The Associated Students of Madison Sustainability Committee met Wednesday to discuss upcoming campaigns and events for the semester.
Ian Mullooly, chair of the campuswide Sustainability Council, spoke with the committee to share ideas about improving sustainability on campus.
The Sustainability Council assembles environmentally-oriented student organizations to improve the sustainability on campus, according to its website.
Sustainability Committee Chair Augie McGinnity-Wake praised the council’s abundant resources.
“It’s pretty unique to get the leadership from all these different organizations that have a similar mission in one room together,” McGinnity-Wake said. “There’s not really any other interest area on campus that has any sort of body like this.”
McGinnity-Wake also mentioned the committee’s Bottle Free Badgers campaign, which aims to eliminate the use of single-use bottles on campus.
The campaign stems from the university’s multimillion dollar contract with Coca-Cola. The contract makes it more cost-effective for the university to vend drinks bought in single-use bottles.
The Sustainability Committee’s goal is to increase students’ awareness of the waste produced by single-use bottles and encourage them to carry reusable bottles.
McGinnity-Wake said their focus was to first stop students from buying single-use bottles, which would hopefully lead the university to break the contract and stop selling single-use bottles.
“It’s really hard to pressure the university to break those kinds of contracts,” McGinnity-Wake said. “But ultimately, the idea would be that you would raise enough awareness and put enough pressure on administration that they would end up breaking the contract.”
