Different Shades of Green

As students scatter across campus headed to their first class of the day, many stop in the new snack bar to grab a coffee when they don’t have time for a sit-down, dining-hall breakfast. If they took a moment to pause, these students might notice that all of the coffee is organic and fair-trade certified. What students may not know is that a student made this happen.

Jen Dakin ’02 was concerned when she noticed that the coffee at Colby was neither organic nor fair trade. She proposed this change and worked to make a permanent impact on Colby and beyond. Dakin’s work is significant, but it’s just a small part of a larger movement at Colby: student-based environmental initiatives.

Projects like Dakin’s have become an important part of environmental awareness at Colby. Although not every member of the student body recognizes the efforts, a large and growing group of enthusiastic environmentalists have left, and continue to leave, their mark on Colby. Recent student-based projects have included removing trays from dining halls to help curb food waste, starting an organic garden, initiating a light-bulb exchange, and organizing a local food and artisan co-op in Waterville, among many more.

New ideas and student efforts are a starting place, but without the support of the college, these ideas would end as just that: ideas. At Colby, open dialog with the administration lets students share ideas and gain support for implementation. “Colby is very receptive to hearing about environmental stuff, which has been really awesome,” said Eric Hansen ’08, co-president of the Environmental Coalition. “Environmental stuff on campus is really a collaborative effort. There are a bunch of different groups, but they work really closely together.”

Enthusiasm and new ideas don’t always mean a new policy. Sometimes student-proposed initiatives are not feasible, but that doesn’t discourage the dedicated. “A lot of the constraints with environmental issues on campus have to do with money and time, but in general, everyone is open to talking about it,” said Anna Barnwell ’08, an environmental studies major.

Getting those conversations going often involves research and data—the most valuable tools for making sustainability changes at Colby, according to Economics Professor Tom Tietenberg of the Environmental Studies Program. He ranks Dakin’s coffee initiative highly among the many others he has seen in his 31 years at Colby, thanks in part to the fact that she did her homework. “She studied the whole thing and found that it was reasonable in cost and it was locally available,” he said. “So the college switched. A student engineered that change herself by providing all the information.”

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