Grass is greener on the other side...

Harvard University has developed its ecological policies in a creative way. In an effort to reduce its greenhouse gases by 30 percent by 2016, the university’s landscape services have started replacing the lawns with organic grass. This means that no fertilizers or pesticides are used as the ecosystem is basically self-sustaining, the microbes in the soil make the grass green. The initiative has also reduced irrigation by 30 percent. Going green has thus meant also economical sustainability.

Harvard also helps others to become green, the instructions for organic grass can be found at: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/fmo/landscape/organiclandscaping/

I could easily think of some other ways in which Harvard could decrease its environmental footprint starting obviously with my daily headache topic: paper cups and plates (used in the lunch seminars). As 20 000 students walk around the corridors and yards of Harvard, the university should use its influence to make the area around Harvard Square a little bit greener (and I don’t just mean organic grass!). I’ve become increasingly aware that we shouldn’t put too much faith in the global politics of solving environmental problems, instead we should really focus on small steps taken on the local level (I know that someone before me invented this). Pushing the local business to more ecologically sustainable production seems like the only way to go forward.

I’m not saying that local action is easy either. I tried to convince my local café owner to change to real mugs instead of paper cups, the old Asian man didn’t understand me and was first offering me another paper cup. The problem was at first the language but I guess the real problem was purely conceptual: “what is wrong with paper cups?” Pronouncing “ecological” didn’t seem to ring a bell in this man’s head. Instead of trying to explain him my rationale again, I think I just walk a bit further to The Biscuit at 406 Washington Street in Somerville . They have real mugs (they also have "Helsinki" sandwich) that made my coffee taste so good that I was inspirited to send them an email thanking them. The Biscuit replied:

“Thanks for your input! Yes, in addition to our use of real plates & mugs, we also recycle the majority of our plastics & cardboard, we have a compost program for our food refuse, and we use organic produce, dairy products and flour products, when available. We are members of a Maine food-co-op program that encourages locally-grown products in much of what we do, and during the Framers' Market season (April thru October), we not only participate in a large number of markets, but we actively encourage "product swap" with farmers and other local producers. Given the large amount of product that we do use to produce our pastry goods, it is not always possible to "go local", but we do what we can, when we can. Thanks again for your interest!”

I guess I'm off to The Biscuit now...

Impressions from Harvard Square

I haven’t even come close to completely cover our trip in Egypt but now that I have already undertaken new adventures in another continent I can no longer reminisce about snorkelling in Dahab, excellent sea food in the backstreets of Alexandria or the first rain in years in Sinai. I have immersed myself once again in the academic life and for two weeks now I’ve been savouring the atmosphere around Harvard Square. While I immediately felt like home in Boston, I have to say that some aspects of American culture and life surprise me as much as Islamic Egypt.

One day, just after my arrival, I started talking to a Romanian-French associate professor who had been living here for years now. I doubted if I could ever live here for a longer period and he assured me how I would find it eventually better than Europe (at the moment, I’m still doubting). At least there is one object to my absolute daily satisfaction rate: paper cups. Now I’m more prepared for this ubiquitous waste and I’m carrying my own thermos mug with me in order to avoid the paper cups in the cafés (however, paper cups being just one example of the ecologically unsustainable life style here).

Another “ex-European”, a German economics professor at Harvard, told me that while he enjoys his life enormously, he also misses the healthier balance between work and leisure in Europe where people actually have time to have a Sunday brunch with friends. I observed this work addiction very soon after arriving here. People carry their take-away coffees around the campus looking busy, eat their lunch during the classes and try to multitask the day through. Are they really more efficient in their work like this, not having a real pause to calm down? I don’t know but if I remember correctly, some economists argue that the productivity is around the same in Europe even if we work much less. Anyways, if our more easy-going work rhythm is not improving our economic growth rates like in the USA, I think it must be correlated with the well-being of people.

So, even though I’m very impressed by the Harvard University and nice and polite people (working for their tips?), I’m still not ready giving up my European identity and pride of being European. I’ll keep you updated on my sentiments of European superiority on the one hand, and my positive observations of the American culture on the other. I’ve already abandoned some of my arrogant prejudices about the Americans, but however, only premised on the non-representative sample around Harvard.