Sustainability will require more effort

I can't say I'm surprised that IU has earned a D-plus on the College Sustainability Report Card. Looking around the campus, I can't recall the last time I saw a concerted effort to avoid waste on the part of ordinary students, faculty or staff, whether it be of paper, energy, water or other valuable resources. Sinks continue to drip, some buildings are overheated in winter and overcooled in summer, and many of us (myself included, though I try to avoid it) print a lot more pages than we need to.\nOne very obvious instance of waste that was recently reported in the IDS: the new parking shuttle for faculty and staff. It's not just that turnout was low the first day; how many can the University expect at a parking lot with only 50 spaces? Why devote a full-size bus to this shuttle when a smaller vehicle seems more than adequate? Better yet, why not encourage employees to park at the stadium, where two shuttle routes already run every five minutes?\nI believe that the Council for Environmental Stewardship has worked hard and done good things (like the green-bottle campaign), but IUB will never make real progress until the desire to live and work in a more sustainable way spreads throughout our campus culture.\nElizabeth Venstra\nIU employee