Columbia's Quiet Revolution

Eliav Bitan

The problem with a quiet revolution is that no one hears it. Pragmatic environmentalists who are taking the lead in the effort to create a sustainable campus, city, and world are waging Columbia's current revolution. This generation of reformers does not look quite as audacious as the revolutionaries of 1968; they're certainly not smoking in the President's office. But their achievements are quietly eclipsing those of previous generations of progressive Columbians. Today's leaders sign petitions, meet with administrators, present practical technological solutions, and in the past few years have served as the impetus for fundamental changes that have gone basically unnoticed.

A few weeks ago I attended Columbia's Environmental Job Fair. I put on a jacket and fancy sweater, and as I walked to Lerner I passed a few friends. Each asked where I was going, and why I was so dressed up.

"I'm going to an environmental job fair."

"Oh, I didn't think environmentalists dressed up."

The next person I saw made a similar joke.

"Where are you going?"

"An environmental job fair."

"Environmentalists have jobs?"

I was amused by both jokes, even though they each expose stereotypes of environmentalists. We are scruffy, unshaven, unemployed dreamers. We live in woods and fields, listen to alternative music, and have very little to do with the way a city like New York or an institution like Columbia actually functions. In fact, this environmentalist sensibility—a keen awareness of human impact on the natural world—drives many of Columbia's decisions. Our university is a leader in the field of making sustainable decisions and is proving that there is at least one problem that the administration and the student body can tackle together.

The environmental movement is predicated on an awareness of the ways that humans alter the Earth, often in fundamental, irreparable ways. Environmentalists study and attempt to limit practices that damage the Earth. This effort is complicated by the fact that some environmental damage occurs over a long period, and can diffuse beyond those initially responsible. For example, the owner of a polluting factory does not usually drink the toxic waters of an aquifer he has damaged. American companies that emit greenhouse gases are not always immediately impacted by severe weather events and other climate changes they have caused.

One response to this challenge is desperate, violent activity to stop otherwise disinterested business or governments from harvesting lumber or constructing factories and laboratories. Increasingly, environmental activists are focusing on promoting business practices that represent the marriage of environmentalist ideology and pragmatism, practices that do not destroy our natural resources and are profitable and strategic. Waste disposal is an example of an enterprise where an environmentally sound solution saves money in the short run. As our profligate creation of waste fills landfill space, the cost of storing waste has become a problem municipalities must address, creating business opportunities for those who can reduce human detritus. At times, the government provides incentives for companies to develop and implement environmental practices. In response to dramatic climate change, nations are seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, economic opportunities are available for those who can decrease rates of carbon dioxide emission. Finally, public awareness has the potential to cause significant numbers of individuals to choose environmentally sensitive behavior. Many Americans are choosing to eat organic or local foods, objecting to the petrochemical pesticides and genetic modification that agricultural conglomerates use to create huge yields. These three trends each create new markets for environmentally aware businesses.

Columbia Business School is currently launching a program to study these cases of environmentally conscious business. Working with the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), the Business school is pursuing the program Environmental Protection through Incentives and Commerce (EPIC), headed by CERC's James Warfield and professor Don Melnick. EPIC will seek out examples of business models that have involved environmental sustainability, and will publish a case study manual of environmentally sustainable business that will enable students to study environmentally conscious business practices.

As Professor Melnick sees it, the goal of EPIC is to take environmental profitability "out of this fuzzy, 'yes business can be sustainable and make money.'" The program seeks to bring in Fortune 500 companies and New York investing firms. "To do that that you need research, and we're a university—we do research. That's what we're good at," Professor Melnick explains. This research is the start of new ways of thinking about environmental protection and profit. Traditional business models, which have harnessed exploitive technologies to extract and utilize natural resources in a non-sustainable way, have had hundreds of years to evolve; it will take initiative, expertise, and creative thinking to develop new ones.

Melnick is working with the Coalition of Rainforest Nations on his own practical initiative, one designed to create profit for rainforests that reduce global climate change. To reduce international carbon dioxide emissions, the Kyoto Protocol established a system of issuing carbon credits to national governments. Some nations produce less than their allowed amount of carbon dioxide, so they sell these excess credits to other nations, creating a market in carbon emissions. There are provisions in the Kyoto protocol enabling countries to earn credits for reforestation or other processes that increase the number of green plants sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. But there is no provision for adjusting a country's carbon credits for avoiding deforestation. The Coalition of Rainforest Nations, supported by CERC and Don Melnick. is attempting to give nations with forests carbon credits for their sequestration of carbon. Because rainforests are the main place where CO2 is stored, this would give tropical developing nations an incentive to maintain their rainforests. The current CO2 market is about 30 euros per ton of CO2. If developing nations can earn 30 euros for every ton of CO2 their trees extract from the atmosphere, they will have a fiscal incentive not to deforest their land—it will be worth the most in its natural state. Natural ecosystem markets like the CO2 market will be a major source of investment revenues in our lifetimes. Professor Melnick knows there are many unexploited natural resource markets, claiming that the people who find them and exploit them are "going to make a lot of money." He points out the example of "people two years ago who bought carbon credits at 2-3 euros a ton and are selling them at 30 now."

One canny Columbia student who's riding the winds of change is CU Business School Alum Ron Gonen ('04), who created a business called Recyclebank. The business plan is simple. Consumers recycle their waste and are paid by the pound, earning $5 in coupons for every 10 pounds of recycling. Gonen has implemented Recyclebank in Philadelphia, where both local businesses and national chains like Starbucks and Bed Bath and Beyond have participated. Recyclebank charges municipal clients per household and collects additional revenue from recycling plants. For example, Philadelphia has estimated savings of $100,000 in landfill fees last year alone. Mr. Gonen is seeking to expand the program citywide, estimating that Philadelphia could save $17 million a year in landfill fees. Recyclebank has paid back a $100,000 initial investment from Columbia Business School's Lang Center for Entrepreneurship, and will be introduced in over 100,000 houses in New England next year, according to The New York Times. Gonen says his Recyclebank shows "that a company that focuses on the environment can also be very profitable."

Albeit on a smaller scale, Columbia undergraduates are finding other ways to make money by being environmentally aware. Only two years old, the student run organic food Co-op, LOAF, has begun to break even. Founder Susan Kahane explained the relationship between organic foods and a healthy environment. Organic farming "doesn't affect the surrounding land in negative ways, and allows farms to be more sustainable." Not only are farms sustainable, but there are immediate environmental health benefits to farming without artificial chemicals like pesticides. As Ms. Kahane points out, "Pesticides can cause cancer and other diseases." Columbians' response to these ideas about organic food was enthusiastic. Kahane recalled starting the project up. "When we had the idea we get a lot of emails all the time, being like 'wow this a genius idea.'" The force of student interest in organic food forced Columbia's Dining and Housing to give LOAF its own space in JJ's Place to run its own business.

To be sure, student interest was not based on idealism alone. Kahane says that among the forty or so students that show meetings, many "aren't interested in organic or healthy food particularly, or at all. They bring chicken fingers to the meeting. They like the idea of something student run, they like the idea of entrepreneurship." LOAF isn't making its owners rich yet. Despite free space and an initial grant to buy food, LOAF has only managed to break even after its second year of operation. Food often languishes on shelves before Columbians overcome the allure of fried chicken to buy something organic. But organizers are optimistic that as more students are educated by LOAF's free handouts and come to think more critically about the sources of our foods, sales at the other store in JJ's Place should increase.

Alongside start-ups like LOAF, undergraduates at Columbia are pushing the University to adopt more environmentally sound practices that it can easily afford to incorporate. The effort to convince the University to change over to recycled paper has been major. Stephen Cox, a first-year member of Students for Environment and Economic Justice (SEEJ), has been part of an effort to give Columbians the options of using recycled paper at no extra cost. Stephen and the SEEJ Tree-Free Paper campaign "used petitions and information campaigns to engage the wider student body in our campaigns." Stephen knew that the idea of buying recycled paper for the university had "widespread support" but required "contact with administration…the ones who ultimately make decisions." SEEJ also conducted tests to show that recycled paper works as well as non-recycled in printers and copiers. In March, the CU office of purchasing announced that Columbia would buy 30% recycled paper at the same price as non-recycled, enabling departments to switch with no costs.

The switch to recycled paper exemplifies current student environmental achievements and shortcomings. Thirty percent recycled paper is nothing new, and Columbia's lag in incorporating can be explained by resistance to more expensive paper as well as conservative distaste for mandating recycling. Some departments have been using one-hundred percent recycled paper for years, and Columbia's purchasing decision to buy thirty percent recycled paper in 2005 seems a little bit delayed. Columbia students trying to encourage the switchover to recycled paper could point to the example of Housing and Dining services, which switched to recycled paper a few years ago.

Indeed, the department of Housing and Dining are key leaders in Columbia's green revolution. Housing is saving electricity and money by switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs through the light bulb exchange in Watt and Woodbridge, and putting timers on lights in McBain and EC. Every time students do laundry they use Energystar certified electricity and water efficient washers and dryers. Additionally, Housing also has plans to install low flow toilets across campus. Dining has switched the plastic materials used in all campus eateries from oil-based plastic to plastic that is synthesized from corn resins. These containers decompose in a matter of days, not decades, and their production requires far less CO2. The paper napkins and cups at Columbia eateries all come from recycled materials. And all the cooking oil used on campus gets recycled by JR Rendering. Many of these ideas didn't come from students at all. They simply came from administrators at Housing and Dining with bright ideas about ways to save energy and resources.

I asked Larry Levitas why he was supervising so much change across campus in the Dining department. He cited the leadership of President Bollinger and the pressure of Columbia students. Levitas also believes that environmental sustainability is simply "the right thing to do." Some see this rationale as a nearly religious adherence to a set of ideas about the future. While decisions made by Housing and Dining to enforce environmental sustainable may seem unnecessary and invasive, they are actually the result of a practical attention to the well being of the University, its students, and the world. Environmental policy is enacted for pragmatic self-interest, and the only values it assumes is the maintenance of our natural habitat for future years and generations.

Mr. Levitas explained his reasoning with a common-sense analogy. People who don't address the idea of environmental sustainability, he says, "are like a landlord who won't fix a broken roof because it costs too much. He lets it go, but ultimately winds up depreciating the value of his own property." The Earth's depreciation will be disastrous as it is, ultimately, all the property we've got.

As Mr. Levitas has met with student groups and implemented new changes, each greening initiative has led to another. "This is like a steamroller, building momentum…I know my name won't get remembered, but we are achieving a small something here." Housing and Dining, and Columbia itself, is, in Mr. Levitas's words "demonstrating that this works," taking a leadership role in our community, implementing specific changes for pragmatic reasons.

ELIAV BITAN is a first-year Ecology student at Columbia College. He has a job researching wind energy for the Earth Institute.