One per cent campaign will make us greener
While in Montreal for the Less Talk, More Action conference, David Suzuki toured the greenhouse on the 13th floor of the Hall Building. The environmentalist sampled some of the produce from the greenhouse while filming a special segment of the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet. The five-minute spot focused on Concordia’s initiative spearheading the one per cent campaign on campus.
Matthew Gore
A record number of student voters approved a fee levy of 75 cents per three-credit course for a fund that would help make the campus more sustainable.
“I am ecstatic, but not surprised,” said Peter Schiefke, who along with Mohamed Shuriye developed the idea for the one per cent campaign. The goal is for students to donate the equivalent of one per cent of their tuition to make Concordia one of the greenest universities in the world. With the contributions of roughly 42,000 full- and part-time students, the fund should come to about $185,000 when it is collected for the first time this fall.
Shiefke added that more students voted for the campaign than for the student union executive. “Some voters came out just for the campaign.”
The projects which may be funded are many: a 100-tonne composting facility on the Loyola campus; electric shuttle buses; reusable bags for all campus purchases; reusable mugs for free trade coffee.
Some of the projects come out of Sustainable Concordia, which started as a student project four years ago and has become permanent through the support of the office of Vice-President Services Michael Di Grappa. It receives a separate student fee levy of 5 cents per credit.
The one per cent campaign will be managed by a board including Sustain-able Concordia staff members Melissa Garcia Lamarca and Chantal Beaudoin, as well as student leaders and university administrators. Conversations are expected to begin soon to determine how the board will operate within the current structure.
“The board will have to establish a five-year plan and set priorities.” Schiefke sees this as a first step. By next year, he hopes to go across the country, promoting the program on other campuses.
“We already have a sustainability group on campus. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” Schiefke said, suggesting that the existing group could manage the increased funding here, while the program expands elsewhere.
“These funds mean that sustainability issues are now front and centre and no longer on the back burner. We have the means to make these issues a priority,” Schiefke said.
He is expecting confirmations about contributions to the fund from the university and the provincial government.
Schiefke and Shuriye were CSU executives last year. They formed Youth Action Montreal, which held the Less Talk, More Action conference last month.
(See more on the CSU elections here)