Providing avenues for students to become engaged in sustainability, as well as being able to facilitate ongoing communication and information sharing between the University, the McMaster Students Union (MSU), and the broader student population is an important component in being able to effectively foster a culture of sustainability at McMaster.

In 2011, MACgreen, the MSU Service focused on environmental sustainability, and the Office of Sustainability worked together  to investigate various student sustainability pledge statements at other universities to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as well as help to generate new ideas on how McMaster can utilize this approach to engage and communicate with its own student body.

Important components to be included in McMaster’s Student Sustainability Pledge were determined as follows:

• Ability to not only sign the Pledge, but also be able to state which specific initiatives the signatories will commit to in order to satisfy the Pledge statement
• Ability to record the number of signatories on an ongoing basis
• Ability for students to enter their email address so that they can be connected to a network that would support ongoing communication and information sharing on topics of sustainability

Through investigation of various technologies and web-tools available, all of the identified components stated above were able to be achieved, such as a list of items that signatories can agree to commit to, including a field to input individual initiatives, a counting device to log the number of signatures, and the option to receive campus sustainability-related news updates. With the launch of the Pledge in September 2011, MACgreen is able to utilize this tool to engage students on an ongoing basis and keep them informed through their bi-weekly newsletter, the GreenVine. The full Pledge can be found here by clicking the link below.

The McMaster Student Sustainability Pledge statement is as follows:

"I will strive to take an active role in understanding the social, economic, and environmental consequences of my decisions and actions in order to effectively contribute to the development of a culture of sustainability
at McMaster University and within the communities which I am a part."

Take the Sustainability Pledge!

Created December 14, 2011