Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Sustainability Task Force?
Why is having sustainability in the Strategic Plan so important?
What is sustainability and what does it mean to you?
How did the Task Force define sustainability and use that definition in planning for a sustainable future?
What is the Evergreen Sustainability Report?
What are the key strategies for a sustainable Evergreen community as specified in the Sustainability Report?
What are the key targets for a sustainable Evergreen community as specified in the Sustainability Report?
What is the Sustainability Task Force doing now?

What is the Sustainability Task Force?
Evergreen’s President and Vice Presidents created the Sustainability Task Force in the Fall of 2005 following three summers of faculty-initiated sustainability institutes. The Task Force is a combination of staff, faculty, and students whose original purpose was to write a brand new section on sustainability for the college’s five-year strategic plan. Even though Evergreen is a national leader in advancing sustainability on campus, we still have a long way to go before sustainability is reached. The Sustainability Task Force will play an important role in Evergreen’s long-term effort to become a sustainable college.

Why is having sustainability in the Strategic Plan so important?
As far as institutional planning goes, the strategic plan is the best place for sustainability to be housed: the strategic plan identifies our core values as an institution, guides our operations, and is closely linked to budget allocations. Therefore, carefully considering how we define “sustainability” in the college strategic plan helps to define who we are as academic institution. Ultimately, how sustainability is defined is important to those of us who work, live, and study at Evergreen. Moreover, when sustainability became one of the major foci of the college strategic plan, TESC became one of the only college’s in the nation officially committed to a sustainable future. So, how Evergreen defines sustainability has far reaching implications extending well beyond our campus borders. How will Evergreen carry out its commitment to sustainability? The answer starts with a good definition of what sustainability actually is.

What is sustainability and what does it mean to you?
“Sustainability” – is arguably the buzzword of our time. As a word, it seems to be everywhere and freely used by everyone. Type “sustainability” into the Google search bar and you will receive millions of hits with various titles such as sustainable development, sustainable economy, environmental sustainability, sustainable agriculture, sustainability of human progress… well you get the point. Apparently, any other word in close proximity to “sustainability” must be better and worthy of our efforts. This is interesting since the word “sustainability” is not necessarily a good one. After all, we can sustain someone on life support indefinitely – not a particularly desired state to be in.

So what exactly is sustainability? The answer is elusive: sustainability is not regularly seen, cannot be easily photographed, and it is nearly impossible to find a place where sustainability fully exists.

Many of us search for sustainability by scrutinizing each component of our daily lives. We question the things we buy, the food we eat, the way we travel, the waste we generate, our relationships with other people and wonder, whether or not, we are contributing to a sustainable world. Unfortunately, at the end of the day the answer is likely no. This is disheartening. Feeling the burden, we nobly lessen our unsustainable activities and try to reduce our overall negative impacts. However, as Will McDonough and Michael Braungart stated in Cradle to Cradle, we have successfully become “less bad”.

Perhaps this is the dream of sustainability: to live a rich and fulfilling life without compromising the quality of other peoples’ lives (in both space and time). In fact, the most widely recognized definition of sustainability comes from the 1987 Brundtland Report and echoes this dream. They defined sustainable development as that which "meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". But, how does this translate into strategic planning at Evergreen? This was the daunting challenge faced by the Sustainability Task Force and the Evergreen community.

How did the Task Force define sustainability and use that definition in planning for a sustainable future?
The work of the Task Force began with the ethical premise that, for sustainability to be both meaningful and enduring, the vision for sustainability (and its accompanying action plan) had to be organic. Task Force members agreed that we could not isolate ourselves in a room and create a definition and a plan that would endure. We saw ourselves as facilitators of a community-wide conversation that would result in consensus around what sustainability is at Evergreen, and how we would labor toward it. Without that consensus or common definition, we also knew that we would never galvanize the needed institutional support for our initiatives to go forward. So, we decided to engage our community in a broad-based conversation on sustainability.

Throughout the Spring Quarter of 2006 we initiated a broad community outreach program. We realized that it would be difficult to engage a diverse and busy population in our deliberations. Consequently, we chose several different methods that would bring in a large number of people into the conversation. These included one-on-one interviews with faculty members, one-on-one interviews with students and student groups, well designed student workshops that were facilitated within academic programs, initial visits to sector staff meetings culminating in a cross-campus staff institute, interviews with key administrators and decision-makers at the college, and an online web survey.

Thinking about all of these different forms of engagement with our many diverse community members we needed to have some measure of consistency. This would be especially critical when it came time to analyze the feedback from our engagements. Therefore, we choose three central themes for our questioning that provided some level of consistency. These were,

• What is your current perception of sustainability at Evergreen?
• What would a sustainable Evergreen look like in the future?
• How do we strategically get from where we are today to where we want to be in the future?

By the end of the Spring Quarter, Task Force members had face-to-face contact with over 380 colleagues including:

• 229 staff,
• 126 students,
• a dozen faculty members, and
• several senior administrators.

Our committee is truly grateful for the time and willingness that our fellow community members gave to this project. These discussions provided directive and great insight. As a result, the very essence of our final report is a product of the Evergreen community. The results of these questions, conversations, forums and other engagements helped us to both define sustainability at Evergreen and to determine the initial major steps for getting closer to our goal. Based on these discussions the Task Force reached this vision for a sustainable future at Evergreen:

“The Evergreen State College will be a laboratory for sustainability as demonstrated in its operations, curriculum, and quality of life for employees and students. We will nurture values and practical skills that motivate a lifetime commitment to a sustainable, intergenerationally just, way of living on a healthy planet.”

What is the Evergreen Sustainability Report?
The Sustainability Report is the culmination of the Task Force’s initial charge: to create a vision and corresponding goals that were to be incorporated into our college strategic plan. The report was based on the extensive feedback obtained during the community engagement process. This final report consists of three tiers: 1) a cover letter – a brief overview of the process and results; 2) the matrix – a spreadsheet containing major objectives and corresponding timeframes; 3) the comprehensive report – the detailed report containing our reasoning, milestones, and measurables. The full report can be accessed at: http://www.evergreen.edu/committee/sustainability/interimreport.htm.

What are the key strategies for a sustainable Evergreen community as specified in the Sustainability Report?

• Establish a curricular pathway in sustainability
• Increase opportunities for a practical education in sustainability
• Initiate a robust plan for the reduced and efficient use of resources
• Examine and implement best sustainable practices/purchases policies
• Increase communication and assemble the history behind Evergreen's sustainability goals, achievements, and indicators
• Manage Evergreen’s land endowment for increased biodiversity and maximum educational opportunities related to sustainable practices
• Strengthen bonds and relationships among all Evergreen’s programs
• Strengthen bonds & relationships with Evergreen's neighbors & greater community region
• Improve campus spirit and internal wellness and foster healthy relationships

What are the key targets for a sustainable Evergreen community as specified in the Sustainability Report?

• Become carbon neutral by 2020;
• Become a zero waste college by 2020;
• Increase our locally produced food purchases to 40% by 2010;
• Reduce our energy consumption by 30%, on a per full time equivalent basis, by 2010;
• Reduce our paper consumption to 50% by 2010;
• Reduce the number of computers per capita by 15% by 2010;
• Reduce the number of individual desktop printers by 50% and photocopiers by 10% by 2010.

What is the Sustainability Task Force doing now?
Upon completion of the Sustainability Report and our contribution to the college’s strategic plan the Task Force was meant to “disappear.” However, sustainability work at Evergreen is only just beginning and the Vice Presidents recognized that the Sustainability Task Force could be an invaluable asset as Evergreen strives to become a sustainable college. Therefore, the Vice Presidents made the Sustainability Task Force (which was originally designated a disappearing task force) into a permanent committee. Currently, the Sustainability Task Force meets on a regular basis in order to help facilitate our communities effort to become a sustainable college and work in pursuit of the goals highlighted in the 2006 Sustainability Report. For more details contact the Sustainability Task Force Coordinator.