Despite the chill of the post-rain weather, around 20 Pomona College students, faculty and alumni filled Estella Laboratory’s Emmy Noether Room (1021) on Feb. 7 to discuss the results of Pomona’s annual Sustainable Action / Visible Effects (SAVE) over aguas frescas and tamales. The SAVE report assesses Pomona’s progress towards various sustainability goals for reaching carbon neutrality in 2030.
The panel featured Evelyn Mineo PO ’25 and Katie Chao PO ’25, two of the three summer interns who created the report.
Chao presented the energy and climate sections of the report. She emphasized transportation emissions as a clear opportunity for improvement, as there was a 148 percent increase in emissions between 2022 and 2023.
“Obviously some travel … is unavoidable,” Chao said. “But in the age of Zoom, I personally believe that so much can be done to make things like conferences, workshops, meetings, etc. remote … Three round trips to Vietnam — which was something I actually saw in the data — is not necessary. There are definitely big strides that we can make there.”
Mineo presented the report’s food section. According to the report, 32 percent of Pomona dining purchases met at least one sustainability certification recognized by the college. One graphic presented by Mineo depicted both the quantity of purchases in different categories and the percentage of the purchases which were sustainable. For example, 100 percent of purchases in the vegan category were sustainable, but vegan food purchases make up the smallest percentage of total food purchases compared to other categories.
She emphasized the importance of student choices in increasing the amount of sustainable food purchases for the dining halls.
“[People] ask … ‘what can you do to contribute to sustainability at Pomona?’ Mineo said. “In the food department, at least, creating demand for the categories that are more sustainable.”
A key example of the influence of student demands was last year’s Meatless Mondays, also known as Mindful Mondays. Meatless Mondays were established to reduce meat consumption. Currently, meat is Pomona’s least sustainable category of food purchases, with only 5 percent of purchases meeting sustainability certification.
Mineo said that strong student opposition undermined the sustainability effort.
“Last year, we had a lot of outcries around Meatless Mondays,” Mineo said. “There were articles written in TSL about how Meatless Monday was an abomination … Students are really good at boycotting the dining halls when they have sustainability-themed days … [which is] a little bit difficult when you’re also trying to promote sustainability.”
One student in the audience noted that people tend to avoid Pomona’s meatless options more often than similar options at the other 5C dining halls.
Mineo referenced a 2016 study that found that an increase in dining spending correlates with a decrease in financial aid spending. Bowdoin College, the subject of the study, has since challenged this claim.
In correspondence with TSL, Mineo clarified that there is no evidence that the alleged trade-off between dining spending and financial aid spending applies to Pomona.
Still, she emphasized the importance of considering the implications of a potential correlation between dining spending and financial aid.
“What are we advocating for?” Mineo asked. “And then what are we complaining about?”
One student asked about the plans for the new Center for Global Engagement, which is slated to replace Oldenborg Center.
Alexis Reyes, director of Sustainability and Energy Management, explained that the Sustainability Office is looking into the feasibility of an all-electric or net zero building, but that ultimately, the decision lies with executive staff and the Board of Trustees.
Reyes believes unfamiliarity is a key obstacle holding Pomona’s administrators back from making more ambitious choices.
“It feels scary to build something with a technology that you’ve never worked with before,” Reyes said. “Can it be done? Absolutely. You just have to get over that … human feeling of the unknown. But if [we] make the new Oldenborg all-electric, that’s just the beginning for all of our new construction.”
Reyes emphasized the importance of student advocacy in college-wide sustainability efforts.
“As students, you can for sure advocate your voice,” Reyes said. “Maybe it doesn’t feel like your voice is always heard, but people are listening to the student voice.”
Although the panel focused on food, energy and climate, Mineo hopes that the panel increased awareness of the report so that people will read it in its entirety.
“There’s just so much to be said about that report,” Mineo said. “And we wanted to do this panel because I think a lot of times students don’t know it even exists, or how to access it.”
For Steven Kim PO ’26, the panel clarified Pomona’s sustainability initiatives and raised questions about how sustainability initiatives are developed.
“It opens a new door to other questions that I have about how energy works and how these things are even put in place … The sustainability initiatives make me feel pretty positive,” Kim said. “More so than not having known about this at all. So I would say I’m glad I came.”
TSL reported on the SAVE report when it was initially released in Oct. 2023
Access the full 2023 SAVE report on Pomona’s website