(Update: On 11 Oct 2021 the Reed College Board of Trustees announced its decision to divest the college’s endowment from fossil fuels. Read about it here.)
This has been a tough summer in Portland. We’ve set a record for the number of days in which the top temperatures have exceeded 90F (average: 12 days/yr, 2015: 25 and counting). Despite the heat, and drought, and wildfires, Reed students will be returning to a campus that looks mostly green. But how ‘green’ is Reed really?
The Sierra Club has issued their 9th annual back-to-school rankings of eco-friendly colleges and universities and Reed is nowhere to be found. I suspect we don’t even submit any data.
Who are the cool schools? Way out in front is University of California, Irvine (859.75 points). Irvine’s sister campus, University of California, Davis (787.97 points) comes in a distant second. But don’t be fooled by the size of these big state universities, puny Oberlin College comes in fifth (769.50 points). Even Lewis & Clark College (756.30 points), rises above its location in the cloud banks parked on top of Portland’s west hills, to come in ninth. A cloudy climate, it seems, is no impediment to greening one’s campus (here is what Sierra says about Lewis & Clark).
I suspect that the main obstacle holding Reed back is lack of will. We think that environmental issues are important, just not that important. So we don’t hire a full-time Sustainability Coordinator. We don’t assign staff to work full-time with the rest of the Reed community on environmental issues. We have rejected all forms of divestment from fossil fuels, large and small. And while we have made some progress on campus green projects, we keep pretty quiet about them. (A good way to keep expectations low.). Reed is perfectly willing to let other northwest institutions take the lead — Lewis & Clark (#9), Portland State University (#20), Oregon State University (#40) — and hope that some of their green reputation will rub off on us.
Here is what Sierra magazine says about Lewis & Clark College:
Lewis & Clark has gone above and beyond in how it manages its waste: In 2014, the school diverted an impressive 513 tons from the landfill. Students have to pay extra if they print more than 650 pages in an academic year, so everyone prints double-sided. Residence halls hold move-out events during which students donate unwanted stuff, and volunteers run an appliance take-back program. The dining halls have audited what they throw away and offer a discount to those who bring in reusable containers. Unused food goes to underserved students at local grade schools.
