The UW recently rented goats to undertake weed control on campus rather than use pesticides or polluting gas-powered devices. Also, this past year the UW encouraged students to recycle their unwanted goods when they cleaned out dorm rooms. This resulted in 12.25 tons of clothes, household goods, etc., going to nonprofits.

The UW is a member of the Leadership Circle of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. In 2006, Clara Simon was hired to be the UW’s sustainability officer and is receiving an award as an emerging leader in sustainable high performance building.

Current challenges at the University of Washington, according to Director of News and Information Bob Roseth, relate to individual habits and behaviors. "While it’s relatively easy to change building policies and to replace devices, it’s often harder to change what people do day to day."

Current challenge: To break faculty and staff of the habit of driving to work. Smith College last year launched an "opt-out" program that encourages employees who drive to work alone to leave their cars behind and instead use public transportation, their own locomotion or carpool to work. About 80 employees are "opting out" this year, the first year of the program.

What is working? Water bottles. Smith handed out 2,500 blue 16-ounce plastic bottles to students when they arrived on campus this year. Each bears the message "You must recycle" with the "you" crossed out and replaced with "I." Last year, the college had distributed 2,500 bottles of water each week to students who were opting for boxed lunches. This year: Zero. Students are filling and refilling their blue bottles. The bottles each include carabiners that can be used to clip them onto backpacks.

Environmental Coordinator Julie Rosenbach said, "Recycling is one of our biggest challenges, not just with the students, but throughout the college. Also, getting peoples' attention and engaging them on sustainability issues is a challenge. Students are bombarded with issues and wooed with trinkets so that it is becoming difficult to get their attention."

Rosenbach describes what is working: "Engaging small groups of students, faculty, and staff is working." However, she added, "We have made the world so convenient for people that many will not go the extra steps it might take to sort their trash and recycle. There are no immediate consequences for dumping it all into the nearest bin. We need to focus more attention on this issue."

Sustainability unites the generations, the faculty and the students, Rosenbach said, "although the approach taken by the faculty and the students is different. Students want big issues to take a stand on. Students more often want to see the result of their efforts - 100% or we're falling short. Faculty and staff take a more cerebral approach to issues and more often remain unseen." http://www.bates.edu/sustainable-bates.xml.

On the academic side, faculty are focusing course work on sustainability to help Colgate collect and organize certain data relevant to sustainability practices on campus. For example, a new senior seminar co-taught by physicist Beth Parks, and Ian Helfant, associate professor of Russian and chair of Colgate's Environmental Council, will focus on alternative energy options both as an academic topic and through research focused upon Colgate's energy needs and usage. In addition, students in Earth and Environmental Processes will be conducting an inventory of Colgate's greenhouse gas emissions.

Next month, the Environmental Council may recommend that the university hire an Environmental Sustainability Coordinator. Meanwhile, the group is considering costs vs. benefits, as well as qualifications and possible job description.

For more information, contact Barbara Brooks, director of public relations and marketing, Colgate University, 315/228-7416, bbrooks@mail.colgate.edu.

back to top

Current challenges include:
• Engaging diverse constituents of our campus so they each can "see" themselves in campus sustainability
• "Convincing" the campus that we are sincerely pursuing sustainability, that this is more than greenwashing and isn’t a flash in the pan
• Marketing the sustainability program (speakers, events, activities, initiatives) to the campus
• Ever increasing demands by students, research facilities, and IT consumption ("plug loads")

What is working? Robson is noticing "paradigm shifts within facilities and administration. From CFAO to Operations & Planning, to maintenance and custodial services, we have a team that is ‘getting it’," Robson said.  "Sustainability can be the rare issue that unites the generations if we speak about the impact of sustainability as not being limited to environmental issues, but rather that it’s about creating healthier, happier campuses and communities." www.case.edu/news/sustain

U.Va. is hosting the Greening Virginia Universities and Colleges Conference on October 26, which will feature presentations focusing on Sustainable Campus Policies and Planning, High Performance Buildings, Sustainable Facilities Operations, and College Campus Initiatives and the Community.

Conservation
The University is concerned about energy usage, both from the standpoint of the environment and the savings that result from reduced energy usage. We have several staff members working on these issues: Paul Crumpler, energy program manager; Libba Bowling, energy engineer; Bruce "Sonny" Beale , recycling director. http://utilities.fm.virginia.edu/energy/index.asp

U.Va. is also promoting conservation within the community through such efforts as Energy Day (October 12) that showcase conservation endeavors and feature displays and demonstrations from vendors selling conservation products and alternative energy.
http://www.fm.virginia.edu/EnergyDay/

Currently in a drought situation, U.Va. is also stressing water conservation. Water usage has dropped from 23,000 gallons per person to 13,000 gallons per person, despite increased numbers of people at the University. http://www.virginia.edu/drought/

Recycling
U.Va. Recycling just collected about 23 tons of cardboard during the two-week period when students were moving into their residence halls. Winning awards for its recycling program over the past 16 years, U.Va.’s success comes from partnering with student environmental groups, enlisting their help for special projects and by supporting the students in their efforts to get the recycling message out to students, particularly the first-year students.
http://recycle.virginia.edu/

Greenhouse Gas Inventory
As part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), Oberlin College is currently conducting an inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, heating, air travel and commuting using the Clean Air-Cool Planet Emissions Inventory Calculator.

Campus Resource Monitoring System
Oberlin College installed a feedback system on dorm use of water and electricity as part of an effort to create a more sustainable campus. The premise of the feedback system is that providing dormitory residents with easily interpretable real-time feedback on electricity and water consumption -- and on the financial and environmental impact of this consumption -- will motivate and allow students to conserve resources. Currently, electricity is monitored in 21 dormitories and student houses. Electricity consumption for 16 of them is displayed in real time on a custom-designed web site: http://www.oberlin.edu/dormenergy.

Campus Sustainability Course
Beginning this fall, the Environmental Studies Department is offering a campus sustainability course. The course complements the College’s larger sustainability efforts and includes lectures and discussion but will primarily engage students in various aspects of solving real problems. Themes will change from year to year as the process of implementation moves forward but this fall’s course is mainly concerned with technical matters of measurement standards and data analysis related to the greenhouse gas inventory. Students will also investigate technical options to improve efficiency and strategies to promote organizational learning relative to climate and environment. The course is offered in conjunction with the Office of Environmental Sustainability.

Wind Power Initiative
The Oberlin Wind Power Initiative, spearheaded by Professor John Scofield of the physics department and Mike Roth, OC ’06, is completing research into the feasibility of constructing a wind turbine in the Oberlin area. After compiling a year of data from their tower located just north of town, the group will assemble a business plan that will use a cost-benefit analysis to determine the most suitable level of production. If the data show the potential for effective wind production in Oberlin, the team will seek funding from the College, private investors and the city of Oberlin.
http://wind.oberlin.edu/wind/index.htm

• Saw David Letterman dedicate his namesake building on campus, which will be LEED certified.
www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,7273-850-54358,00.html
www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,54503--,00.html

• Won a national award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for a video game designed by BSU students that addresses sustainability (tested at a local elementary school).
www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,7273-850-54686,00.html

• Received the Energy Patriot Award from Sen. Richard Lugar, honoring Ball State's Council on the Environment--the longest-standing green committee in Indiana's higher education community.
www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,53854--,00.html

• President Jo Ann Gora joined with university presidents in fighting global warming by pledging that Ball State will become a climate neutral campus. www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,7273-850-53740,00.html

ASU research in sustainability benefits from the recent opening of several centers and facilities. The Decision Theater, which fosters collaboration through visualization of real world problems, and the Decision Center for a Desert City, with its accent on wise water management, are examples. The Central Arizona Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research project, which focuses on rapid urbanization, is another large sustainability program at ASU. Additional research activities include the ecological restoration of the Mongolian grasslands in China, the development of new architectural approaches to solar energy, and a study of the social factors influencing the effectiveness of biodiversity preservation.

Jonathan Fink, the Julie Ann Wrigley director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Arizona State’s university sustainability officer, says GIOS (http://sustainable.asu.edu/gios/index.htm) has generated $35 million in private investment and has an international Board of Trustees jointly chaired by businesswoman Julie Ann Wrigley, Rob Walton (chairman of Wal Mart), and President Crow.

Sustainability education also has moved front and center at ASU, home to the first (and so far, only) freestanding, degree-granting School of Sustainability in the U.S. The school (http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/) opened its doors last January and now has 28 graduate students enrolled. Charles Redman, director of the school, says next fall the school will begin offering undergraduate courses in sustainability, where he thinks as many as 100 new students will be the first to begin work towards a major in sustainability.

Sustainability is practiced on campus as ASU implements sustainable business practices as a way of "walking the walk, as well as talking the talk," says Fink. Projects include:
• Free bus passes to all faculty, staff and students resulting in a ridership increase from 400,000 one-way trips in its first year to more than 1.5 million bus riders last year.
• A Flex-car program where cars, located on campus, can be rented by the hour as a way of encouraging alternative methods of commuting.
• A commitment to solar energy. The first system on campus was a 30-kWhr demonstration system on the roof of a parking garage. A second system being installed on Biodesign B will serve as a prototype for a 4 MW system on the Tempe and Polytechnic campuses.
• A food utilization program that uses food grown on campus – fruits, nuts and herbs currently make up the collection -- in ASU dining facilities. Additional varieties will be introduced as areas of the campus are re-landscaped turning ASU in to a micro-farm.
• A program that diverts landscaping waste to a local farmer partner for composting. In its first month, 11 tons of waste were composted rather than sent to a landfill.

Coming together: The college's many "green" groups, from a student-run Fair Trade organic coffee company to students working on the CC Farm, now meet four times a year at Green Roundtable summits. Students are very passionate about environmental issues. A Campus Sustainability Council merges the efforts of students, staff and faculty; and a new campus sustainability coordinator has been named.

Accountability: Colorado College will not sign the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment without having a long-term plan for campus sustainability in place first. The college is conducting a campus-wide environmental audit to determine the college's carbon footprint, and an action plan will lay out steps to reduce the footprint. The audit will be updated annually to measure the effect of new energy conservation projects.

Challenges: Meeting demands of students who want to see immediate change. Last academic year, students did their own cost analysis and convinced the administration and trustees to pursue LEED certification for the Cornerstone Arts Center, a $33 million building under construction on campus.

Construction and renovation projects:
Design and equipment specifications maintain high levels of efficiency and promote technological developments that are sustainable.  For example, with respect to retrofitting existing buildings, most recently a high albedo roof was installed on a dorm building, which minimizes the "heat island effect."  With the development of West Campus, beginning in 1999, groundwater recharge systems were installed in several residence halls, which returns storm water to the ground and recharges the aquifers and preserves the integrity of wooden piles under historic buildings and structures.

Alternative forms of transportation:

• The university has purchased 22 electric vehicles for its campus fleet.
• As of July 2007, all diesel fueled equipment is fueled by ultra-low sulfur bio-diesel fuel which goes beyond the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection regulations.
• This year the university installed 67 bike racks, adding over 200 bicycle spaces throughout campus.

Improve efficiency and/or obtain energy from renewable sources:

• In existing facilities, $5.4 million was invested in efficient equipment upgrades.  These upgrades included replacement and upgrade of over 80,000 lighting fixtures; equipping over 2,000 rooms with occupancy sensors; installing over 400 energy efficient motors; numerous variable frequency drives; addition of over 10,000 points to the DDC energy management control system; plate and frame free cooling heat exchangers; high efficiency air conditioning systems
• These energy efficiency investments have resulted in savings totaling over 200 million kWh or 110,200 tons of CO2 emissions (using current New England Regional electricity emission factors).
• The university has also begun a carbon emission inventory and committed to reducing GHG emissions by signing the American Colleges and Universities Presidents Climate Commitment.
• In 1994 Northeastern installed its first renewable solar photovoltaic system on the roof of the Curry Student Center.  This 90-panel system was upgraded in 2005 and currently produces in excess of 21KW of clean renewable power.  Northeastern is considering the merits of adding additional renewable power systems on campus.

Recycling:

• Northeastern's recycling program began in 1989, includes residence halls, and recycles 13 different categories of items, including asphalt and construction materials.  From 2005 to 2006, Northeastern reduced its trash by 97 tons and recycled approximately 78 tons more.

Curriculum:

• Northeastern's goal is to make climate neutrality and sustainability a part of the curriculum and other educational experience for all students.  In the College of Engineering, sustainability issues are already woven throughout the curriculum for Civil and Environmental Engineering and for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, including courses focused entirely on renewable energy and on environmental issues in manufacturing and product use.

Macalester is now the proud owner of an EcoHouse. Environmental Studies Professor Christopher Wells was the lead faculty member on the project, the goals of which are to provide a place for students to live and think conscientiously about the environment, and to turn the house into a live-in lab. Macalester would make scientific data about the house available on the Internet to any students or non-profit groups.

The house renovation budget was $50,000. Renovations were made keeping convenience, usability, aesthetics, and functionality in mind, in addition to overall sustainability: Instead of using shingles, the EcoHouse roof was covered in metal sheets, which will last for at least 75 years and are recyclable. A ventilation system was also installed to cool the attic and new insulation was blown into the home. The panels on the roof are part of a water heating system, which uses sunlight to heat an anti-freeze type substance that runs to the water heater and heats the water without using much, if any, natural gas. Inside, all the appliances were selected for their high-energy efficiency rating.

The home of Macalester’s new Institute for Global Citizenship will have LEED Platinum certification. To date, only a handful of buildings worldwide have received a platinum rating, the highest possible.

Macalester College President Brian Rosenberg is also a member of Leadership Circle of the Presidents Climate Commitment.

back to top