If you see me walking along the infamous Glenn G. Bartle Drive, taking abnormal and arbitrary steps, mind your business. I’ve come to notice that when the leaves fall, I make it my job to crunch each and every one in my path underneath my white sneakers. I don’t know what it is about leaf stomping — maybe it’s the sound, or just the fact that this activity proves that fall is in full swing. I am sure many of you are with me in this, given that you all experience the littering of leaf particles sprinkled throughout the sidewalks and streets of BU as well. Today, I witnessed the fall leaves disappear by a very peculiar machine making moves down the road adjacent to the University Union.

My friend asked me what the machine was. Me, being confused that she had never seen this vehicle before, explained that it was a street sweeper. Upstate kids, am I right? Just kidding!

She explained that it was funny to her that money and fuel is wasted cleaning up pieces of nature when they are broken down by themselves and with help of the weather. It turns out that street sweepers pick up sand, rocks and other pieces of earth in addition to leaves. Its cheaper and more fuel-efficient friend, the parking lot sweeper, is used to pick up litter and lighter waste materials. Considering leaves, pebbles and dirt will be in constant movement and natural degradation, maybe Binghamton University can switch to using parking lot sweepers only for areas with extensive trash. It would be better for their wallets and better for the air.

Parking sweepers are only a first of many steps that BU could take to become a greener campus. The Food Co-op, located in the Undergrounds of the University Union, creates vegan and other allergy-conscious snacks and meals for the students of BU. After making their culinary masterpieces in the kitchen, they discard food scraps in compost bins. The contents of a compost bin can go a long way in creating nutrient-rich soil, which could even be used for the student-run garden on campus, BU Acres. And since we are going to need a lot of compost, we can get the dining halls involved too! If BU displayed a compost bin conveniently located outside of a dining hall — to avoid the wretched smell of course — but close to the trash cans, students could put their uneaten scraps to good use.

In my latest column, I griped that although cardboard plates used in dining halls are a step in the right direction, they do not get properly recycled unless they are free of food waste. Obviously, there is no way to avoid any and all food waste on plates, but maybe we could cut back on food waste lingering on our plates by composting. We would be killing two birds with one stone — sorry for the non-vegan-friendly idiom — while also enhancing the opportunity for clean food at BU by bettering the waste management process in dining halls.

I would like to applaud BU in the first place for at least making attempts to “greenify” campus — and I am not talking about Green Day Friday, although I always get a kick out of a free frisbee being tossed at me from Baxter the Bearcat. Instead, I am giving kudos to the recycling bins placed in each dorm, where I encourage students to take advantage of simply throwing a plastic bottle into the blue bucket instead of walking down the hallway each time you need to recycle. Additionally, the green reusable food trays located at each dining hall look like a great resource to cut down on utensil waste.

Let’s hope the BU community can have some real green spirit and make the world greener as well.

Carol Dineen is a freshman majoring in chemistry.