The Unsustainable House
Being in my first year at university, I live in halls. Well, it’s kind of halls, it’s actually a house, but it’s on the campus grounds and is owned by the university.
Staffordshire University definitely wants to cut energy and water use on campus in both buildings of learning and residential buildings. This campaign has been led by stickers posted everywhere you see saying “switch it off” on large windows and also stuck on light switches. Stickers associated with reducing water usage can also be found above most taps. One of my primary concerns with this is that stickers is (as far as I know) the only real method for the university to attempt to change the behaviour of students and lecturers. Does a sticker really make a difference? Should there be active discussion about turning lights off when you’re not in the room and using water more wisely?
My case study on how effective Staffordshire University’s “sustainability” campaign has went. My study is very localised; to the confines of my house, and I by no means expect this to be the same in every house/hall at Staffordshire University, though as everyone in my house comes from different backgrounds, it shows a greater picture by how different types of people have different attitudes towards actively trying to be more environmentally friendly.
To the left, this may just seem like a slightly dirty worktop and basin, but there’s more than what meets the eye. The saucepan has not been washed up straight after use, and has been filled with water. This was left for quite a while, therefore the water inside has cooled and is now unusable to clean with, therefore it has been wasted as it will just be poured away. Sustainable? I think not. I may not be the perfect role model for cleaning dishes, but I make sure that I only use the water required. This situation is one which doesn’t adhere to the “Use water wisely” stickers, though on a level that many might not even think about as an unsustainable practice. Still in the kitchen, there’s another problem; infact a few more. The cooker in our house is quite dated, and the oven door isn’t very tight/sealed; this means that it takes a long time for the oven to heat because a lot of the heat can easily escape. It’s an inefficient use of the energy it uses. I called up maintenance and told them that the over door doesn’t close very well. The response to this was to merely make the safety lock on the door tighter; this did not help with the fact that there was a problem with the oven door gasket. The third issue in 
the kitchen is the location of the extractor fan relative to that of the cooker – each are separate sides of the kitchen. This makes the entire extractor fan an inefficient system that really doesn’t help with extracting steam and cooking odors. Even due to it’s somewhat redundant placement, it is still used, and because of its poor performance because of its location, the fan is often left on for over an hour after people have left the kitchen. To the people in the house, it is merely a quiet noise, not something which uses energy. The fourth and final sustainability I see in the kitchen is that we are told we have recycling bins on a general information board in the kitchen, though the reality is quite different. We have no recycling bins in our kitchen, nor do we have a bin outside of our house to put recycling in. So, for this, no one can really be held accountable but Staffordshire University, because we have no place to dispose of everyday recycling.
Throughout the house in public areas i.e. kitchen/living area, halls, landing and bathrooms,
there is a large problem with people ignoring the stickers about turning lights off (image to the right). Throughout the house, out of all the public places I have mentioned, from my observations it is only the bathroom lights which in fact switched off; others are often left on constantly. Curtains will not be opened and lights are left on. Over the past few days I have conducted a practical test – I turned all of the lights off on the ground floor, then whenever I next need to leave my bedroom, I will observe which lights have been switched back on and left on. Out of the four lights in public rooms downstairs (apart from the shower room), three of these lights will be left on by other people. This is conclusive evidence that the campaign to make people switch lights off when they are not needed is being actively ignored by all residents in the house.
As a brief point, the heating is often constantly on in public areas of the house, and I too often have the heating on in my room quite frequently, as the insulation in these houses is not great.
The final thing I wish to point out is the water use in the bathroom. More likely than not, there will be a running tap in the bathroom. Not running exessively, but enough to raise concern over the frequency this occurs. The sign telling people to use water wisely is yet another sign which is ignored.
Though this review sounds very negative overall, as stated at the beginning of the post – I have no evidence to suggest this is a university wide issue; apart from recycling facilities. I have not seen one residential recycling bin since I first came to Staffordshire University. There are recycling facilites in many of the university faculty buildings, though these are not for residential scale use, but instead for waste produced within the faculty building, which can be reflected by the small size of these recycling bins. As an addendum, I would like to point out that there is a sustainability section on the university website which does have a more substantial campaign, though I have never been exposed to this part of the website being advertised.
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