This entire week, in recognition of Earth Day, Marquette dining halls will forgo the use of trays in an effort to conserve water and energy. I am sure that certain groups on campus will hail this as a great leap forward in the campus’s efforts to save the environment. In reality, it will be much more of an inconvenience to students as they try to balance multiple plates, utensils and glasses with only two hands and less of a viable means of conserving water and energy.
It is gestures like this that are indicative of most conservatory measures taken to save the environment: time, money and effort are often spent only to yield absurdly minimal results at a cost of maximum inconvenience. Even with the amounts of water that will be saved by not using such wasteful things like trays, it will still pale in comparison to the amount of water used by the campus everyday as students shower, cook, clean and drink. In fact, I’m even willing to bet that almost as much energy was wasted in printing out all the posters and billboards that will be advertising efforts to save the earth this week. There are areas of both the country and the world running out of clean water, but Marquette is in no danger of running out of water as a mile down the road lies one of the world’s most abundant supplies of fresh water.
If we at Marquette really want to do something that will produce actual results, we need to be willing to make changes to our lifestyles, not just inconvenience ourselves to save a few measly gallons here and there.
Here are some suggestions to actually affect the environment in a positive way: (1) stop watering and cutting all of the grass on campus – this will save much more water and cut emissions from gas-guzzling lawn mowers; (2) stop caking sidewalks with copious amounts of salt during the winter – as a chemistry major I can assure you that salt corrodes almost anything it touches and wreaks havoc on vegetation, not to mention I hear it’s a pain to clean off of Ugg boots; (3) Issue students LED headlamps for walking at night and turn off all street lights. This will drastically cut electricity use as well as light pollution; and finally (4), stop cooking grade F foods at campus dining halls so students will be less inclined to throw it away. The measures that I have laid out are extreme by most standards, and I’m sure come off as being quite crazy. I would be extremely surprised if anyone implemented any of these suggestions. I merely aim to illustrate the point that inane efforts such as putting aside trays for a week, replacing inefficient light-bulbs or installing solar panels won’t ever amount to a significant reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions. If Marquette, and the rest of the country for that matter, is actually concerned about the environment, we need to be willing to drastically change our way of life and standard of living.
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