Central European University kicks off CEU Sustainability on World Earth Day
By Natalya Yakusheva and Nathan Johnson
On April 22, Budapest's Central European University (CEU) celebrated World Earth Day in style with a day-long programme of environment-themed entertainment, activities and presentations. The festivities included the long-awaited introduction of recycling bins on campus.
Support for the Earth Day festivities came from the CEU Department of Environmental Sciences and the Student Union, with some student and teacher pocket money thrown in for good measure. Other groups played a key role in organising the Earth Day event, such as the student-run Sustainability Campus Initiative (SCI), the CEU Sustainability Advisory Committee (CSAC) - comprising faculty, administrative and operations staff and students - and the Human Rights Student Initiative. Both the SCI and CSAC were instrumental in getting the recycling pilot off the ground, as were CEU administrators putting in time with the Campus Redevelopment Office (CREO).
"SCI started six months ago," CEU student and SCI member/organiser Petr Kiryushin told Green Horizon. "We wanted to see CEU become a more sustainable, more environmentally friendly place. We first organised a sustainability festival on October 10 of last year. Afterwards, we decided that we wanted to do some long-term actions, so we asked our teachers to let us do some assignments to promote sustainability on campus. We're doing something that no one has done here before, and it's great."
A healthy way to start the day
The day started with an on-campus fair-trade and organic breakfast in the 'Japanese Garden'. Open to all CEU students and faculty, roughly 75 people enjoyed pancakes, bread, fruit, jam, crisp veggies, tea and coffee, and had a chance to learn about the SCI's immediate aims and long-term goals. One plan is to carry out a re-design of the Japanese Garden itself, thus making it a greener, more comfortable urban setting for relaxation, study or chatting with friends and acquaintances. Remodelling should be completed around mid-May.
"Basically, what we're going to try to do is to make this place a little bit more sustainable, greener, more colourful, and more welcoming for students," said Kristin Faurest, a landscape artist in charge of the garden re-design effort. "Maybe it can become something like an urban laboratory."
As everyone enjoyed breakfast, two student volunteers, Lea Baumbach and Logan Strenchock, provided some background to the event - reminding everyone that this was merely one of 90 million Earth Day-related events taking place worldwide - and made a pitch to enlist support for the Japanese Garden project. Only a few minutes later, Baumbach had collected 20 signatures.
Booths and bins
Following this delicious start to the day was an Earth Day Fair. A number of stalls were set up inside the 'Octogon', the campus' nerve centre connecting the main entrance, auditorium, laptop area, library and lifts to classrooms. A number of wares and causes were on display at tables lining the area: SCI offering T-shirts, badges and bags (and accepting donations!); the hugely successful Budapest 'branch' of Critical Mass with stickers, t-shirts and posters; vegetarian lifestyle awareness-raising, with some very tantalising treats on offer; and Fair Trade Coffee courtesy of Treehugger Dan's bookstore and café. Games, crafts, information booths and photo and video exhibits were located immediately nearby in the main lobby.
It was in the early afternoon that the day's 'main event' took place: With 'Gonna Fly Now' - better known to an earlier generation of moviegoers as the 'Rocky Theme' - playing through a boom-box, students clad in matching Sustainable CEU T-shirts bound into the Octogon, each hoisting high a brand-new recycling bin for use on campus. Following an excited round of applause, a paper ribbon-cutting ceremony marked a symbolic beginning of a new era at CEU. Doing the scissoring honours was Head of Student Services Peter Johnson, who spoke a few words about the challenges involved just in getting three recycling bins set up for collection on campus for the first time in CEU's 20-year history.
"I'm very excited to be here to help inaugurate this new addition to the university community," Johnson addressed those present. "This is a great day and I'm really proud of the students who worked really hard on this. Of course, these bins will not accomplish anything by themselves. It's all of you in the community who have to do something."
For the time being, students will be able to deposit waste at two locations on campus into either of three bins marked 'paper', 'plastic' and 'trash' (some of the waste collected from the latter will be separated and recycled). No one would claim that the bins will usher in a 'recycling revolution' on campus, but they do mark a significant, important first step in a long-term strategy for raising environmental awareness within the CEU community - both now and in the future.
"Getting some recycling bins in place on campus was one of the first SCI initiatives," said Logan Strenchock, a CEU student from the United States. "We all come from different places, but lots of people were asking: 'Where are the recycling bins?' It's what a lot of people are used to back home."
Forward momentum
The event concluded with a series of brief presentations in the neighbouring auditorium from those most closely involved with the Sustainable Campus Initiative. A word of welcome came from Emily Ferrell from the CEU's Human Rights Initiative, after which CEU Senior Vice President and Chief Operation Officer Liviu Matei gave an inspiring introductory speech. Stuart Durrant then walked those in attendance through the nuts and bolts of the CEU redevelopment strategy. Tamara Steger, Head of the Campus Sustainability Advisory Committee lauded the CSI efforts, and expressed hope that future incoming students will be able to build from present momentum. Finally, Petr Kiryushin talked about a 'bottom-up' approach towards making CEU a greener campus. He also thanked individually all of those in attendance who volunteered countless hours of spare time to make this inspiring, fun event possible.
"What is special about CEU as an institution is that we don't necessarily follow whatever track comes out of Brussels or somewhere else," Matei remarked during his presentation. "CEU is a university where people encourage thinking. I think that this is what we should also do in the area of sustainability. A small initiative can force people to start thinking, and we need to provoke people to start thinking and seeing things in different ways."
