When you think of a university going green, you usually think recycling, conserving energy, using digital sources, or at least recycled paper in textbooks. But universities – and today’s students who are often referred to as the “sustainability generation” – are increasingly demanding deeper and deeper environmentally proactive measures and are holding decision makers accountable for them.
To that purpose, higher education is going green with more and more alternate power systems fueling college buses and mass transit vehicles. Solar and wind are being used to make indoor learning spaces comfortable, as well as the behind-the-scenes environments that control institutions of higher learning. And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the sustainability-focused research and development occurring in classrooms, labs, studios, and R&D think tanks nationwide.
Today’s university students are even demanding that their food is green. They want to know where it’s sourced from, how it’s sourced, and whether it has a sustainability footprint.
That’s why universities across the country turn to companies, such as Filta, that provide environmental services to commercial kitchens nationwide, including a growing plethora of college campuses. Filta’s services are used by universities to not only extend the life of cooking oil through micro-filtration, but also to ensure that it is recycled for biodiesel at the end of its useful life.
Consider this recent article a university journalism student penned about the work at her own school, the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Madison Wanco published the article after speaking with a Filta employee, who happens to be a peer college student. One local Reno television station, KTVN, even opined that eating fried food could help save the planet.
It would be hard to imagine a college campus without fried food, but when students learn that even their fries can be sustainable, it can be mind-blowing, life changing, and well, enlightening.
As it is clear from the student interest in the sustainability of cooking oil, campuses going green in multiple layers is of utmost importance to this younger generation who will soon take the reins as local, national, and world leaders. Being able to chalk up wins that pair their beloved fried food with sustainability is not only obviously attractive, but increasingly imperative to our country’s younger generations.
