Sustainability plan leads to fair trade recognition for UWO

Within the next few weeks, UW-Oshkosh will become the first in the United States to be recognized as a fair trade university.

The campus is making a commitment to the use of many fair trade products, which focuses on paying fair prices to producers and advocating higher standards for sustainability in the making of goods.

"The point is that the people raising these products should have a living wage," said David Barnhill, Environmental Studies professor.

The accomplishment is just one small part of the new Campus Sustainability Plan, unveiled

Tuesday after more than a year and a half of work. The plan outlines 12 top priorities in reducing the university's environmental impact.

"Everyone's going green," said Chancellor Richard Wells. "It seems like every time you turn around, everything's green and everything's sustainable. We really want to be doing it in a fundamental way and move forward as an institution."

The plan focuses on four main areas: operations, teaching, research and outreach. Facilities Management Director Steve Arndt is taking on the operations aspect.

One "ambitious" goal, as Arndt put it, is to become 100 percent independent of fossil fuels by 2012. That would require either remodeling or replacing the heating plant on the north side of campus.

"Sustainability is becoming part of our thinking process in how we do things," Arndt said. "The power plant is proof of that."

In the teaching phase, faculty will have the opportunity to incorporate sustainability into classrooms by either modifying courses or creating new ones.

"We hope we're going to be seeding a widespread diffusion of sustainability in courses on this campus," Barnhill said. "Hopefully most of our students will have somewhere down the line encountered the idea of sustainability."

Barnhill also looks forward to using UW-Oshkosh as a subject of research.

"We're planning to have both faculty and student research to look at what we're doing and how we can do it better," he said.

The sustainability team composed of 28 faculty and staff members, launched the effort to create the plan in October 2006. The 124-page document outlines the university's attempt to become a national leader in sustainability. Other priorities include hiring a full-time director of sustainability, performing a campus-wide energy use study and expanding the campus audit on environmental impact.

One such audit several years ago showed that the university was imbalanced in its focus on sustainability.

"We were heavy in terms of doing the work on sustainability in our operation planning, but really not focusing on the research and outreach part of it," Wells said of past practices.

Arndt said that the energy study should show which areas of campus need a reduction in usage. Another time to cut energy use is during winter and summer breaks.

"We're going to try to consolidate and shut down different things when there's no one around," he said.