools to help promote a sustainable future, while ensuring that it is a proper way of doing it. This is because students will have the reins and the projects will not be in the hands of large corporations with their own intentions in mind.  It is something that has been used by students from various classes at the school and many environmentally related projects have been created using the maker space. Some of the daily materials I interact with on campus would be all materials involved with transportation. I wish there was a way to make the campus shuttles and buses more eco friendly and more green, essentially by limiting emissions.  Other items include some of the non renewable utensils that are used here and I wish there were less plastic bottles that are just being thrown away and littered throughout landfills. Honestly, I don’t use many things that I think could be more green. I try to stay as eco friendly as possible. The stuff that I have no control of, such as the non renewable utensils and bottles just get thrown away. I know some of the straws here can be recycled, but I don’t really know what happens with the other items.  It is something I think about because the amount of waste we produce is a problem. I would like to know more about where everything goes, I feel that it would make me more self conscious about what I use, in a good way that is. The story of stuff is a very interesting video because it takes us in depth of what happens to the stuff that we use, and as I said, I want to know more about that. I never knew about the linear system that our material economy runs through, as well as the toxic materials involved with that system, especially with the process the materials follow.  I felt that when she talked about the amount of toxic chemicals we release (4 Billion Pounds a year), how much we consume, and how much trash we produce (4 ½ pounds of garbage a day), I was truly shocked. It is a video that truly opened my eyes to the problems we are facing and accepting. I would say the biggest “uh-oh” moment from the text is when I realized how bad the chemicals that are in our environment truly are I was shocked and concerned with the fact that the majority of college campuses aren’t using a form of green chemistry. I feel that this is a reality check and we need to pay attention to what we are using.  One that stuck out to me was “For every one process of product that’s being reinvented using green chemistry and green engineering, there may be a hundred or a thousand yet to be rethought under these terms” (Thomashow, 69). This means there is so much we can rethink and redo but we don’t because we don’t truly understand the severity of the situation.  

Aesthetics

I would say of all of the contributions shown in the two pages the one that speaks to me the most is the one one from John Tallmadge, the author of The Cincinnati Arch: Learning from Nature in the City.  I would say his opening sentence of the excerpt about “Sustainability is not a problem, a condition, or a program; it’s a way of life” (Thomashaw, 198) .  I think oftentimes people tend to see it as a problem and something that we need to fix when in reality it is just something we need to embrace and accept that living sustainably is just part of life.  I try my hardest to live in a sustainable way and I feel that it is important for people to do the same seeing that it is just a way of life. When it comes to his view on graffiti art I felt that his perspective was quite interesting.  It is something that I had never thought about before. His idea of designating areas on campus for encouraging graffiti artists is something that I feel could be beneficial to livening up the campus as a whole. By graffiti art he means using “sustainable materials—found objects, grasses, moss, or sticks” (Thomashaw, 203).  I think that a legal canvas would be something people would have to get used to. I feel that if we did something like this at UNE people would take interest but it would take a little bit of time. It is something that I would be interested in seeing around campus. I feel that creative sustainability should appeal to all sorts of people with all sorts of values.  I think simple things such as sustainable water and power is something that everyone can get on board with. The only thing I can think of is kind of like the graffiti art. Making some sort of art that represents different peoples views using sustainable materials. It is an easy way to get many people involved while appealing to all sorts of views and values.