Scribner thinks ‘green’ for LSU

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Capitol news bureau
• Published: Jan 12, 2009 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 am

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Denise Scribner would love for LSU to one day become a fully pedestrian campus and completely carbon neutral.

While such a time when the campus emits few, if any, carbon greenhouse gases may not be realistic soon, LSU leaders see Scribner’s presence as a strong and symbolic first step.

Don’t call her the eco queen or “green girl” as some colleagues tried; Scribner is LSU’s first “campus sustainability manager.”

It is a job created late last fall dedicated to making the campus more environmentally friendly, aware and organized.

“This is really the beginning of thinking about how to do this,” said Scribner, an LSU graduate and Baton Rouge native who performed eco-friendly city engineering for Long Beach, Calif., for the past 10 years.

“We have to come up with solutions,” she said, noting that Baton Rouge offers little in organic friendliness.

“California wouldn’t be able to survive like that,” she said with a laugh, adding that she wants LSU’s agriculture efforts to eventually help the college dining halls become fully organic.

One of Scribner’s “pie-in-the-sky” goals is for LSU to create “zero” waste, she said, noting that much more can be recycled than people realize.

Progress requires not just projects to make the campus more “green,” but also classes so students graduate with the lesson learned, she said.

She said LSU must expand on its classes like organic farming, a course in the Horticulture Department taught by Prof. Carl Motsenbocker.

While the long-term goals are great, the “low-hanging fruit” is what is realistic now because of ongoing state budget cuts, said Scribner and Jason Soileau, LSU campus planner and chairman of the new Campus Committee for Sustainability.

“We’re going after the most bang for the buck,” Soileau said. “But we’re not always going to be in a budget crunch, so we need to be perched and ready.”

Even with the tight budget, LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said he sees Scribner’s job as “symbolic” of progress.