Alyssa Hafken ’28, an environmental science major, formed a new club called the Sustainability Collective this school year. Hafken ’28 is a part of the Dickinson Eco Rep Program a member of the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE) Steering Committee, the environmental majors committee and is a student procteur for Access and Disability Services (ADS). She loves plants and gardening. Hafken cites her mother and grandmother as inspirations on caring for the Earth. Hafken’s goals for the club are to bring awareness to areas where Dickinson could be doing better to keep its reputation as a top ranked sustainable school.
In line with this goal, some of the topics she wishes to intoduce in the club include: analyzing why Dickinson still invests substantially in fossil fuels and how much food is wasted. Dickinson is part of a corporate entity of economic investments that promote fossil fuels, and the College banks with Wells Fargo, who also uses fossil fuels. While Dickinson’s dinning hall food is sourced from the farm and the college composts food that is not eaten, Hafken argues that leftover food should instead be donated to a local food bank.
“Composting only preserves like 5% of the carbon from going into the atmosphere, so 95% is going into the atmosphere” Hafken explains.
Hafken also drew attention to a lesser-known fact of how Dickinson can claim to be “carbon neutral,” when it’s actually “carbon offsetting” instead. Carbon offsetting is the process of creating a carbon emission, but investing in an organization or project that funds renewable energy in a different part of the world. While carbon offsetting is better than just emitting carbon in the atmosphere, it poses a problem of disaparties in geography. Hafken was part of the Tree Club last year, which she found a helpful inspiration for her as she has come to understand two main reasons the tree club is no longer in existence. The tree club focused too much on divest movement and failed to properly advertise and recruit new members. Hafken has some exciting events and is actively encouraging new members. The club has plans to meet with Lindsey Lyons and Neil Leary to discuss food waste at Dickinson, having a talk with Ecoasis. The club has yet to become official and elections will be held preceeding fall pause.
