JESSE-ROSS COHEN & CLAIRE YICK
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At this year’s ELS Career Panel, one participant was asked if he considered himself an “environmentalist,” and whether his work in private practice ever forced him to go against his beliefs. His answer was telling of the types of perceptions that environmental activists must often rally against: “Well, I’m not an environmentalist in the common sense of the word. I’ve never chained myself to a tree. But, you know, I recycle. I have a conscience.”
This year, the ELS brought the green part of Osgoode’s conscience into focus via the Sustainability Committee. We kept our chains (and whips) at home, working with the administration to achieve major success. Osgoode and its leadership want to be environmentally friendly actors, and we were happy to usher them in that direction.
A sample of our achievements:
- The now-infamous Lug-A-Mug Week, in which we gave out over 100 free coffees and 30 reusable mugs to those who stopped by the table and reminded themselves of the importance of diverting paper cup waste. A big thank you goes out to Lisa Xie and Aramark for supplying us with these freebies! Look forward to Lug-A-Mug returning next Fall. And, in the meantime, don’t forget that over one million (non-recyclable) cups are sent to Toronto landfills each day.
- Keeping on the trend of reusability, we were responsible for the installation of the soap dispenser (filled with Green Works naturally derived dishwashing soap) above the sink beside the Bistro. Now, Osgoode students need not waste an extra cup just to avoid their evening tea tasting like the Peruvian Blend coffee they bought that morning! A thank you goes out to Peter Lee for making this happen, as well as for generally being a prince.
- A big change for next year: a composting bin will be placed outside the Bistro, so that food scraps can become fertilizer instead of fodder for landfills. Again, a thank you must go out to the Lisa Xie and Aramark for agreeing to look after this bin.
Of course, challenges and obstacles remain. Our efforts to secure double-sided printers for the library led us into a bureaucratic quagmire, and we still can’t figure out why the lights in student services and throughout the rest of the Osgoode building need to stay on all night. Members of the Sustainability Committee met with Dean Sossin in February to discuss these issues. He was very receptive to ideas we had to green Osgoode and readily accepted the faculty and administration’s role in helping with the cause. The Dean has even checked out the “Broken Osgoode” tumblr, but wishes that students would post the exact location of these incidents (so that Peter Lee doesn’t have to sleuth through the halls of the Ignat Kaneff Building to find the broken items in question).
Overall, we are thrilled with our first year’s success, and look forward to making even more progress next year. If you’d like to join our fabulous (and successful) green team or if you want to add your input on how to make Osgoode more sustainable, please email EnvironmentalLawSociety@osgoode.yorku.ca. We’ll need your support in the upcoming year!
Finally, Claire and Jesse would like to individually thank the Sustainability Committee’s members, whose hard work and dedication was truly the driver of our success: Robyn Blumberg, Bianca Bell, Erica Stahl, Sarah Virani, Jessica Rosenberg, Angela Yang, Kevin Thompson, and Natalie MacDonnell.
Jesse and Claire are the ELS’ Sustainability Committee’s Co-chairs.