William and Mary recently held a reusable bottle drive, in which any student could pick up a free, reusable water bottle for making a promise not to purchase any water in plastic bottles.  This was just the start of what the William and Mary Committee on Sustainability is planning for the semester. The committee has kicked off a "Do One Thing for Sustainability" (DOT) initiative, in which students can write one thing they will do for the environment, either on paper or on a Facebook post. Students could list swearing off bottled water or taking quicker showers, or any other positive lifestyle changes. The next step is for the art department to assemble an installation from the dots that will be displayed in the school's library. 

 

A YouTube contest is also taking place between submitted videos about people's "DOTs," which will have winners shown by the Committee on Sustainability at an Earth Day party. All of this is part of a promising and relatively new attempt at greening the William and Mary campus and as much of the rest of the world as possible.

 

Future hopes are to measure the rate of sustained commitment to these various "DOTs" and expand the program to other schools. William and Mary based this program on a model developed by Saatchi & Saatchi S, which is an international consulting firm on sustainability, and we are the first university to adopt the "DOT" program. The hope is that it will expand and promote sustainable choices at campuses everywhere. When it comes to sustainability, you can never have too many participants.