Laura Elena Mercado McIntyre
2008

           The fall of my freshman year I became an active member of Cornell’s student organization the Society for Natural Resources Conservation, SNRC. I became interested in this organization because I love nature and the environment. When I graduate from Cornell, I want to obtain a PhD in community development, focusing on the involvement of low income communities in obtaining environmental justice and improving their quality of life. I hope to achieve these goals via my major in Natural Resources, my planned minor in Development Sociology, and the activities and organizations, like SNRC, that I choose to participate in.
I have been a member of SNRC since I heard of its existence at the very beginning of freshman year, and I plan to be a member my entire career at Cornell. December of 2005 I was elected president of SNRC, and have spent 3 to 5 hours of every week working on SNRC’s environmental campaigns. My most important and time consuming project with SNRC, which I also work on as a class project through ALS477: Environmental Stewardship in the Cornell Community, is standardizing the procurement of recycled paper and other ‘green’ office products across all departments at Cornell.
While Cornell’s vision often entails grandiose projects which are geared towards the distant and lofty goal of sustainability, there are many feasible projects our University can implement to improve the sustainability of the everyday practices of our students, faculty, staff, and administration. One of the most reasonable ways Cornell can lead the conservation movement is through responsible purchasing. SNRC has been working with administrators and professors at Cornell over the last 6 years to convince departments to purchase responsibly and buy post-consumer recycled paper. The reasons that departments primarily give for not purchasing post consumer recycled paper was that their department budget was not able to support green purchasing because of the additional cost it required and the quality of office supplies were often the first items to be cut. Thus, SNRC has proposed a Green Account that would make it more financially feasible for the decentralized Cornell departments to purchase more sustainable office supplies.
The Green Accounts Pilot Project is planned for the 26 departments of CALS. The minimum allocation of funds will be $50/semester for each department.  This leads to a total budget of $1300 for a one-semester trial.  Although this amount does not represent a big difference for the greening of each department, it is meant to encourage responsible purchasing with some extra financial support. In addition to the $50 reimbursement, funded by Steve Golding, a green purchasing pamphlet will be given to and presented to each department. They are meant to educate feasible ‘green’ enhancements a department can make with the help of this money. During the pilot project, I will be in contact with the CALS departments to facilitate purchasing and get feedback on the implementation of the program. Following the one-semester trial, there will be an evaluation survey to see if and how the departments used the ‘green’ money and suggestions for the implementation of a complete program.
            If all goes well, the Green Account could be a model for green purchasing in a decentralized system, making Cornell the leader among decentralized universities in the sustainability movement. It fosters sustainability by incorporating a triple bottom line business strategy that blends economic, social, and environmental values. The publicity of the Green Account would also encourage students, alumni, and the larger community to follow Cornell’s commitment to sustainability, and hopefully alter their own habits for the better.
Working on the Green Account Pilot Project has allowed me the opportunity to interact with authority figures within a community to accomplish an important goal. This interaction is seen by my meetings with Dean Koyanagi, the Sustainability Coordinator; Joanne DeStefano, Vice President of Financial Affairs and University Controller; Steve Golding, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration; Don Viands, Associate Dean and Director of Academic Programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Robin Yager and the 17 other Business Service Center Directors; Doug Mitarotanda, Student Trustee; Eric Ludewig, Associate Director of Purchasing; and The Green Purchasing Task Force.
As president of SNRC, I also try to reach out to other organizations and people that have similar goals of sustainability and conservation. I attend weekly meetings of the Sustainability Hub, a group of individuals from all sustainability organizations on campus, that come together to talk about each other’s efforts on campus and work to support each other’s ideas and events.
I am also currently co-organizing two Earth Day events. One is the Cornell Earth Day, which requires me to work with the environmental groups on campus, hold several meetings planning the events, reserving venues on campus, and publicizing for the events. The second Earth Day event I am co-organizing will take place near the Finger Lakes National Forest, where I and other members of the Ithaca and Cornell communities will get together to teach up to 75 home school children and their families about native tree planting, recycled paper making, solar powered carpentry, tree climbing with ropes, fungi and edible mushroom inoculation, tree and plant identification, soil conservation, composting, veggie diesel, and forestry products.
My involvement with SNRC, both as a member and as its president, has given me the opportunity to improve my leadership skills. I have improved my communication skills by presenting pilot project and Earth Day ideas to other groups and administrators. I have also realized that being a leader does not mean taking on every task. I have learned to better manage my time and can now assign tasks to other members of SNRC, so I do not burn out and so SNRC’s goals can be met more efficiently.