Content
Litter becoming an increasing problem
11 April 2009
As was reflected in the ‘Daily’s’ article in mid-week about one of our star Russian students, overseas visitors in particular love the campus and its wildlife.
The same can be said for most of our staff and students, and our love of this environment is reflected in ongoing work to study and protect the wildlife, and generally scope whether we can become over time a self-sustaining ‘ecoversity’.
It has always been our concern in successive strategic and campus master planning exercises to develop quality, distinctive academic programs on the one hand, but also be an environmental experimenter and exemplar on the other.
Our academic standing continues to increase, as our involvement in an OECD study demonstrated. In addition, there is an increasing demand from overseas students to study here.
So the academic growth of the University continues unabated annually with increasing teaching and research opportunities. That trend will likely accelerate further in the years ahead following the implementation of the Bradley Review agenda.
It is, however, the consequences of growth for the campus environment that I am most concerned about.
There are signs of diminishing respect for that environment from some people.
It seems inevitable that with our heavy reliance on the use of cars, that there will be the erosion of verges and previously open space in order to accommodate the pressure for parking on campus.
But with that extension of controlled parking areas, has also come irresponsible littering, with plastic bottles, bags, cartons being disposed indiscriminately on an increasing scale. Add to this the irresponsible smokers whose cigarette butts are getting more numerous, and we are faced with diverting more core funding to deal with such litter, some of which endangers wildlife, especially the young.
It is time to re-emphasise that every one of us has a personal part to play in keeping this campus an attractive and important part of our development to a world-class university of this century.
Could I urge everyone to be more careful and responsible with litter and avoid environmental damage whenever possible.
In the meantime, we move to finalisation of a bus terminal to increase public transport, and we continue to monitor whether we will be forced to multi-storey and paid parking and even a smoke-free campus sooner than we expected.
Such initiatives have already been implemented in many other universities internationally.
The concern with our unique environment here must remain a high priority.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor and President at the University of the Sunshine Coast.