LOUISVILLE, Ky.–Remember those square, plastic disks we all used to stick in the A drive of our computers?
The University of Louisville is asking faculty, staff and students who still have the disks stashed away at work or home to dig them out and bring them to a recycling bin on the West Lawn near the Belknap Campus Red Barn on Wednesday.
The “disk drive” will be one of several activities at a green information fair organized by UofL’s new Sustainability Council on Oct. 22, which is national Campus Sustainability Day. The council will work over the next year to ramp up the “greening” of the university, said Barbara Burns, a psychological and brain sciences professor heading the group.
More than 30 UofL departments, community groups, civic organizations and vendors have signed up to have booths at the fair, all with a green theme.
Other fair attractions will include a clothing swap sponsored by UofL’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety and a chance to sign a pledge to reduce personal energy use sponsored by Partnership for a Green City.
Burns also hopes to sign up as many as 500 faculty, staff and student volunteers at the fair to support her group as it works to boost green policies and practices on campus.
The computer disks collected through the drive will be taken to UofL’s Speed School of Engineering, where workers in the electrical and computer engineering department will scrub them of data before they are taken to Louisville Metro’s recycling center.
UofL’s Sustainability Council was formed in August to act as a clearinghouse for all of the university’s sustainable practices.
The university’s new strategic plan sets measurable goals for improving the university’s green practices through 2020. One of those goals is to move up in STAR (Sustainability, Tracking and Assessment Rating), a list of environmental standards set by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability.