On April 16, the Student Sustainability Center and Associated Students of Colorado State University hosted a panel featuring multiple sustainability experts who presented CSU students and community members with insight and information regarding consumption habits and how to enact solutions. The topics discussed ranged from fashion ethics to transportation and food.
To kick off the discussion, Nicole Vieira, an assistant professor in the Honors program researching ecology and environmental ethics, discussed the importance of personal reflection and making environmentally conscious decisions based on individual personal interests.
“I’m trying to teach students not to feel powerless, but to start with internal reflection, figure out, ‘What is important to me?’ identify those, research those things and then make your choices for your consumption based on the things that excite you and interest you the most,” Vieira said.
Throughout the discussion, panelists also emphasized the importance of education in making environmentally conscious decisions.
“Education is oftentimes the foundation for changing mindset,” said Jamie Gaskill, associate director of active transportation at CSU. “When you start opening people’s minds to the different possibilities, oftentimes they’re then changing their behavior, realizing the benefits of that and then that spurs even more ability for them to advocate for the things that they want.”
Gaskill explained that transportation is an area where small shifts are possible and necessary, and nondriving transportation options are critical for communities at CSU to function sustainably.
“At CSU in particular, we have a lot of dedicated resources to doing this work and to trying to make transportation accessible to everyone to try to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” Gaskill said. “After electricity and natural gas, the No. 1 greenhouse gas emission at CSU is transportation, so we’re really trying to target that, and it’s a tough one to get at.”
Additionally, Zach Clark-Lee, operations manager at Vindeket Foods, brought attention to food waste as a major crisis when it comes to consumption and sustainability.
“Thirty percent of the landfill is food, and we have people that are starving,” Clark-lee said. “We’ve put all this time and energy into this food, and here we are throwing it away, and we’re looking at people starving. I mean, this makes no sense to me.”
Clark-Lee stressed the need for systemic changes when it comes to advocating for equity, access and waste reduction in the food industry.
“It’s looking at the broken system and saying, ‘How can we either change the system and make it equitable for everybody, or how can we divert this food waste to the people that can use it?’” Clark-Lee said.
Cultural differences also played a role in the discussion, especially in the realm of fashion sustainability.
Sonali Diddi, an associate professor who teaches global environmental sustainability, drew from her personal experience living in different parts of the world to explain how cultural norms influence consumption patterns.
Originally from India, Diddi explained that the norm growing up was to use everything for as long as possible. She referenced a shirt being worn, then being used as a cloth, then being used as something to clean a chalkboard, until it had to be thrown away — because it didn’t make sense to buy new things when other items could be repurposed instead.
“I went to Australia from India to do my master’s, and it was just a huge shift to move from a production-centric, more collectivist society to a more individualistic consumption,” Diddi said. “It was just a ‘buy, buy, buy’ kind of attitude.”
She went on to discuss how “the need for new” is not sustainable, especially in the fast fashion industry, and noted that brands will only change sustainability efforts when their bottom line is threatened.
Michael Buttram, the basic needs program manager for the Office of Student Leadership, Involvement and Community Engagement, encouraged students to take a stance when it comes to sustainability and reminded them that they have the power to influence public policy.
“You have a unique position right now with the student voice to demand a space at that table,” Buttram said. “That’s the youth; that’s the new vote, and so the policymakers have to be aware and have to stay there. So do this. Be loud. Be the squeaky wheel. Demand that the policymakers come to the table, and you can challenge those things.”
Reach Laila Shekarchian at news@collegian.com or on social media @CSUCollegian.
