Hannah Lundquist-
In the past few years, UW–Stout has made several considerable efforts towards becoming a much more ‘green’ campus. We now have recycling programs, renewable energy plans, public transportation and water bottle fill stations, to name a few.
To take it another step further and work on another large ‘green’ project, Stout has decided to get rid of a number of large student parking lots.
In doing so, this will limit the amount of students that are driving to campus. The hope is that this will make people choose to limit their carbon footprint by carpooling, walking and taking bikes more often.
The plan is to get rid of Lots 4 and 34 on south campus. These are some of the largest parking lots, so they bring in the most students. The lots will instead only be used for sporting events and career conference parking.
While this seems like a drastic change to make, it should help limit the amount of carbon dioxide that cars contribute to the air.
Many campus staff members have said, “Students will learn to adjust to this change just like they have with other things in the past.”
On north campus, it will be about the same effect. Lots 22 and 11 will now be used exclusively for events.
UW–Stout officials said that students on north campus have very good access to the bus, and so they felt it was unnecessary for them to be driving and to have as many cars as they do.
Dunn County Transportation recently said that they wanted to get more buses for Stout, and so Stout thought this was the perfect opportunity to cut back on student carbon emissions.
Campuses across the country have a big job to do. Colleges contribute to a lot of energy waste considering the high volume of people living and studying there.
Many other schools in America are making large changes as well. Unity College in Maine decided that they would no longer use fossil fuels at their school. George Washington University’s campus invested in a new lighting system throughout campus. They invested $141,000 into the project, and because of this, their savings per year equaled $100,000. Their investment paid for itself in under two years.
Stout may be making a big change by getting rid of parking lots, but in the end, reducing our carbon footprint will help the Earth and make our campus a better place to be.