Sustainability at Mercer University (II)

(I am grateful to Sarah Stitt, a freshman student at Mercer University who has granted permission to post this contribution)

The light problem I would like to address actually covers two forms of pollution: light pollution and energy pollution. Last semester Mercer University hosted a Caring for Creation Conference. I was in two classes environmentally themed because of the conference. As part of my environmental themed Honor’s class, I needed to create a project that would help improve environmentalism or awareness on campus.
To get some ideas, I attended a student run forum. At this forum, a faculty member mentioned that while the majority of the street lamps on campus were not environmentally friendly, one of the men from Physical Plant (general maintenance) had purchase one LED bulb and installed it a street lamp outside the campus book store. He hoped to get feedback from students and faculty on whether or not they preferred this type of light to the other lights on campus. However, he hadn’t widely publicized what was different about this light, so while many of us students had noticed the “funny blue light,” we didn’t know what was special about it, or who to tell that we preferred it. Thus, my project concept was born.

I decided that I would photograph the two types of light on campus and compare not only their physical pros and cons (whether the light was better, brighter) but also which light polluted less. I would then create a survey to record students light preference. Once I had both my information and survey results, I would present these and hope that the university would switch over to the better light (assuming it was the LED one). These are a couple of the photographs I took that night (taken on the exact same setting):

These are a couple of regular campus lights.






This is the LED light.




Granted, there is some additional light coming from the bookstore and cafeteria behind the LED light, but still, the difference in brightness between the two is striking. Also, the difference in light pollution is striking. The regular campus lights create that horrible orange glow that floats over so many cities. The LED light, however, is clear and focused with a much smaller haze. While the initial appeal of this project was that I knew LED lights were more environmentally friendly and energy conserving, these pictures made it evident to me that switching bulb type could also make campus at night safer while reducing the light pollution on campus.