The Second Sustainable Leadership Group met on Thursday Oct. 27 to discuss environmental tactics and plans to make UAF more sustainable in practice and in mentality. The SLG is made up of a collection of staff, students, community representatives and faculty, including the chancellor.

Audubon International representative Ron Dodson initiated the discussion. Dodson said that UAF has collected and declared all their environmental audit results so far, since the last SLG meeting in spring, and the university is ready to reduce their ecological footprint drastically.

"We must walk the walk and talk the talk, by using sustainability in its broadest terms, and moving towards sustainable lifestyles," Dodson said. "We certainly should feel that we are working towards admirable goals indeed."

Laura Henry, student, researcher and environmental activist, outlined a report back from the Bioneers Conference 2005 in Anchorage, which addressed how to create sustainable communities all over America. She emphasized that along with Alaska Polytechnic University (APU) and University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), UAF could combine in signing the Talloires Declaration, a universal pledge for higher education environmental sustainability, which would result in a unified and encouraging environmental vision for Alaska’s universities.

Further on the agenda was the need for SLG to become representative of the student body. Regarded as vital by Craig Gerlach, an anthropology professor, was the need for representation from the "dynamic and lively" student group the Sustainable Campus Task Force (SCTF), and from the Sustainable Campus Initiative (SCI), a body working towards sustainable policy with student representatives from each school. The SLG decided that there was definite need to meet more often than once a semester, and they are always open to suggestions on representation ideas for progress.

The first outcome of the meeting was to launch the group with a Sustainability Day, declaring all the objectives and plans to make UAF greener as well as easy individual tips to decrease our consumptive habits. Dodson illustrated these ambitions by saying "One elegant way to recycle is not to create it in the first place."

Secondly, was the consensual idea to implement student-led environmental projects that precisely investigate UAF’s financial and environmental losses through specific mediums such as transport emissions, energy losses, food waste and primary resource dependence. This was geared through the central ecological themes in Alaska, as stated by SLG chair Carol Lewis from Natural Resources Management, "Land, sea and forest and community resources."

Other plans already underway are the Cold Climate Housing Research Center with an incoming full-time member of staff dedicated to UAF’s environmental management to develop objectives, set priorities and significant, time-bound targets to fulfill them. Projects are also continuing with ASUAF and the Fairbanks North Star Borough to pursue community-wide recycling and bus-extension services.

Finally, Lewis said that the SLG needs the UAF community to know that it is here, and "the ball is rolling." As Laura Henry quoted from the Bioneers Conference, "Communication is to sustainability what location is to real estate." The group will meet again in December, by which time UAF should be seeing some targets and awareness campaigns, pushing to the forefront of sustainable initiative.