"Our campus has come a long way in getting students interested and involved in conservation," says Mills, who served as coordinator of her campus' Green Campus Program, a nonprofit initiative funded by utilities companies. But then she adds, "I hear about what Santa Barbara and other campuses are doing and I get green envy."
She remembers moving into a Santa Cruz dorm four years ago loaded with polyester sheets, an energy-guzzling TV/DVD player and knickknacks that were destined for a landfill.
"I was thinking economically, not environmentally," says Mills, who changed her major from computer engineering to environmental studies after taking a class on freshwater policies around the world. "It was an awakening," she says.
Unlike the back-to-the-land hippies of the 1960s, "students today want to make our urban areas better, and they're starting with their own halls and by asking campus dining facilities to support local farmers," says Michael M'Gonigle, a founder of Greenpeace International, eco-research chairman of environmental law and policy at the University of Victoria in Canada, and coauthor of "Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University."
"Who would want to ignore the size and reach of these students?" M'Gonigle asks.
This is, after all, a generation accustomed to seeing trash sorted into glass, paper and plastic recycling bins. Sustainability is a growing concern on campuses, says UC Davis grad student Jonathan Woolley, who leads the California Student Sustainability Coalition.
"All you have to do is look at the number of student bodies who've chosen to raise their own fees to fund green initiatives," he says, noting that it "costs students money they don't have but saves the campus resources in the long run."
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janet.eastman@latimes.com
