Recently, two new sustainability initiatives passed through the Student Senate proposal process. The new changes are a result of the work of members of the Student Senate Sustainability Committee in an effort to provide easier ways for members of the Aquinas community to save money and time while helping out the environment.

The first, entitled Community Carpooling, will allow students, staff and faculty to post their destination plans in an open forum that could be accessed through a link on The Moose website. Other members of the Aquinas community could view their posts and offer to carpool with them to their destination.

The site will be regulated by Jessica Onan, Program Director for the Center for Sustainability.

This proposal is also expected to help with the parking problems and may even decrease the amount of cars unnecessarily parked for long periods.

The second proposal is called One Saint’s Junk is another Saint’s Treasure. This proposal would look a lot like a localized eBay. As with carpooling, any member of the Aquinas community can go to a link on The Moose website and post an item for sell or post a request for an item. The idea is to reduce the amount of items — couches, books, lamps, clothes — that are thrown away every year.

Advantages for this proposal are also numerous. Firstly, students can save money on textbooks, dorm furniture and anything else that gets posted on the forum — the possibilities are endless. Many members of the Sustainability Committee believe that dialogue between students increases a sense of community on campus. Less unwanted items will be thrown away, resulting in less waste.

The buyer is reusing an item, resulting in less use of material resources to make it.

As a community, Aquinas has been making big changes and plans to make campus a better place to live. The recent wave of environmentally conscious changes being instituted on campus has been largely because of Aquinas students — any student can submit an idea through the Sustainability Initiatives link on the Aquinas web site.

Each idea must be explained and has to show that it can be financially, environmentally and socially beneficial for the Aquinas community. If your idea is selected it could be put into action.