Sustainability: An Introduction

By Hunt Brown, Director of Sustainability

The Wright State Strategic Plan (adopted 6-13-2008) includes the following affirmation of the importance of sustainability:

Sustainability—the necessity of preserving our planet compels us to weigh the impact of our decisions, both short term and long term.

This article is the first in a series that will discuss sustainability in more depth, what it means, why it is important, and how Wright State is working toward it. It will consider what has already been done here at Wright State, what is currently going on, and where the university seeks to go. Future articles will focus in particular on the work undertaken at Wright State by the various administrative and academic units that are making it all happen.

In this initial article, I will briefly summarize what I mean by sustainability. Literally hundreds of definitions exist, but many are coalescing around what is called the “triple bottom line.” The short version is that working toward sustainability (whether a university, a business, a country, or a person) means promoting and ultimately ensuring environmental protection, social justice, and economic opportunity. And, this is true not just within the confines of one’s frame of reference (university, business, etc.) but across the planet, and not just in the short run but for the indefinite future.

In a 2007 Washington Post editorial*, Michael Maniates chastised efforts to make sustainability (aka greening) appear easy as exemplified by books with such titles as It’s Easy Being Green. Becoming sustainable at whatever level will not be easy. We will need resolve and we will need to commit to change. We will need to call for serious discussion of the magnitude of the problems and their solution. As Maniates observed, “Paul Revere didn't race through the streets of Middlesex County hawking a book on ‘The Lazy Revolutionary’ [and] Franklin Roosevelt didn’t mobilize the country’s energies by listing 10 easy ways to oppose fascism.”

On the journey to sustainability, education is critical, and where better than at a university? At Wright State we can and should talk the talk in the classroom and we should walk the walk in our planning and operations. Each of us at Wright State has a role to play, both on campus and in our communities. Collectively we should be a model for the region.

Stay tuned, there is much to discuss…

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*I first saw reference to this editorial in Thomas Friedman’s book Hot, Flat and Crowded.