Many Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB) students noticed rare emails from the Sustainability Office and Dean of Students land in their inboxes in recent weeks. The messages aimed to gather information on the relationship between students, sustainability and CSUMB by encouraging recipients to fill out the Sustainability Literacy Survey.
The effort to understand student perspectives comes at an important time for campus sustainability efforts. Last year, CSUMB hit the halfway mark on its 10-year 2020 Inclusive Sustainability Plan. Meanwhile, in November, the sustainability webpage for Cal State Monterey Bay was updated for the first time in nearly two years.
As recently installed charging benches bring new advertising revenue to the Sustainability Office, they seem eager to improve student outreach efforts. And as pressing environmental issues like carbon emissions and offshore drilling bring national discourse into CSUMB’s own backyard, students may be looking for big and small ways to do their part.
Toward that end, CSUMB recently hired Amanda Armstrong as waste engagement outreach coordinator. She brings a background in communications for environmental nonprofits and community engagement with the Manteca Unified School District. “My role really focuses on the education, outreach and, of course, engagement with our campus community here, understanding how our daily actions contribute to our sustainability goals here on campus,” she said.
Armstrong connects with students at Second Wave Supplies – the popular campus reuse store located in the library – and events like Otter Thursdays. “I’m really passionate about the environment, so getting to educate people about our sustainability goals here at CSUMB makes me really happy,” she said.
Yet as a part-time staff member still getting acquainted with CSUMB, Armstrong isn’t as involved with other resources available to students looking to support campus sustainability efforts. Many programs are instead overseen by Derek Martin, associate director of Safety, Risk and Sustainability.
Martin chairs the President’s Sustainability Committee, which he describes as “a group of faculty, staff and students from all over campus who are advocating for sustainable change.” The committee is made up of five working groups with focus areas ranging from material consumption to social justice and equity.
For student organizers, the Sustainable Events working group is a particularly valuable resource. They created the Sustainable Events Blueprint, which advises event planners on areas such as waste, travel, energy usage and food sourcing.
The Events Blueprint is also integrated with 25Live, CSUMB’s event reservation system. It encourages event planners to complete the Sustainability Pre-Event Checklist, a Google Form that assigns the event a Sustainability Event Rank: Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. According to Martin, “they then get an icon that they can choose to put onto their promotional materials to highlight the fact that they are indeed a sustainable event.”
CSUMB still has a ways to go if it hopes to make its ambitious sustainability goals a reality. But the Sustainability Office emphasizes that those goals hinge on student outreach efforts and clearly communicating what each individual can do to contribute.
“I want to find ways to make sustainability more visual and more apparent to everyone on campus…So I want to create touch points where we can really interact with people,” said Martin. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard about our new Wonderfil station that is in the Otter Student Union.”
Installed in September through a partnership with Santa Cruz-based startup Wonderfil, these stations allow students to refill containers with shampoo, laundry detergent and other soaps, saving money and reducing waste.
“That’s one of those really great examples of how we can get hands-on with sustainability and build habits early.”