There’s no better time to think about sustainability than in the middle of a nice, long pee. That’s how many students at Ithaca College first learn about EcoReps, a primarily student-run environmental education and action group that’s served the campus for close to a decade. EcoReps populates the Campus Center bathrooms with what they like to call installations — plaques strategically positioned at a toilet-sitter’s eye-level, providing information about sustainability and EcoReps initiatives.
One such installation was senior sociology major Oak Weihing’s introduction to the organization. In the four years since, Weihing has contributed to the group first as a volunteer and later as a paid staff member employed by the Office of Student Sustainability. Currently, they act as Donation Representative for the Campus Center Dining Hall, helping to facilitate weekly food donations in partnership with Friendship Donation Network, a local non-profit. Each Friday night, EcoReps packages unserved food from across campus for distribution to Ithaca locals struggling with food insecurity. Since the initiative began three years ago, EcoReps has donated over 12,000 meals, averaging 200 individually packaged meals per week.
“There’s a reason I’m the food donations rep,” Weihing said. “It’s because it’s the thing I care the most about. [I love] hearing about the people who receive these meals and how appreciative they are of it, and how much of a difference it makes.”
Scott Doyle, an IC alum who oversees EcoReps and heads the Office of Energy Management and Sustainability, said the program helps connect the college to the greater Ithaca community.
“We’re always trying to learn from the campus partners,” Doyle said. “I feel like our campus is like a living lab, like a small city almost. We do things that the broader community does, and we’re always looking to sharpen things based on what’s successful and also what’s problematic in the community.”
Local initiatives helped inspire the Gardens and Circles Apartments composting program, another EcoReps effort to minimize food waste. Students living in the apartments can sign up to receive compost bins, which EcoReps collects on Sunday mornings in partnership with Tompkins County. From there, the waste gets sent to Cayuga Compost, to be transformed into soil and sold to personal gardens. Beyond sustainability, the effort benefits the college financially, minimizing costs for garbage collection.
As the initiative continues to unfold, EcoReps attempts to educate students about what items can and can’t be composted. Doyle hopes that, as a whole, the work of EcoReps can help students plan for how they might prioritize sustainability in their future.
“Maybe it inspires somebody to get involved with that work, if they graduate,” Doyle said. Even if not, their efforts would ideally encourage students to engage in environmentally-friendly practices after graduation.
On campus, rumors often circulate that beyond educating the student body, many IC sustainability initiatives lack tangible results. Some community members say that the recycling at IC doesn’t get recycled at all, and is simply meant to build eco-friendly habits for students’ futures. Doyle said this belief is false. Though it’s true that the same garbage trucks collect both trash and recycling, they are kept separate throughout the process. Trucks make multiple rounds across campus, picking up trash, recycling, and compost all in different loads.
“Single stream recycling is still a thing,” He said. “We still want to do it, and we’re still working hard to make sure that’s the case.” He said that the trucks typically come for garbage first, then circle back around for recycling, and then finally compost. Each load costs the college a different amount for processing depending on the load’s weight, with the highest rates for garbage and a reduced rate for recycling. Composting is funded separately, as part of an annual fee.
IC, which was ranked #22 in the country for sustainability efforts by Princeton Review, hopes to be carbon neutral by 2050. In the meantime, EcoReps has lots of work to do.
To boost recycling engagement and awareness, EcoReps organized a recycling competition between Ithaca College and SUNY Cortland in the weeks leading up to Cortaca, the annual football rivalry game between the two colleges. EcoReps collaborated with their counterparts, the Cortland Green Reps, to design the challenge. Whichever school can collect the most five cent deposit cans and bottles will win.
Besides a lack of awareness about recycling, many EcoReps have noticed wasteful practices regarding dorm and campus essentials. Another major effort the EcoReps have taken on to reduce waste is the Take It Or Leave It (TIOLI, pronounced “tee-o-lee”). The program offers a place for people to both dispose of and acquire items such as clothes, kitchenware, and books for free. TIOLI is in Bogart Residence Hall, which houses first-years. Shay Mogge, a junior environmental studies major and EcoRep, said that EcoReps had begun to notice a pattern of negative consumption.
“At the beginning of the semester, everyone buys a bunch of stuff from Amazon,” Mogge said. “And then when they move out at the end of the year, it’s all in a dumpster outside. We see that, and we’re like, ‘that’s awful.’”
Mogge said that TIOLI comes as a pleasant surprise to many students.
“A lot of people are just wandering into Bogart, and they’re like, ‘What is this? This is awesome,’” they said.
Combatting climate change can be a daunting task. Small moments of positivity, both social and environmental, can help bring hope in these dark times. Whether supplying a hungry person with a meal, or providing a student with used textbooks they’d otherwise have to buy, EcoReps attempts to foster sustainability through moments of human connection.
“I would encourage anyone who is feeling climate dread… to try and engage in your own community, start building a better world,” Mogge said. “And that means one interaction at a time, that means very, very small. And then we’ll be able to change things that way.”
Mogge has found the community of volunteers and staff working to package food donations every Friday to be one such source of humanity and hope.
“When we do get a chance to involve people,” they said, “that’s the stuff that makes it feel like you’re saving the world.”
Meital Fried is a first-year Park Pathways major who writes about the real impacts Ithaca College EcoReps are having through their work. She can be reached at mfried@ithaca.edu