I was excited to be going to college. The very idea brought happiness to me. I would be studying things that actually mattered to me, meeting new people, and entering into new conversation with many different viewpoints. It may seem silly to some, but I was also excited to be at a public place that had an abundance of recycling bins and thinking about sustainable efforts. I’ve lived in Murfreesboro most of my life, and I know what MTSU offers on campus and to the community. MTSU has a great program for Nursing, Education, and Mass Communication.

There are also great opportunities on campus for students in geoscience, agribusiness, and agriscience. They have a food pantry for students. All the recycling bins on campus have a sticker proudly stating “MTSU recycles” and “Provided by MTSU Campus Sustainable Fund.” This is all great until I realized MTSU doesn’t recycle as much as I thought. MTSU isn’t really taking full advantage of what they can do, nor are they providing students with full information on the MTSU Campus Sustainable Fund or the recycling program.

When searching the university website for “recycling” or “MTSU Campus Sustainable Fund”, I got simple definitions of what recycling is, the origins of the symbol, and how campus organizations can apply for a grant from the sustainable fund. I didn’t get much more about the actual mission or data about the effectiveness of recycling on campus. At that point, I decided to pay closer attention when walking on campus. I started actively looking for recycling bins and taking mental note of the type of recycling bins compared to true waste bins. From these observations, I noticed that MTSU doesn’t promote recycling.

The recycling bins are widely spaced from each other and most of the bins are plastic and can types. The bins are also not grouped in a convenient way. For example, to promote recycling there should be one true waste bin with 3 recycling bins, one for each type, grouped together. Another thing I’ve observed is there aren’t waste bins of any kind near or in parking lots, or in the courtyard in front of the library.

There are few waste bins of any kind in the Student Union or the Keathley University Center. There are also more true waste bins than there are recycling bins on campus in general. How can MTSU say they recycle when it’s not promoted or convenient for students to participate in recycling? The one place that does make it convenient is the library. Paper bins are more abundant; however, there is still something left to be desired as other types of bins are only accessible by the elevators.

With that being said, A 2012 Greendex report, from National Geographic Society, shows that Americans feel that green initiatives could help the planet, but actually, have some of the lowest percentages of initiatives surveyed from several countries. Also, the report shows that Americans think a low percentage of the population is green but answered that they themselves were green in actions. A 2015 Nielsen study found that more than half of a population from 60 countries surveyed would pay more for products from a company with sustainability efforts. The purpose of the study was to find millennial “product purchase drivers”. I find this interesting, especially with MTSU being a unique campus.

I would classify it as a commuter college with a wide demographic of students, a lot of which is comprised of non-traditional students in the millennial age range. Pew Research Center classifies a millennial as “anyone born between 1981 and 1996.” MTSU could most likely make some changes to its campus sustainability and the student body would fully support it. More money could be allocated to the MTSU Campus Sustainability Fund to add bins around campus. Ratings for the college could even improve, and launch Murfreesboro into a new, positive topic in national news broadcasts.

I’ve mentioned the word “sustainable” a couple times now, and you might have noticed this isn’t all about the blue bins. There are four-degree programs that could benefit from MTSU implementing more sustainable efforts. The programs are as follows: plant and soil science, geoscience, agribusiness, and agriscience.

I don’t know the full details of all those programs and the possible minors attached, but I do know of some sustainable actions that relate to the programs. Composting could help all of those programs. Considering we have an Agripark, it wouldn’t be that hard to set up. MTSU could even involve the community to allow for residents to compost, too.

According to a Washington Post survey in 2010, 35 million tons of food waste was generated with 97% going to a landfill and 3% being recycled. There has been a 50% increase in curbside collection residential food waste since 2009. While the current trash disposal system in the United States doesn’t have the capabilities to “process food waste on a large scale”, Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin notes that the movement is inching forward. She also notes that “organic matter decomposing in landfills accounts for 16.2 percent of the nation’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.” Methane from landfills is regulated and monitored by waste management, but it is still dangerous to the surrounding residential areas, especially with the increase of waste going to landfills every year.

With Aramark being the main supplier of food to MTSU and it being against policy to donate food, I don’t know if it would be possible to set up a separate contract with them to change the campus policy on how food is disposed of. I see this as being a huge learning opportunity for students of four different, but similar programs at MTSU, and an even bigger advantage for the university in general.

Even if the food disposal policy can’t be changed, I know of one policy that can be changed. The idea comes from Bea Johnson, the writer of Zero Waste Home. She has five simple guidelines for reducing waste. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. At the P.O.D.s, a refusal policy can be implemented. Simply put, MTSU can encourage people to use reusable bags when shopping by refusing to use plastic bags. Or as some states have done, mainly on the west coast, start charging for plastic bags. The Student Union and Keathley University Center can switch from plastic containers and utensils to paper or cardboard containers with bamboo utensils.

Another thing that is seen on MTSU campus is littering. The main thing that can be seen on the ground around campus is cigarette butts. It doesn’t make the campus look attractive to the weekly tour groups that come through in the spring semester. Due to MTSU promoting a smoke-free campus, there isn’t a convenient place to dispose of cigarettes after people finish smoking.

Once again, convenience is a factor in student behavior. However, cigarettes are toxic waste that “leach toxic chemicals into the environment and can contaminate water” according to Truth Initiative. Cigarettes are a non-biodegradable consumer product with only 38% of a single cigarette butt decomposing after two years as reported by this study. I personally think MTSU needs to be reminded that the student body is non-traditional with mostly millennials who are already sucked into the addictive habit that is really hard to quit. Why not give smokers a place to smoke with disposal bins conveniently located in the area?

But you may be asking, who’s going to pay for all these implementations? MTSU can pay for it. The DNJ reported in late March of 2018 that “MTSU's Board of Trustees raised President Sidney McPhee's annual salary by $52,184 to $400,000.” On July 1 of 2017, the assistant coaches of the basketball team got a $25,000 raise. In a different article, The DNJ reported that “each assistant’s salary breaks down to this: Ronnie Hamilton's salary will increase from $125,000 to $150,000; Greg Grensing's salary will increase from $120,000 to $145,000; Win Case's salary will increase from $127,241 to $152,241.” With a football coach that is dedicated to graduating athletes rather than winning every conference, why can’t the MTSU Board of Trustees have the same philosophy? The reasoning for the rise to President Sidney McPhee’s annual salary was to make it match the salaries of other Tennessee universities’ presidents; however, other universities in the state have the sustainable efforts to, in my opinion, justify giving administration raises in salary. Give MTSU students the best opportunities while promoting good actions for the earth that will ultimately lead to good PR for the university overall.

The information that shocks me the most is how MTSU stands compared to other colleges in Tennessee, especially other state colleges. There are 63 non-profit colleges throughout the state of Tennessee, all ranging from public to private with and without religious affiliations. In my opinion and of my own rating, MTSU ranks the bottom of the colleges that claim to have sustainability efforts or committees. Of the 63 non-profit colleges, I only looked at the four-year colleges to compare MTSU to. There are 46 four year colleges. Of those, I looked at which colleges claimed to have sustainable efforts, and I also looked at what those efforts include. There are 25, including MTSU, that claim to have sustainable efforts. Of those 25 colleges, seven are public colleges. What are they doing that makes my opinion of MTSU so low?

Well, Austin Peay University and East Tennessee State University have the best sustainability programs out the seven public colleges claiming to have a program. Austin Peay University claims to be a “green campus” with three committees dedicated to their mission and keeping the program going year after year. East Tennessee State University just implemented a program this year.

They have a whole Department of Sustainability. Included in that department, they provide education to the student body through “green Mondays”, where “every week, we release a short, practical email with helpful tips on how you make your ETSU community a more sustainable place to live, work, and study.” The department also has several events each month to promote sustainability on campus and in the community. I’m focusing on ETSU so much because it’s a state school, same as MTSU. If ETSU could implement and staff a whole department to focus and promote sustainability, why can’t MTSU? Even without having a department MTSU could make small changes to make MTSU a greener campus, and I mean truly do it. Not just have stickers on blue, plastic bins placed out of the way of sidewalks going through campus. With this, I am not including what can be done to make the dorms on campus more sustainable as I have no experience living in the dorms, and through talking to friends that do live in the dorms, what happens in the dorms is really based on individual views and actions.

Tennessee colleges aren’t the only colleges with these programs. In fact, Tennessee isn’t even on the list of greenest universities provided by Statista. In a listing of twenty colleges, College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine is first, Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont is second, and Sterling College in Sterling, Kansas is third. Vermont is first in state rankings also by Statista, Maine is sixth, and Kansas is 42nd. Tennessee doesn’t even make the listings for the greenest states, and none of the cities in Tennessee make the listings for the greenest cities. To give a comparison New York doesn’t even make the listings for the greenest states, and they are so much more progressive than Tennessee.

This is bigger than the MTSU campus. It doesn’t just affect your life while on campus. If you live off campus, I consider you to be a Murfreesboro resident, even if you just moved here temporarily for school. Despite the Murfreesboro Convenience Center, the city’s recycling center, having constant use, the Rutherford County landfill closed at the beginning of this year. Although the landfill “only accepts construction and demolition debris compared to its neighbor, Middle Point Landfill, which takes in garbage from residential properties in 19 counties, including Davidson County,” the impact on the county is worrisome. The director of the landfill told News Channel 5, “last year, we thought we had three years left.” This is really concerning to me because it means that more trash is going to Middle Point Landfill, which is predicted to reach capacity in 7 to 10 years, as reported by WGNS Radio.

I don’t think Tennessee or Murfreesboro are going to make any those listings in the next year or even five years, nor do I think Murfreesboro or MTSU will be anywhere close to zero waste as a community. MTSU says it’s recycling, but I think it can do more than recycling. Throughout I’ve mentioned a couple solutions to the immediate issues surrounding sustainability on MTSU. The factor that any committee on campus can’t control is student action. The way to encourage student action is through education. Implementing education fairs with the agriculture programs for the community or having Green Mondays like ETSU would call many students to action. It would be a small change, but I believe many small changes add up to make great change.