Beneath the surface of grassy, green quads on college campuses across the nation, a crisis is afoot. Fueled by agrochemical influence, underresourced grounds departments, and a general lack of awareness, many colleges and universities use potentially hazardous pesticides to keep campus green spaces free of unwanted weeds like dandelions and clover.
This practice unnecessarily exposes students, faculty, and campus staff to chemicals that can cause cancer, harm reproductive health, and disrupt hormones. According to researchers, these chemicals also help fuel our climate and biodiversity crises, decimate soil health, can leach into groundwater, poison pollinators, and are toxic to birds, fish, and other aquatic organisms.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Re:wild Your Campus aims to lead a growing movement for organic land management at colleges and universities and transform the way we see and engage with our green spaces.
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It all began in 2017 at UC Berkeley, when my volleyball teammate Bridget Gustafson and I learned that a potentially hazardous herbicide was sprayed around our court before practice. We were shocked by the possible public and environmental health risks from the spraying of, we learned, a product containing glyphosate, which is among the most widely used active ingredients in herbicides and has been found in 80% of US urine samples in those over age of 6, according to data collected in 2013-2014.
Our activism began one year before the 2018 Johnson v. Monsanto verdict, in which a jury found that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide was a “substantial factor” in causing the plaintiff’s cancer, but two years after the World Health Organization ruled that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Concerned for our safety and that of our teammates, we asked the supervisor of Cal Athletics Fields & Turf to stop spraying near the courts. We agreed, in return, that our beach volleyball team would pick the weeds surrounding the court.
Not long after that we secured a grant to bring an expert organic horticulturist to campus to work with the UC Berkeley grounds team and transition two of the largest green spaces on campus from conventional land care to organic land care. When properly employed, an organic land-care program will revitalize soil health, thereby creating a more resilient ecosystem that is able to fend off pests without chemical inputs.
So the first step was to bring life back into the soil. There are more living organisms in one teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet, but synthetic pesticides and fertilizers decimate soil life. When healthy, soil retains more water, sequesters more carbon, and is able to better support desired plants, enabling them to outcompete weeds. Our two pilot sites responded so well that the organic program spread and the UC Berkeley campus is now almost entirely organic.
We then set in motion a campaign for the entire UC system, and as a result of UC-wide student advocacy, the UC system banned glyphosate-based products on all 10 campuses and reexamined its pesticide policies. After graduating, I started Re:wild Your Campus (formerly Herbicide-Free Campus) and began working with students nationwide to create a world in which college campuses do not exist at the expense of human and environmental health.
Now there are active Re:wild Your Campus campaigns on 15 universities across the country, and several of these campaigns are in the midst of working with landscaping teams to break ground on organic pilot programs. At Emory University, students are supporting the grounds team in the transition of multiple sites on their campus. Students at Drexel University are also working with the grounds team there to transition a large green space, Drexel Park, to organic land care. Our student leaders conduct much-needed research on the ecological and economic benefits of transitioning to organic, and we hope this will inspire other universities to make the transition.
At Drexel, Emory, and many other schools we work with, we hear the same concerns: cost and aesthetics. However, through research we have compiled and base on our own experiences, we’ve found that a properly implemented organic program will leave an area looking the same, if not better, and that the long-term costs of organic management are lower than conventional management.
To help encourage more schools to ditch hazardous pesticides and go organic, Re:wild Your Campus has launched the Green Grounds Certification, a first-of-its-kind certification for campuses that are taking steps to prioritize human and environmental health. Seattle University, Cascadia College, and University of Washington Bothell (UW Bothell) are the first three schools to receive this certification — and all at the highest level: platinum. This means their campuses and sports fields are all managed without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.
Campuses like these have seen great benefits from transitioning to organic management practices. In our report, published in 2021, we found that implementing organic land can result in water savings of up to 25%, increased soil health, and reduced costs associated with campus management. Factoring in time and pesticides, fertilizers and other applied products, UW Bothell and Cascadia College are spending one-tenth the amount on their organic lawns as they once did on their conventional lawns, according to our findings.
Unfortunately, though, change is slow. If you’re a student, your campus, whether it's a K-12 school or a college, is likely covered in potentially hazardous pesticides. But the tide against pesticide-intensive campus management is turning, and you can help. Reach out to your campus grounds management or sustainability office, encourage them to become Green Grounds Certified, offer support as they make the transition, and push to get administrators involved. It's high time that colleges and universities prioritize the health and safety of campus communities and become models for climate resilience, both in the classroom and on the grounds.
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