“Green your Campus, Green your live!”

 

An implied jargon from the 2021 National Student Leaders on Sustainability Meeting (NSLSM) event located at UIN Raden Intan Lampung Campus. Maybe we've often heard about green campuses, but have we properly interpreted what green means? It's not just a lot of trees and greenery knick-knacks scattered in the campus area. A green campus means every human being in it including me, you, lecturers, employees and the community around the campus environment who work together to preserve this nature.

  Not only ranking but also moving the campus community to be aware of every activity that has an impact on nature   More than 900 campuses in the world participate in the UI Greenmetric ranking. A ranking that moves all campuses to take care of each other so that they can be valued well.   The old adage says "what we sow, we will reap". Likewise with nature, what we do in our daily life will also have an impact on the condition of natural sustainability. Especially in the campus environment where we carry out various activities. Efforts to protect the environment can start from ourselves by not littering and according to its type, not using excessive plastic and replacing it with shopping bags, and not using fossil fuel private vehicles and replacing it with cycling or walking. These things may not be too hard to apply in our campus environment, but have they implemented them? Let's start from within ourselves.   The preservation of this nature needs togetherness   Togetherness to protect the environment does not only end with one's own actions. We need to work with various parties to preserve it. The things we get in our environment are certainly different from other environments. A group discussion is needed to explain what are the solutions and implementations carried out by each campus environment.   In the 2021 NSLSM event we were given one hour to conduct a Forum Group Discussion (FGD). I happened to represent my campus with the theme Energy and Climate Change. I explained how my campus reduces greenhouse gas emissions so that the earth's temperature in climate change can be reduced. There are so many lessons from other campuses that I have learned to apply in my campus on a small scale such as writing motivational words in every corner of the campus, to large scale such as implementing Zero Energy Building (ZEB).     Love the environment with happiness   There is no need to be forced or feel alone to act pro-environmentally. Even nature itself never requires you to take care of it. We should be the ones who realize that we are only riding on this earth to be our home. Taking care of the earth is not an order that we can choose whether we want to or not, protecting the earth is our collective obligation as its inhabitants.   This nature is already rich in the diversity of its biota on land and sea. Keeping it does not mean we are hostile to those who don't care about it. They just haven't realized how important this environment is. Inspiring and inviting them is a solution that can move them to love our environment together. One way to love this environment is to enjoy it. Enjoy the growth of trees from seedlings to large, enjoy the beauty of the colorful underwater habitats, enjoy the cleanliness created from garbage collection, and so on. Those are all the activities that I did in this 2021 NSLSM event by planting mangroves, snorkeling, and cleaning up the coastal environment.   I feel very happy and proud to have been a part of NSLSM 2021. Hopefully we can meet in the following years with new stories from every action we take in our respective communities.  

“You and I may differ in reasoning. However, preserving the natural environment in which we live is our collective obligation.” – Achmad Adam Azzuri

   

by Achmad Adam Azzuri, Telkom University