Community members brainstorm green ideas

Brittany Boettcher is looking to start a green business of her own. For her, sustainability starts with the individual.

The junior agriculture resource economics major turned to last night's Sustainnovate 2011 event in the Hoff Theater in Stamp Student Union for ideas to approach sustainability with a creative eye. As many university eco-friendly goals have recently been met, university students, alumni and administrators used the event as a forum to share past and present projects. The AshokaU TerpChangemaker team, the business school's Center for Social Value Creation and the Office of Sustainability organized the event as part of Ignite UMD, a new multi-part series of discussions modeled after TED Talks — events run by the nonprofit organization TED that focus on technology, entertainment and design.

About 40 students listened as the keynote speaker, Provost Ann Wylie, highlighted the university's goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 as laid out in the Facilities Master Plan. Wylie said the university was far from reaching this goal, adding that carbon contributors, such as the university power plant and air travel, are major road blocks.

"I can't overstate how difficult this is going to be for us," Wylie said.

She said the university aims to accomplish this goal by making older buildings more eco-friendly, through installing more green roofs and creating systems that would capture rain water for reuse. But Wylie said it was up to students to keep the university moving in the right direction.

"[Students] are very much the providers of sustainability," Wylie said. "So students, keep after us; don't let us rest on our laurels."

Terp Changemakers decided to kick off the Ignite UMD series by talking about sustainability because group member and event organizer Luciana Debenedetti said students in the last year have been particularly active in developing new approaches to create a more eco-conscious campus.

"There's been a lot of initiatives on campus to reduce our carbon footprint and have more sustainable practices," Debenedetti said. "We really wanted to make this a big campus event that everyone should care about."

And Office of Sustainability manager Mark Stewart said student input is an integral component of upping the university's sustainability ante.

"We need to figure out how to bring more people into this initiative," Stewart said. "We want students to learn more about sustainability through living it on campus."

He spoke to students about different goals the office completed over the last several years to teach sustainability to the university community through initiatives such as the Chesapeake Project — a workshop that helped faculty integrate sustainability into their courses. Stewart said the goal was for each student to learn about the environment in at least three courses during their time at this university.

Some students said they were skeptical of the university's goals.

"I think their conception of sustainability doesn't get to the root of the problem," senior German and linguistics major Phil Glaser said.

Debenedetti said she hoped the event indirectly inspired students to launch sustainability initiatives of their own on the campus.

"We don't want to push directly where students feel like they have to do something," Debenedetti said. "It's our hope that by listening to [speakers], they'll take something away from it."

saravia at umdbk dot com