Environmental Art on Campus

Good news stories about campus sustainability initiatives resonate with all of us as students continue to create environmental change across the world. I would like to share a good news story about environmental art on a university campus.

This past school year I was part of a graduate and professional students sustainability group (Biosciences Sustainability Committee) at Queen’s University who chose to use art and creativity as an opportunity to create change on campus. The ‘trash art’ project involved the creation of a symbolic giant-sized donut and travel mug using Tim Hortons bags and coffee cups collected at a Tim Hortons outlet on campus. Originally the project had two key messages: ask for no bag and bring a travel mug. However, the result of this project was even greater than we had anticipated, receiving more media attention than we could have imagined. But what was even more surprising was the response of the Tim Horton’s outlet itself. Observation and rumour told us that this particular outlet was piloting a new policy; no bags for wrapped items unless asked by the customer. Although Tim Hortons staff became tight-lipped when we tried to find out more on the new policy, the change (even if it turns out to be temporary) showed the positive effects and awareness that art could bring. We’re thinking about making ‘trash art’ a yearly tradition and I’d love to hear some of your ideas for a new project. I would also love to hear if anyone has their own stories about using art as a means of effecting change, so please post them if you’ve got them!

Allison Roberts, Graduate Students for Environmental Sustainability, Queen's University

Sierra Youth Coalition goes to the Coca-Cola Annual General Meeting!

The Sierra Youth Coalition has partnered with the Polaris Institute and the Canadian Federation of Students on the Bottled Water Free Zones campaign, a piece of Polaris’ broader Inside the Bottle campaign (www.insidethebottle.org). In two short months this winter, 15 Canadian campuses created over 40 bottled water free zones, including student unions, academic departments, student organizations and groups, cafés and restaurants. The campaign will continue as campuses prepare to launch bottled-water free frosh weeks, to turn student-owned buildings into bottled water free zones and to create more zones, ultimately posing a challenge to beverage exclusivity contracts with Coca Cola and Pepsi Co.

Bottled water free zones are created when policies are put into place ending the sale and distribution of bottled water and steps are taken to encourage the consumption of tap water and raise awareness about the problems with the bottled water industry. This includes exposing the negative environmental and social impacts of bottled water. Environmental impacts include the use of fossil fuels to make plastic bottles, the release of toxic chemicals during the production of the bottles, contributing to global warming in the transportation of bottled water and increasing plastic waste. Social impacts include the depletion of water resources in communities around the world ATHand the use of manipulative marketing to undermine confidence in public water systems. The bottled water industry has been so successful that people pay more for a litre of bottled water than they pay for a litre of gasoline.ATH

SYC joined a number of organizations, including Corporate Accountability International and the India Resource Centre, at Coca Cola’s shareholders’ meeting in Delaware to deliver the message that Canadian students are challenging their exclusivity contracts with Coca Cola as a result of the company’s environmental impacts and poor human rights record. To date, 48 American colleges and universities have cancelled their contracts with Coca Cola for these reasons.

Report Back from the Ontario Regional Coordinator

I wasn’t sure what to expect of the Coca Cola’s Annual Shareholders Meeting. Having the chance to have your voice heard by one of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world was certainly daunting, but I was curious to see what the meeting would be like.

At the meeting, I was given plenty of opportunities to evaluate the meaning of greenwashing. On the one hand, it is a mark of the success of public campaigns to see how much money and time is spent on improving Coca Cola’s public image, sometimes with concrete steps such as a 20 million dollar partnership with the World Wildlife Foundation. Other more dubious steps include Coca Cola’s pledge to become “water neutral;” in other words, to replace all the water it uses back to watersheds which is a claim impossible to prove or quantify. On the other hand, I wondered throughout the meeting at the increasing difficulty of cutting through the spin and separating real change from perceived change. For example, CEO Neville Isdelle spent quite some time talking about the importance of supporting sustainable communities in the 21^st century in language quite familiar to SYC, while his CEO Elect Muhtar Kent cited rapidly increasing urbanization as one of the most positive growth factors for Coca Cola’s profits. Considering the negative impacts ATHof urbanization on sustainable development, this was a contradiction in messaging that was not addressed.

Many of the comments throughout the meeting called on Coke to shut down its operations in certain communities in India where public water is going to Coke’s bottling plants, to improve its labour record in Colombia and to move away from bottled water. In one of the more tense moments in the meeting, two Tibetan activists emotionally pleaded for Coke to cancel the Olympic Torch Relay in Tibet. The CEO became increasingly frustrated throughout the meeting as people insisted on having their voices heard and demanded real answers. One student was cut off during her two minutes of allotted speaking time.

Though I have my own interpretations of my experience in Wilmington, it brought up a lot of questions that are relevant to all of us working towards a more sustainable future.

Within our current global economic and political systems, is it possible for a corporation, multinational or otherwise, to become sustainable? What does a sustainable corporation look like?

What is corporate social responsibility? How can we separate greenwashing from real positive change in the priorities and operations of corporations?

How does the structure of a corporation impact whose voices can be heard by shareholders?

How do we account for the impact of corporations on some of the world’s most marginalized communities when defining a sustainable business?