Right now Emily Naud, 32, is in a predicament: What is she going to do with five pieces of sushi sitting on her plate leftover from dinner? As an active environmentalist, she immediately asks the waiter if the restaurant composts in hopes of returning the uneaten sushi. Disappointed to find out they don't, she asks for a to-go box. When handed a plastic container, she gives off a sigh of dissatisfcation. All she wants is to be able to do the right thing and give back to the planet as much as she can.

"I'm sorry, you guys. This is just my thought process," Naud says to the dinner table, as she excuses her actions and instinctively flips the plastic to-go container over to check if it is recyclable. "Being eco-friendly is a lifestyle. You have to think about these things." Checking for recyclable and compostable materials comes second nature to Naud, as she is SF State's student center's sustainable initiatives coordinator and is responsible for making the student center more sustainable.

SF State, in supporting the city and county of San Francisco's goal of a 75 percent diversion rate by 2010 and to be zero waste by 2020, is doing its part university-wide by promoting sustainable actions with an emphasis on composting and the promotion of alternative modes of transportation. To achieve this goal, Naud and other SF State environmentalists stress the importance of educating people to spread the word across campus and across the city about recycling, composting, and overall sustainability. Currently, San Francisco has a diversion rate of 72 percent, according to the city's environmental department, while the university has a diversion rate of 75 percent. 

Four years ago, ECO Students, the university's only student-run environmental group, conducted a waste audit, inspecting the student center's trash contents. In the audit, they discovered 75 percent of the waste could be composted. Shortly after, a plan to compost was set into motion.

After four years of planning, the recycling and composting bins made their debut on April 23, 2009, at four locations in the student center. Trash diversion monitors, working voluntarily, stood by, directing and educating students on which colored bin their waste should be placed in. Because the monitors played such a big role in the initial success of the bins by interacting with and educating students about composting, they will continue to play a big role in making sure students partake in sustainable actions on campus.

"Some people don't even see that there are three different colored bins. It doesn't even make them wonder why there are different colored bins," Naud says, a little frustrated. "Having a person there, educating students about how to compost will have way more of an impact than posters or signage."

Disappointed with students' lack of education on the subject matter, members of ECO Students and volunteers agree. "People just trash their stuff. They don't really think about it," Liza Sternik, ECO Students communications coordinator, says. "That's why we really need to be there, telling them what to do with their waste."

While it may seem as though students don't care to sort through waste, some students take it upon themselves to do their part. Freshman Michael Zambrano, 17, makes it a point to pick up bottles lying on the group or around trash bins and puts it in the appropriate bin.

"There is a liability to recycle. It's not just a choice. You owe it to yourself and to the environment," he says. "You might only be here for fifty, at most a hundred years, but that piece of plastic you decide not to recycle will be here for thousands of years."

While the student center has received funds for the recycling and composting bins, there are still many steps to make the program widely successful, including using proper signage, hiring volunteers, and promoting.

Signage is a big challenge considering that people miss the sign with recycling and composting instructions on the bins. Naud plans on having new eye-catching posters, which will be created by graphic designer and former Environmental Studies major, Gavin Grant, that will serve as an informative guide when the monitors aren't around. The new posters will showcase what waste materials are recyclable, including paper and plastic materials, compostable, including all food waste and food-soiled materials like coffee cups and paper containers, and can be placed in the trash, including other miscellaneous items.

The next step in making the university greener is the installation of a set of hand dryers in the student center's busiest restrooms located by Café 101. "The dryers will require less energy and create less waste for our landfills," Naud says, who also notes that it would be less work for the custodial staff. "It's just a matter of proving that it works and that it can be successful." The Dyson hand dryers, which are very similar to the ones found at the Academy of Sciences, will be installed in October.

In addition, San Francisco Energy Watch will conduct an energy audit to look at how to reduce energy cost in the student center, and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will do a water audit to look at how to reduce water usage. The audits will provide information that will allow the student center to identify high utilities usage and find a way to cut costs while being sustainable.

To encourage sustainability in the university's residential halls, ECO Students is reviving the community garden behind Mary Park. Allison Schentrup, ECO Students administrator, hopes to restore the garden, which was once overgrown and full of weeds, with newly planted fruits, vegetables, and herbs with the help of the university's students, residents, faculty members, and staff by organizing Garden Work Days every Wednesday afternoon starting in October.

"Contemporary (gardening) practices that involve pesticides and herbisides are damaging to the environment and human health. Removing these damaging chemicals and rotating crops the way we would in this garden, allows the soil to rejuvenate and replenish nutrients," Schentrup reveals. "Practicing this kind of gardening means the soil will not be depleted and can produce food for a number of years."

ECO Students, in collaboration with the university's housing, Recycling Resource Center, and SF Environment, also has created a detailed slideshow to educate incoming freshmen and new residents on green practices in the residential halls and on campus. The slideshow, which is shown to all of the university's residential advisors and passed to the residents, was instituted in response to how housing is the biggest producer of waste on campus, has lower recycling rates than the rest of the campus, and that students new to the San Francisco Bay Area may not be familiar with the city's recycling practices, according to Ashley Malyszka, ECO Students administrator. It addresses common items that contaminate the university's recycling, including coffee cups, which are compostable, Styrofoam, tetrapaks, like soy milk cartons, and plastic bags, as well as stressing the importance of creating waste in the first place.

Moreover, Sustainable SF State,the university's sustainable branch, is promoting alternative modes of transportation with an emphasis on biking. In this year alone, the university has created new bike paths encompassing the campus, a project spearheaded by Caitlin Steele, the university's sustainability coordinator. The new bike paths connect Thorton Hall and University Park with other nearby bike paths. Sustainable SF State is also responsible in installing 200 more bike racks on campus, creating more of an incentive for students to ride their bikes to campus without the worry of carelessly locking their bikes to campus rails and receiving a ticket for breaking the law.

In addition, sustainable SF State will also be hosting a "Parking Day" event in an effort to build awareness of the various forms of alternative transportation available to the campus. University environmentalists will take over twenty campus parking spaces on the roof of the parking structure on October 6 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., transforming the spaces into mini-parks with play areas complete with benches and sand, as well as bike stations where people can get a bike riding lesson or bike repair tips. The goal of the event is to help people visualize how parking spaces can be transformed into recreational areas and to persuade them to use different modes of transportation instead of their cars.

To help the university become more sustainable, a proposition of increasing tuition by $3 per semester for a sustainability fund has been put into motion by Sam Brown of the student governing board. The increase would generate at least $90,000 per semester that could be used towards sustainability, including replacing all the current toilets to low-flush toilets and installing hand dryers in all the bathrooms.

Eco-conscious history major Charlotte Bush, 23, who will be graduating this semester, says if she were a Freshman, she wouldn't mind a possible increase to keep the campus greener. "It would actually save the school money in the long run," she says. Disappointed that the university doesn't already have hand dryers, she hopes that the fund would be put into good use.

Schentrup believes that there are only a small portion of people who care about doing the right thing for the environment, but that number can grow if people know about the university's steps towards becoming greener and more sustainable, including the current policy on recycling and composting. When they know about the policy, she points out, students will be more inclined to sort through their remains and place them in their proper waste bins.

"It is all of our responsibility to know the policy and to do our part," she says. "As people, we have to ask: What are we giving back to our community?" 

Naud is hopeful that the composting program, the installation of hand dryers, and other upcoming sustainability initiatives will work if people are educated and understand the reason why sustainable actions are needed.  "There is a good amount of people who care, but awareness can grow through education," she advises. "When people realize the social justice aspect of the green movement, people will start to wake up."

"It takes a constant presence of mind to change detrimental habits, and sustainability is lifestyle that requires decision-making geared towards preserving the planet," Naud adds. "If the planet is healthy, everything living thing on the planet has a chance to be healthy as well."