BOULDER, Colo. — Sustainability is not easily defined whether you live in Colorado or Arizona.

With the establishment of the first recycling program at a university in 1976, the University of Colorado at Boulder has set the standard for other schools in the nation. Now, the University of Arizona is following suit by making a commitment to sustainability.

What officials have found is that the first steps could be the slowest and the most difficult.

Kevin Burke, student coordinator for campus sustainability at the UA, said one of the first steps the university is taking is to work on a “baseline carbon inventory,” meaning it will look at its impact on every aspect of campus life.

“(President Robert Shelton’s) climate commitment at the university has to show progress towards creating a comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction plan for the university,” he said. “So obviously the first step is to do that baseline inventory.”

By joining the pilot program for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, an organization composed of universities in the United States and Canada, the UA is taking yet another step to a move toward a more sustainable future.

“One of the big things that a lot of different people, groups are trying to do regarding sustainability is come up with a way to rate it,” Burke said. “How do you quantify what is sustainability?”

“What AASHE is trying to do is put together a rating system that all universities could use to chart their progress and to compare themselves to other universities,” he added.

Burke said this rating system will help determine whether or not the university is practicing “green building,” in which builders can check off points for recycling or water conservation.

While the program is in its early stage — “Nascent is the word,” Burke said — the university is still determining a definition for sustainability. He added that the term encompasses everything from research at the UA to the courses offered.

“There are no firm definitions of sustainability,” he said. “There’s the United Nations accepted definition, which is 25 years old, and everybody just kind of goes by that, but (then) it comes down to actually saying this is sustainable and this is not.

“So all this is is just an effort to as comprehensively as we can right now to figure out ways that we can track the progress the university’s making.”

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After decades of “milestone” advances, Marianne Moulton Martin, associate director of the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the university is also working to determine the true meaning of sustainability.

In fact, she said, sustainability is a relatively recent term for the university. But as a standard, CU has perennially been one of the leading universities to create or try efforts to make its campus more environmentally conscious.

Students have the biggest impact on that success, Martin said.

“We are run by students and we are funded by students,” she said. “Students have been a part of a lot of the initiatives that have happened on the campus, so really keeping pushing the envelope and trying new things and being the first in a long line of accomplishments. But it’s because students keep pushing forward.”

In 1970, students founded the Environmental Center, which is still student run to this day. Then the university was one of the first, Martin said, to form a recycling program on a school campus in 1976.

Other programs included a student bus pass in the early 1990s, wind power paid for by student fees in 2000 and an action plan for a greener campus (Blueprint for a Green Campus), also in 2000.

“We’re trying to make sustainability be part of the campus operations for decades, and it’s pretty exciting times because it is becoming more and more of the standard,” Martin said.

While also a member of AASHE, the school is working to becoming sustainable on all facets, said Dave Newport, director of the Environmental Center and board member of AASHE, including “education, research, operations, community interface, campus culture. You name it.”

As far as what the UA can do to take steps to a greener campus, Newport advised to take a more operational approach to sustainability by looking at is from the “environmental, fiscal and social priorities.”

“I think it’s a process,” he added. “And so long as you honor that process, and I think you’re doing as good as you’re going to do.”