We are MBA students at Colorado Mesa University (CMU). As a class, we are divided in our views of the justification for environmental costs at CMU and have decided to look further into just how “green” our campus is and why.
Environmental costs are the costs an organization incurs when trying to limit their effect on the environment. We discovered that the campus utilizes a wide variety of sustainable efforts, and the practices embedded at our university show it is an organization that values the environment and sets their standards high.
Geo-exchange systems, recycling, and the sustainability council are just a few of the examples of environmental costs that are involved with this campus whether these efforts stem from a desire to help the environment or a desire to cut costs. We do not doubt that CMU values the environment, but the purpose of this editorial is to uncover their motives.
We collaborated to look at environmental costs incurred at CMU and economic benefits that come from them. The first cost is perhaps the largest found on campus in the geothermal heating and cooling exchange system.
It includes 171,000 feet of pipes and seven well fields. The pipes carry heat energy around campus controlling the temperature of most of the buildings on campus, and the well fields allow the system to store and receive energy for future use depending on varying heating and cooling needs. After increased costs for installation are factored, geo-exchange technology offers the lowest cost option for primary heating and cooling.
A second cost is the recycling bins placed across campus encouraging students to recycle, and a third is the water filling stations which save thousands of wasted plastic bottles every month.
CMU has a sustainability council to which they have delegated management of recycling efforts, but who knows about these programs? Why did we have to search to find them? We argue that the reason is simply that CMU values the environment more than they value the publicity and chooses to make decisions to ensure our campus is “green” despite the costs.
A growing trend in industries is to integrate sustainable business practices and utilize them as core business functions. Whether domestic or international, activists are claiming humans have a moral obligation to sustain the planet for future generations with sustainable practices in the workplace, and companies are following suit.
However, what is the underlying motivation behind companies incurring these environmental costs? What is the real reason that organizations like CMU implement sustainable strategies such as hydration stations and a geo-exchange system?
Recycling costs must be balanced between money spent and the environmental effect. Sometimes one environmental saving is swallowed up by another environmental cost. For example, the fuel used to collect and transport the recyclables could outweigh the environmental savings of the trees that have been saved. Scrap paper could be sold in bulk for many purposes and CMU has an abundance of scrap paper.
These actions must lead to cost savings for the university or else incurring the cost would be pointless for the university’s business model. The chief motivation driving business owners are to make profits and minimize costs. So, as companies exploit these practices as a marketing tool, the discerning citizen should identify these sustainable practices for what they truly are – not a moral imperative but a faux.
Does it matter more that CMU truly cares about the environment and fulfills their moral obligation, or that it incurs these costs simply as a way to invest in future savings? As students who represent CMU, and as the community this school supports, it is important for us to be knowledgeable on this topic that greatly affects both the business operations and the image of the school.
Signed, The Students of ACCT 500: Managerial Accounting, Fall 2018.
