Campuses aim to become more earth friendly

Tag : pressure thermostat

And rising junior Josh Butler, 20, couldn't be happier to livethere.
“It means a lot to me that the college is thinking about thisreally seriously,” says the co-founder of Sustainable SLC(Sarah Lawrence College), which partnered with the school on thegreen residence house. “It's very different if it's juststudents working for this as opposed to it being a jointeffort.”
Most colleges have been environmentally conscious for years, withcampus cleanups and recycling efforts that are often led bystudents. But now they are focusing on where students live,creating green residence halls that are becoming a hot destinationfor eco-minded students.
While many keep green in mind when building new residence halls,some are taking it a step further, renovating student housing tomake them more sustainable and implementing programs to promotepermanent lifestyle changes.
Wake Forest University has installed Energy Star appliances,low-flow shower heads and water-saving toilets in its studenthousing. Emory University's Turman Hall displays energy consumptionfor the entire building on a monitor in the lobby. While residentscan individually control the temperature setting in their room, ithas to be within the university's approved thermostat settings.
Prospective parents and students are asking about sustainability,says Mark Cunningham, director of housing and dining at Universityof California, San Diego, which conducts focus groups at highschools.
Colleges brag about their Leadership in Energy and EnvironmentalDesign (LEED) certificate from the U.S. Green Building Council, aWashington, D.C.-based nonprofit. There are 236 LEED-certifiedbuildings on college campuses, and another 1,547 campus buildingsare LEED-registered, which means they are pursuing certification.
Rollins College spent about $8.5 million renovating the 200-bedWard Hall, with two-thirds raised through donations and charitablegifts, said George Herbst, vice president and treasurer of thecollege.
“We decided that rather than tear down and haul all theconcrete and structural steel to the landfill, that it would bemore environmentally responsible to rebuild it using the existingstructure,” says Herbst. “It has common bathrooms, butthe structure was good.”
The LEED system gives credit for reusing structural elements andmaterials, but renovating does pose challenges, says Baird Dixon,principal with Street Dixon Rick Architecture, which designed fivenew green residence halls at Vanderbilt University.
There is more planning involved — many old buildings aren'tbuilt to current codes — and additional resources may beneeded to restore a building to its original condition.
At Vanderbilt, which renovated and built new residence halls,finding large quantities of renewable resources, such as bambooflooring, was challenging, and a great deal of time, energy andanalysis went into determining whether to use graywater, which wasultimately rejected.
While going green saves money in the long run by reducing energyand water usage, it comes at a price, says Cunningham. Raise coststoo much and students will move off campus.
“It puts a lot of pressure on us because room and board ratesare part of affordability to live on campus,” he says.“You have to build a building. The greener you want to makeit, the more money you have to spend on it. We look for alternativefunding, but it's a challenge.”
Some of UCSD's initiatives include purchasing green furniture,providing reusable plasticware in the cafes and dining halls andgiving out individual recycling baskets for each resident.Furniture is handed down to nonprofits, and the school purchasesfrom local vendors when possible.
Cunningham says the school uses its green initiatives to teachstudents about how to be environmentally conscious so when theyleave campus, they think about things like using“green” flooring.
At Rollins College, the investment seems to have paid off.
“If we had another building like this, we would fill it upinstantly,” Herbst says.
“The students want to be there. They like the idea of thework we have done with sustainability.”