The Sustainability Advocates are a group of students who were elected to the Sustainability Advocate position on their residence hall councils. The goal of the Sustainability Advocate program is to empower and guide students in learning more about sustainability on campus and sharing that knowledge with their peers. They learn this information through presentations from other students doing sustainability work on campus, their own self-guided research, activities, and group discussions. A few of the topics that the Advocates received presentations on this semester include energy on campus and the Cogeneration Plant, the differences between paper towels and air hand dryers, electronic waste, and a general sustainability at UNH presentation.
This Fall semester, the Advocates worked primarily on planning sustainability-centered socials for their residence halls. They began by addressing a sustainability topic they were interested in and planning an activity around that for the enrichment of their fellow residents. Some examples of the socials that the Advocates conducted are a sustainable cooking class, tote bag painting, sustainability and composting trivia, a hall thrift store, and many more!
Every Advocate also met with their Hall Director or Assistant Hall Director to create a Sustainability Snapshot of their residence hall. These meetings were able to provide the Sustainability Institute with good firsthand insight into the state of sustainability within the various residence hall buildings. One of the greatest takeaways from these Snapshots was that the greatest sustainability challenge in our residence halls centers around improper items contaminating the recycling bins. In light of the identification of this issue, the Advocates will be heavily focusing on recycling education within their residence halls in the Spring semester.
Finally, the Advocates partnered up to write a short article about a sustainability topic related to campus. These short articles were based off areas that the Advocates were interested in, and many revolved around presentations they received from Sustainability Institute interns or expansions of the topics that their socials were based on. The topics of these articles were energy on campus, sustainable eating, wildlife on campus, Trash 2 Treasure, and air dryers vs. Paper towels. These short articles will be included in our semester newsletter, which will be sent out to all campus residents early in the Spring semester!
Looking forward to the Spring semester, Advocates will be focusing more on delivering knowledge about recycling at UNH to their residence halls. They will achieve this by designing a tabling activity that they can run together in their residence halls and dispersing materials about recycling to their fellow residents.
We are also still on the lookout for Advocates from various residence halls. If you are interested in becoming a Sustainability Advocate in the Spring semester, reach out to your hall director and Megan Broderick at Megan.Broderick@unh.edu to learn more about getting involved in the program!
