Gaia Focuses on Smith Environmental Issues
By Stina Soderling (‘06)

Gaia is Smith’s student-run environmental organization. Gaia’s mission is to raise awareness about environmental concerns, to increase the level of reuse and recycling of materials on the Smith campus, and to reduce the amount of waste our community produces. In recent years, we have led efforts to get Smith to use organic, fair trade coffee as well as to cut down on paper and plastic throw-away items in the dining halls. This semester, we are working on three consecutive campaigns: campus conservation, paperless month/buy-nothing-day, and dining halls.

The Campus Conservation group of GAIA is working on a few projects that involve conserving water, electricity, and paper on campus. The water conservation project involves researching the use of water-saving showerheads on campus. Reducing electricity usage entails two projects: looking into the current use of compact fluorescent light bulbs on campus and putting up "Save Energy: Please Turn off when Leaving" signs above the light switches in public buildings. Another project involves reducing paper waste by replacing paper napkins with cloth napkins. This project will begin on a small trial scale with just one house in order to observe how effective it is.

Paperless month takes place every spring, and is a cooperative effort between Gaia and the college administration. For one month the entire campus community is encouraged to reduce paper usage as much as possible. This can be accomplished by such efforts as printing on both sides of paper before recycling, or using alternatives to paper like e-mail and chalking to advertise events.

The dining halls campaign met with Dining Services several times last year to discuss how best dining consolidation could incorporate environmentally responsible values. We successfully lobbied for a reduction in unnecessary paper and plastic items, and encouraged more bulk food purchases to reduce packaging material. The result was a campus-wide reduction in availability of to-go containers (which until this year constituted an annual, per dining hall cost of $16,000!) and the incorporation of bulk cereal and condiment items in larger dining facilities. This semester we continue to monitor the dining situation to see if additional improvements are possible.

Gaia generally meets Thursdays at 5 pm in the Campus Center. For more info, contact Gaia’s co-chairs: Katherine Thompson, kthomps2@smith.edu or Stina Soderling, ssoderli@smith.edu

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