|
The material flow analysis so far
completed for one university is crude
and incomplete. Yet, it includes a
representative sampling of the total
resource supply consumed during one
year. Not included are impacts
associated with electronic equipment
(other than through their contribution
to electrical power consumed), delivery
of materials to campus (or off campus to
landfills and recycling centers or via
wastewater discharges), construction of
new or remodeling of existing built
space, or landscape maintenance (other
than via consumption of motor fuels).
Ball State University does not operate
animal feedlots or agricultural research
fields, although it does maintain a
nursery for landscape plantings and
several small greenhouses for botanical
research; in addition, it owns and
maintains approximately 400 acres in
five off-campus properties that
constitute ‘natural areas’ operated as a
field station and environmental
education center. The university’s
research equipment and related impacts
are modest in comparison with Research 1
institutions, as the institution is
primarily a comprehensive university
that stresses undergraduate education,
but it provides educational resources
for approximately 18,500 students and
entertainment and services for the
larger community of Delaware County.
There remains a challenge to identify
and gather data for the remaining
significant flows of materials, then
calculate their associated upstream and
downstream impacts. Most of the impacts
reported in this study are of upstream
impacts for office paper and food &
beverages, or are downstream impacts in
the form of greenhouse gas emissions. It
remains to extend the analysis to
include other forms of impacts, both
upstream and downstream, in an effort to
more fully measure the environmental
footprint of Ball State University. On
the basis of what is reported to date,
other institutions of higher education
may find some promise in this early
attempt to understand the institutional
ecology of one university. As Ehrenfeld
(2002: 283A) suggests about the efficacy
of industrial ecology to bring about
improved environmental quality, “nothing
will change globally until
power-wielding institutional structures
adopt the central tenets of [industrial
ecology].” In this sense, institutional
structures within higher education are
no different from those within other
sectors of material economies. Here,
too, a new paradigm shift is in order.
|
|
