Business View Magazine - June 2016 89
roofs,” Verhoff says. Overall, the campus is striving to
reduce its energy and water consumption by 20 per-
cent by 2020.
Verhoff says that SLU also wants to increase its waste
diversion rate to 30 percent. His Office and other units
around campus are working towards this goal. For ex-
ample, Ground Services placed recycling bins for exte-
rior use and put them in strategic locations throughout
the campus in 2012, Custodial Services updated sig-
nage on all interior bins this past year, and Aramark
implemented a pre-consumer composting program in
the dining halls. Students have also been implement-
ing their own initiatives and programs. “There is a spe-
cific committee underneath our student government
association that focuses on wellness,” says Verhoff.
“This past year they purchased re-usable water bottles
for every single student. The year before, they used
their money to put in water bottle filling stations - about
30 of them around campus. And because of that, last
year, we saved nearly one million water bottles from
going into the landfill.”
Verhoff see these actions as not only preventing waste,
but also fulfilling one of the most important tenets of
the Jesuit ethos: that of social responsibility. “When
we’re talking about sustainability, of course, it encom-
passes not only the stewardship of the environment
but the social implications as well,” he explains. “And
because we’re a Jesuit institution, our students are
very passionate about the social justice component.
For example, they are taking on the issue of disposable
water bottles – they would like to eliminate dispos-
able water bottles on campus, but it’s not just about
the elimination of a waste product. It’s also about the
privatization of our water system; how large compa-
nies are going into small towns and pumping out wa-
ter from the aquifers. It’s affecting small communities,
