Contributed by Samantha Flavell
Oswego County Today intern
OSWEGO – Sustainability and efforts to become more environmentally conscientious have been becoming more habitual and expansive, especially on the SUNY Oswego campus.
On the celebration of the first Earth Day in April of 1970, Oswego students filled a Dodge Desoto with trash and buried it, near the entrance of SUNY Oswego Campus on Route 104, to protest the excessive pollution caused by the auto industry at that time.
Since then, the Oswego State campus has been a microcosm of expanding sustainability programs and has been emphasizing better ways to protest waste and to make our campus and community more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
“I feel like it’s better with the big dramatic instances like if no one makes a big deal about something then no one is going to think about it,” SUNY Oswego Sophomore Luke Lindsay said.
The question is, what counts as a big deal?
In 2012 the SUNY Oswego Sustainability Office was formed, according to Jaime Adams who works for the Sustainability Office as one of the original team members.
The launch of this office began after SUNY Oswego was one of the first campuses to sign on and truly commit to the American College University President’s Climate Commitment that was established during former President Barack Obama’s term.
Since the office’s formation, numerous programs have been started. Each program was aimed at the goal of reducing the college’s carbon footprint.
Some of the more popular programs include the Sustainability Bike Share program.
“Our Bike Share program has become one of our best problems,” Adams said. “For every influx of new bikes that we get, our waiting list gets deeper.”
The aim of this program is to help cut down the CO2 emissions that commuters expel from their vehicles.
In data that was provided to Oswego County Today by Adams, it is recorded that the CO2 Emission of typical passenger vehicle is 4.7 metric tons.
In the Fall 2016 semester 34 bikes were taken out that rode 223.43 miles for 10.94 weeks and produced 1.005 metric tons of CO2 emissions which is substantially less than that of a typical vehicle.
In addition to Bike Share the Sustainability Office is working to promote its Bus Share program which is the sister program of Bike Share in an effort to cut down the campuses CO2 emissions.
Oswego Bus Share is a site that was put together by a previous Sustainability Office intern.
www.oswegobushare.com utilizes all of the preexisting Centro [bus] information, so as Centro updates so does the website without any interference from the school.
The site will give students step by step instructions on how to get to the nearest bus stop, which stop is theirs to get off at and approximately how long it will take to get there.
“We are hoping that this is a sort of alternative that takes away some of the, lack of sort of control that students may feel with the bus service around here,” Adams said.
Commuter traffic is one of the biggest contributors to the carbon footprint on the SUNY Oswego campus.
Both the Bike Share and the Bus Share program are aimed at helping provide students with more sustainable options for getting around the campus and city of Oswego.
“We are all guilty of it, but our job in this office is to make it [sustainability] not only easier, simpler, but also just the way things are done,” Adams said. “So it’s not easy, but it’s very worthwhile.”
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I don’t think the students care about this program, just look at the traffic jam out there between classes. There is bus service and they still won’t use it to get to their homes in the city.