by Catelyn Fitzgerald
While sustainability is a deeply important issue for many Mount Holyoke students, it can feel difficult or overwhelming to become more eco-friendly in everyday life. Mount Holyoke’s eco-reps help address this issue by making sustainability more accessible to students. Eco-reps act as a bridge between students and campus sustainability initiatives to enable students to lessen their own environmental impact and improve the campus as a whole. Mount Holyoke has four eco-reps, who are hired by the Miller Worley Center for the Environment and work with a variety of different departments and offices on campus. This year’s eco-reps are Claire Lunetta ’20, Kathy Hu ’20, Rebecca Parker ’21 and Kaila Goldstein ’22.
“I was interested in doing some work around sustainability at Mount Holyoke,” said Claire Lunetta ’20. When she saw the job posting on jobX she jumped at the opportunity and has since been involved in a number of initiatives and projects on campus. Lunetta is currently the eco-rep coordinator meaning that she does much of the organizing work while the other eco-reps are more hands-on.
The eco-reps work on various sustainability initiatives on campus related to recycling, energy use, and composting. They work especially close with Dining Services and the Office of Residential Life. “I'm very excited about the living green room certificate which we have been working on,” said Lunetta. “We started working on it last spring.”
Kaila Goldstein ’22, who had been involved with the Miller Worley Center on a sustainability round table project which will have its first event in December before landing her eco-rep job, described the new initiative as a survey that students can take about their sustainability habits. Those who are living eco-friendly will receive a certificate to be displayed on their door, and those who do not meet the qualifications for the certification can get a better idea of how they can change their daily habits to be more sustainable.
When considering how students can be more sustainable in their daily life, Goldstein emphasized the importance of saving energy. Turning off power strips when not in use, charging devices during the day rather than overnight, and using less hot water are all easy ways to decrease energy use and help the environment. “They all fall under the umbrella of energy use,” Goldstein said.
Despite the bleak outlook that sometimes comes with working in sustainability, Goldstein remains hopeful about MHC’s future prospects. She was surprised to learn as an eco-rep that the school has many of its own environmental initiatives that it is currently working on.
Curious about how to contact the eco-reps? You can email them individually or at ecoreps@mtholyoke.edu, and keep an eye out for the eco-boards in each hall which are posted on a monthly basis.