Tread Lightly is a proactive group of students and faculty who keep informed about environmental issues facing the campus and surrounding community, and who promote more environmentally friendly practices and lifestyles through demonstrations, service projects and other activities.
Formerly known as the Recycling Club, Tread Lightly has expanded its focus to include a broad range of sustainability issues, particularly the world water crisis and purchase of water in plastic bottles. It maintains that most bottled water is nothing more than tap water, that there are health issues related to the plastic containers, and that some 80 percent of the bottles are not recycled, but funneled directly into the waste stream.
Tread Lightly's Take Back The Tap initiative, begun in 2009, is a campaign to one day eliminate plastic water bottles from campus and to focus energy on improving the quality of municipal water.
Other issues of interest to the club include alternative energy sources, recycling, the controversial hydrofracking method of oil recovery, environmental polices and composting.