Students in the environmental organization Society for Natural Resources Conservation are trying to turn Cornell into a "tree-free campus," and they don't mean quadrangles without greenery. Rather, the barren look of clear-cut former forests is what the students hope to avoid, by persuading more buyers of paper to insist on 100 percent post-consumer-waste recycled products -- to replace the thousands of reams of "virgin" paper consumed at the university every year.
Students in the conservation society (abbreviated as SNRC and pronounced "snerk") also would like Cornell to avoid wood products made from old-growth forests in all new construction, as at least one college in the Northeast has done. But extreme recycling was on their minds in a March 5 information meeting to tout the economic and environmental advantages of paper that doesn't kill trees.
"Cornell is a very decentralized place, and that means individual departments have the freedom to choose what they buy," said SNRC President Garrett Meigs, a sophomore in natural resources, before introducing four guest speakers to about 75 representatives of campus units who gathered in Anabel Taylor Hall for the midmorning meeting. "Our goal is to make Cornell University more sustainable."
Pitching recycled paper at the March 5 meeting, forest ecologist Timothy Fahey, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in natural resources, said the computer revolution's promise of a "paperless society" never came to pass. "In fact, it's gone just the other way," Fahey said, noting that the United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, uses a third of the paper. This country's paper-recycling rate (about 35 percent) is about average, he said, but other nations do much better.
"You're not recycling unless you buy recycled," Fahey said. Making paper from virgin wood pulp is an energy-intensive, polluting, "very nasty industry," he said, whereas recycling paper creates more jobs (than timber harvesting and virgin pulp production), results in less pollution, consumes 70 percent less energy and keeps recyclable paper out of landfills.
Also speaking were Michael Peek, a 1988 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences who is now a vice president of New Leaf Paper Inc.; John Demos, the Northeast representative of the American Land Alliance; and Tad McGalliard, education coordinator at Cornell's Center for the Environment.
Demos said two major schools (Indiana and Notre Dame) have made a campuswide commitment to tree-free paper and a smaller one (College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine) has gone a step further by refusing old-growth-forest building materials in future construction projects.
McGalliard called SNRC a force for positive change in the environmental stewardship movement on campus. "What these students are trying to do fits well with [environmental stewardship]," he said.
And the students aren't accepting excuses like: "Recycled paper costs too much" or "I don't know where to buy it." Paper made from 30 percent post-consumer recycled waste now costs about the same as "virgin" paper, they note, while 100 percent recycled paper costs slightly more. They have lined up sources, such as Peek's New Leaf Paper for large quantities and The Cornell Store for smaller orders, as well as Staples.
SNRC Treasurer Jennifer Heinlen, a sophomore in rural sociology, said grassroots organizations like theirs are now working at all the Ivy League schools. She would be especially proud, Heinlein said, if Cornell could be the first among its peers to become a totally tree-free paper campus.
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