University of Nevada Las Vegas
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

The Nevada Board of Regents has a program called the Regents Service Program. Through this program, UNLV Rebel Recycling has been able to get interns for the past two years. One intern positions has worked on implementing a stadium recycling program for Sam Boyd Stadium. The first year resulted in every event held at the stadium having a comprehensive recycling element. This student was hands on, but it still resulted in learning to negotiate with various stakeholders at the stadium, assessing the successes, weaknesses, opportunities and barriers, planning for improvements and implementing improvements, and managing large groups of volunteers. The internship did not have an stringent academic elements, but it was a hands-on learning experience. The student help embed recycling into the stadium to the point where the facilities staff call to make sure we will be coming to set up and help with clean up.

A second student, in 2013, worked on creating a green event certification program. They researched other campus event certification program and created one that is usable for UNLV. A partnership was formed between Rebel Recycling and Student Union and Event Services (SUES). The student managed meetings between the entities, presented drafts, took comments and criticisms, and edited her draft. She created the certification check list and the accompanying resource guide. The new intern is piloting the program.

Both of these interns enhanced small existing programs or created a new program, and altered campus for the better. They learned through a hands-on project. And both of these projects have been adopted by new interns who are furthering the work started by the original two trailblazers.

In 2013, we had two paid interns from the Take Back the Tap campaign work on a report entitled the UNLV Reduction Plan for Plastic Water Bottle Usage. They wrote a 54 page document that helped to increase the number of hydration stations on campus, created a marketing plan to help increase awareness about refilling and reusing, established a 5 cent fee for the purchase of bottled water (the funds are used to purchase more hydration stations), created a single use bottle trade in program (participants get a stainless steel refillable bottle), gain financial support for the campus initiative (by allocating funds for future interns and for the purchase of reusable water bottles), and build campus partnerships for the effort. Among these partnerships includes Aramark at UNLV who have been able to make the 5-cent surcharge a reality. In this report, all levels of campus life are identified where plastic water bottle use is used, including faculty and staff usage, and allows a bottled water user to become more aware of this important environmental issue.

The students had to write the report, be strategic on what to include and not include in the report, present it, lobby for it and then implement the approved recommendations (which was all of them). They learned a number of skills through the process and made an impressive mark on the campus in terms of the reduction of plastic single use disposable water bottles. Not only was it a great way for the students to learn and in turn engage the campus community, but it was a great turning point for campus sustainability at UNLV. This report adds solid citations to the argument of reducing plastic water bottle usage on campus by having over 60 credible sources. Not only was this a research intensive project, but it served as a beneficial way to understand the innovation happening at other universities making UNLV form part of that category.