Abstract
Environmentalists have been warning that human economic and social activities are exceeding the limits of the planet; and man has kept on pushing those limits back with clever and new technologies and unsustainable behavior. This work has tried to show what the concept of Going Green means for university communities using Tai Solarin University of Education as a case study. The entire Ijagun Community was studied because both the university and the historic settlement, the university host community, Ijagun, have grown together since the establishment of the Tai Solarin College of education. The community of Ijagun was toured and so also the university campus (Ijagun Campus). The changing face of the earth was observed and records taken of the human population, plants and animals, vegetal cover, physical development and structures by number and type, road network, pollution, waste generation and its management, etc. The Registry, Establishment, and Works Directorates of the university provided data and information on student registration, staff and the physical structures, layout and development of the campus. A standardized and pretested questionnaire was also used to collect data and information from two categories of subjects: colleagues (10) and 400 Level students (40) from each of the 5 colleges. The work found out that the concept of Going Green and Living Green is not popular particularly among students: Green areas are few, everyone crosses lawns indiscriminately, waste is generated and poorly managed, vegetal cover is fast decreasing, there is no respect for plant and animal life forms, no thought of mitigation measures against global warming and climate change, etc. Generally, the entire environment is vulnerable to environmental degradation, leading to an unsustainable environment. There must be specialized media for educating and training every member of the community to go green and live green. The university itself may have to do more to encourage going green and living green towards attaining a sustainable green academic community.