Lately, it is almost impossible to see the campus without a green-colored lens.

The University’s efforts to become more environmentally friendly would be impossible without help from the students – and one student in particular, Anthony Santarelli, is taking the campus through steps toward a greener future. Santarelli, junior in ACES, understands that one of these steps includes simply doing more.

“There is a lot that should be improved on environmentally,” Santarelli says. “More needs to be done to ensure that our world will be a more livable place.”

Anthony interns at Environmental Compliance, located in the Physical Plant Services building at 1501 S. Oak St. in Champaign. This program makes sure that the units on campus are in compliance with state, federal and local environmental regulations.

One task that Environmental Compliance performs is ensuring that only water gets through the drains, sending all pollutants to the Boneyard Creek that runs through campus.

Santarelli has been a busy intern since joining this past summer because of the endlessly rainy seasons causing storm discharge and campus construction, which brought concrete and other pollutants into the mix. He explained that his job description entails much more than monitoring the campus’s drains.

“There are so many things that we keep track of for the University,” Santarelli said. “There’s air, water, oil and many other things that Environmental Compliance monitors, and my job was to understand that process.”

Not only does Santarelli bring his work ethic to Environmental Compliance, but he also dedicates his time to Community Organized Recycling Efforts, a smaller group that he helped jump-start.

This group has done work such as holding a Greek recycling competition between fraternity and sorority houses and starting an organization called the C-U Business Program.

“It started out as a grant from my current internship to go toward a project called ‘Greening Green Street,'” Santarelli said. “The business program would monitor the way businesses operate, and make suggestions on different ways they could conserve water, energy and prevent pollution, for example.”

However, because the group decided that there was potential success in this project, members decided to extend it to the Champaign-Urbana area.

“We are 100 percent positive that this will be successful, based on the support and encouragement we have received from local and other businesses,” said Mara Eisenstein, University alumna and contributor to the C-U Business Program. “Our motto is like the Nike slogan: ‘Just do it!'”

Eisenstein also recognizes the contribution that Santarelli, her co-worker and the youngest member working on the Business Program, has made.

“Everything he does is out of passion,” she said. “He is a doer, and he gets it done.”

Santarelli worked 40 hours a week at his internship this summer while also attending meetings at night for CORE. He said that putting in extra time for his group was tiring, yet rewarding,

“It was the busiest summer of my life,” Santarelli said, “But it excites me knowing how successful this could potentially get.”

David Wilcoxen, associate director of the University’s Division of Safety and Compliance and head of the office where Santarelli interns, can vouch for the determination he exerts.

“When one of his team members questioned whether he had sufficient training and experience to implement the green business program, Santarelli replied, ‘Yeah, I thought about that, for a second. Then I kept working on the program,'” Wilcoxen said. “That’s Anthony! He doesn’t listen to anyone, including himself, that says he can’t or isn’t qualified to develop this program.”

While Santarelli is working hard on making conditions in the C-U more livable, he recognizes that there are also simple ways that students can contribute to “green” the environment:

“It’s really not hard to be a ‘green’ college student, because it’s using less,” Santarelli said. “It’s paying for less, essentially.”