Major
Biological Sciences
Advisor
Mundorf, Norbert
Advisor Department
Communication Studies
Date
5-2020
Keywords
Sustainability; Recycling; Fraternity Circle
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Abstract
In our ever-changing world, focusing on sustainability has become important due to human-caused climate change. As a result of our world changing and advancing, the majority of the population now moves at a fast pace. In some cases, this speed of living requires the easiest route possible when it comes to using resources or disposing of items. However, there have been many advancements that have given our world options to be more sustainable. In the 1970’s, recycling was introduced and groups ranging from large corporations to individual households began recycling items and reducing their overall waste production. This was a big step toward sustainability yet even 50 years later, some Americans are still not proficiently knowledgeable about recycling or participating in it. Many other advancements such as energy saving light bulbs or products that are made out of recycled materials have been made available to the public, but some choose to not take advantage.
For my project I decided to focus on sustainability options in the houses located on Fraternity Circle at the University of Rhode Island. I have lived in a sorority house where I witnessed a lack of sustainability first-hand. This lack of knowledge and effort toward options of sustainability was concerning to me, so I wanted to know if the rest of Fraternity Circle followed this trend. To do so, I constructed a survey that collected data on recycling efforts, purchasing of disposable items, waste production, energy use in the houses, and awareness about sustainability. The results from the survey have shown that there is in fact a lack of education on sustainability, and a majority of the houses do not take steps to be more sustainable. With this data, I will form a proposal that will be given to the housing directors on ways for the houses to be more sustainable. My hope for this project is that the Greek community at URI will become more educated on recycling and sustainability practices and, as a result, make changes to see these practices are put into place. The URI Greek community is a leader on campus for many things and sustainability should be one of them.