Office of Sustainability Launches Seasonal Initiative: #NoWipeNovember

WashU’s environmental friendliness has always been a source of pride for the administration and student body. Over the past few years the school removed every trash can from campus, forbade all students and alums from ever purchasing SUVs, and stopped selling bottled water. In recognition of these exceptional steps, the school was awarded the prestigious and oft sought after rating of “low-priority target” by ecoterrorist group Greenpeace.
 
However, despite the green leaps and bounds the school has made, the Office of Sustainability won’t rest until the planet has been totally saved. This past Tuesday, Dean of Sustainability Max Harmon, announced the newest mark in the office’s eternal crusade: toilet paper. “Our office has made printing on campus virtually impossible, we’ve internally sabotaged StudLife to render it completely unreadable, but there is still one source of paper usage at WashU that’s gone unchecked for too long. Every day students and faculty flush thousands of sheets of toilet paper down the drain,” Mr. Harmon screamed nigh-incoherently at the press release, “they don’t even compost it, just straight down the pipes.”
 
In order to combat this threat to the campus’s LEED rating of “Green Like the Money They Paid for This Rating,” the office has designed a new movement, spearheaded by the hashtag #NoWipeNovember to inspire students to limit their wastefulness. “Not only will this cut the costs to upkeep the bathrooms, it will also keep our waste to a minimum,” the chancellor stated in his approval of the plan, “we’ve tried to discourage toilet paper usage in the past by engineering paper that was as thin and uncomfortable as possible to use, but clearly more drastic measures are required.”
 
Sophomore Chris Shatfield, who still occasionally wears his homemade “WashU Students Against Peabody” shirt, was also impressed by the measure. “It never even occurred to me how many trees we literally shit on every day,” Shatfield revealed, “last night was my first dump of No Wipe November and I’ve never felt so free. It’s a little early to say, but I may have to extend into Don’t Wipe December as well.”
 
Thankfully, in large part due to the hard work of men like Mr. Harmon, the Department of Chemical, Energy, and Environmental Engineering has announced that yes, indeed, the planet is nearly saved and soon we’ll need to find new reasons to be smug about our hybrids.