Coogan Brennan, CC ’08, might be described as having his head in the clouds and his feet on the ground.

Yes, he talks passionately and a lot about “sustainability,” a term most of us probably regard as abstract and pretty amorphous. But with every idea for protecting the environment that Brennan generates, he’s also into some activity that makes sustainability efforts real and gives them meaning, especially on the Columbia campus.

In the past academic year, Brennan was very active in the Food Sustainability Project, a student group that works with Dining Services to reduce food waste and find more and more ways to obtain and use local produce and dairy products such as apples and milk in the dining halls.

Brennan was one of the organizers of last year’s plate-scraping project, in which he and others scraped plates and emptied beverage containers at two evening meals, then weighed or measured the discarded food, paper and drink. The results were provided to the student body after the October scraping, along with information about reducing waste. The second scraping in February resulted in a 22 percent reduction in food waste and a 19 percent reduction in paper product waste.

Moving the Food Sustainability Project initiatives ahead, Brennan says he hopes a couple of things will happen in the upcoming academic year. First is that students in John Jay Dining Hall will begin scraping their own plates according to waste categories, and second, that the waste will be the basis of a new composting initiative. Brennan says he envisions the compost being used in landscaping and grounds care, with leftovers transported to local farmers.

“Plus, with students’ scraping their own plates, they’ll realize what they’re consuming and wasting,” he says.

Brennan’s sustainability reach extends to Columbia’s Group for Environmental Opportunities, of which he’s a member. In May, Brennan was involved with the GEO-organized Give + Go Green project during Move-Out. Through the auspices of Give + Go Green, students leaving campus contributed truckloads of clothing, furniture, books and computer equipment for donation to low-income New Yorkers – items that otherwise would have found their way to the dumpster and trash stream.

Through GEO, Brennan says that students and administrators come together each Friday to help each other. His assessment is that the climate around Columbia’s environmental concerns is “definitely changing” and that “the administration is much friendlier toward getting initiatives started.”

Sustainability “is a more accepted thing to spend time and money on,” he says.

Eco-Reps are resident assistants in dorms whose responsibility is to raise student awareness of environmental issues. Brennan was the Spring 2006 coordinator of the group whose significant activity last semester was a student light-bulb exchange. Compact fluorescent lights replaced hundreds of energy-guzzling incandescent bulbs.

“Hopefully, there will be more than one Eco-Rep in each dorm in the coming year,” Brennan says.

This summer Brennan is taking no vacation from his commitment to sustainability. He’s furthering his efforts at Meriwether-Godsey, a contract dining company serving accounts in Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina.

He’s also one of three student members of the Search Committee working through the summer, seeking a Director of Environmental Stewardship – a new position at Columbia.

Come fall semester, Brennan says, he’s “looking forward to seeing the administration come forward and speak out for sustainability, waste management and environmental justice in the University and its surrounding campus.”

And, besides composting at John Jay Dining Hall, he’s eager for “a university-wide ecological assessment as the first step of an environmental stewardship director.”