Seeking Information on Reaching College Student Audiences

Nancy,

Real quick -- anti-waste importing is a very touchy subject in the US, with lots of legal action on "flow control" over the years. Do a legal literature review on this because it gets into anti-commerce clause violations. Do your homework before launching a campaign on this! The National Recycling Coalition has a College & University Recycling Council who are the specialists on reaching college students regarding recycling on campus. Beyond that, there are many NGOs with wonderful experience in organizing college students. Like SVTC and its toxicdude campaign against Dell a few years ago (svtc.org). But I don't think the NRC folks have gotten CBSM principles going yet (Doug, have you done your workshop for that audience yet? Goodness knows it would be useful!). And, as I'm just learning about CBSM, I'm not clear about using it for activist-driven political campaigns. Again, Doug or others, examples would be interesting.

Anne

Gracestone, Inc.
Boulder, Colorado USA
+1.303.494.4934 vox/cell
+1.303.494.4880 fax

I agree that folks working to greenify colleges and universities would benefit greatly from an understanding of CBSM. I have endeavored to use CBSM on campus over the last year or so through several pilot programs conducted concurrently in different "communities": lab, dorm, academic office and administrative office. The students and I have only experienced modest success, however. I believe that we would achieve greater success if we were more disciplined in applying the techniques and were not divided between the responsibilities of our many functions on top of CBSM. Recycling education is typically a band-aid. CBSM is surgery. Our longest running experiment has been an attempt to raise recycling rates in a 500 person lab/research building. The difficulties have been substantial in that these folks essentially have "no community" and, according to the undergraduate students spending the most time there, these folks also have no social skills. As pure research machines they are hard to reach with any semblance of community connection. Early surveys determined that the scanty signage provided during construction, and the maze-like nature of the corridors in this new building, were severe stumbling blocks. As such we worked hard to increase signage and awareness. In the main lobby we provided feedback on lbs recycled in the hopes this would get folks to see themselves as members of a greater community. I personally found hope in recording the name and contact information of any person in the building who called me for information. This allowed me to use them as a reference and insider to assist with further efforts. Such folks often showed great enthusiasm when calling me, but no response or enthusiasm at all when a student worker contacted them asking for advice on how to reach members of their secretive departments, however. In the long run we have seen the weekly quantity of recyclables go up over the 12 month period. I have yet to check this vs the trash tonnage to see if their is a corresponding drop.

As for the initial question (pardon my sidebar about the lab building), we have had mixed success using CBSM with undergraduate residences. Students are a strange lot of mixed communities within each dorm. Surveys indicated that students detested the necessity of walking their recyclables down several flights of stairs to a basement room used for both trash and recycling. Our response was to provide door-to-door pick up once per week on a pre-scheduled day in a dorm and to monitor another college as a control. This produced some increase in recycling in the experimental college but it may have only caused students who would recycle every 2-3 weeks (the most common recycling period according to other surveys on campus) to start recycling weekly. My anecdotal evidence, backed up by some limited numbers from years passed, is that doorknocking as an educational tool can be very influential as long as it is not too aggressive, even if no recyclable are picked up. Students responsible for environmental education that actually took the time to knock on every door in their dorm, smile, ask folks to recycle, answer questions and provide bins and information, generally had better "Green Cup" scores (a competition dorm vs dorm). My feeling had been, before even hearing of CBSM, that such personal contact put a human face on recycling. A member of the community had asked someone in the room to recycle and had taken the time to answer questions. E-mails, fliers, newsletters...students are flooded with such and ignore it out of a sense of self preservation. Contacting them personally is helpful. Food. Never underestimate the ability of food to motivate anyone, especially students. Food does not equate with CBSM or success, but it sure gets their attention long enough to get the first message into their brains just as you get the first bite into their mouths. Study breaks not only offer food but they also offer a sense of community. Combining study breaks with actual recycling "brign your stuff down and get free pizza" gets

In summary, I feel that CBSM has great potential for success in colleges and universities but I have not, through my involvement with the NRC College and University Recycling Council (CURC), seen the topic covered in any depth. I believe that CBSM needs to be tailored to the student community just as it must be tailored to any other community. Finding out what works with students in general, and students in any particular school, requires more of a focus than I have been able to provide so far. Perhaps CURC should bring Doug or another speaker to the NRC annual meeting to present to the 20-40 college reps (students and administrators, predominantly) that attend each year.

C.J. May
Yale Recycling
[email protected]
www.yale.edu/recycling

I would suggest looking at the National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology program (link at http://www.nwf.org/campusecology/). According to the site, more than 100 campuses participate, and the program is described as follows on their site: For more than a decade, National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology Program has been helping transform the nation's college and university campuses into living models of an ecologically sustainable society, and training a new generation of environmental leaders. Campus Ecology supports and promotes positive and practical conservation projects on campus and beyond to protect wildlife by restoring habitat and slowing global warming. More information at the site - hope this is helpful!

Brett --

Brett Pawlowski
President DeHavilland Associates
10925 David Taylor Drive,
Suite 100, Charlotte, NC 28262
Ph: 704.944.3134;
F: 704.944.3101
Email: [email protected]
Site: http://www.dehavillandassociates.com
Blog: http://www.dehavillandassociates.com/blog.html