Drive for Green Results: Desirability

Alternative one: Green Fee

• In order to determine the desirability of our alternatives, we set up a student survey and sent it out to as many Wayne State University (WSU) students as we could, spanning from freshman to graduate students.  Even though just over a hundred students responded, we were able to get some valuable information. 

• Included in our survey, were questions inquiring students about their thoughts on Wayne State and its need to become a more sustainable campus.  The results are clear, and according to our survey, the majority of students definitely agree that WSU has a responsibility to become a more sustainable campus.

• It wasn't surprising to see then, from the results, that the majority of students believe that Wayne State has a need to be more environmentally sustainable and energy efficient.  According to the figure below we can see that over 85% of the students surveyed felt this way.

• As you can see, the students desire a greener, more sustainable campus.  However, when the survey asked if students should be involved with the sustainability effort by paying a small extra fee, the results revealed that the majority of students do not desire to come out of their pocket to help with the sustainability effort.  As you can see in the figure below, just over 63% of the students surveyed do not feel that the students should contribute with the payment of a new fee.

• With that being said, the most fascinating result came with the second to last question asked on the survey.  This question asked students how much they were willing to pay extra per semester to support the sustainability funding; a direct question derived from the previous question where students had to respond if they should be involved in supporting the funding. 

• Interestingly enough, out of the students surveyed, only 40% said that they did not want to contribute, and the majority of the students (about 60%) said that they are willing to pay at least 1 dollar per semester to support the sustainability funding. 

• This means that 23% of the students that were surveyed, initially said that students should not support sustainability by paying an extra fee, but then turned around and said that they would pay at least 1 dollar per semester in support of sustainability. 

• With these results, it can be reasonably inferred that students desire a more sustainable campus, and they would be willing to contribute to the sustainability funding, even if it’s just one dollar.

Alternative two: Revolving Fund

• Since students generally desire a more sustainable campus, then we can infer that they would be in favor of a revolving fund for sustainability purposes.  This would be desirable to the students because they would not have to contribute money from their pocket.  The revolving fund would be desirable for the source, the University itself, because of the immediate funding for sustainability projects with a generally fast payback of no more than 10 years. 

• Also, there are many Colleges and Universities that have successfully adopted this idea such as Harvard University, Whitman College, Carleton College, and Simon Fraser University. 

• For example, at Simon Fraser University, the electrical department wanted to install some LED lamps around the campus, but lacked the funds to do so.  In order to solve this issue, the department requested $27,000 from the revolving fund with a payback of about 3.4 years.  Now the University has an electrical consumption savings of about 157,920 kWh per year.  That generates savings of $7,900 per year for that University. (Simon Fraser University)

Alternative three: Hybrid Fund   

• This alternative is probably the most desirable option.  The hybrid fund would include both the student fee and the revolving fund.  There would be an influx of money from both sources for many different sustainable projects.  The students would not have to pay as much, and we would be able to implement big sustainable projects as well as smaller projects.