Cardinal is the new green: Campus moves aggressively for sustainability
BY ANNIE JIA
At GreenFest, a sustainability fair last Friday in White Plaza, student Greg Hulburd talked recycling with student Jennifer Chu, who is an intern at Peninsula Sanitary Service Inc./Stanford Recycling.
Freshman Mattias Lanas worked the April 27 debut of a produce stand that will sell organic fruits and vegetables near Tresidder Union on Fridays during the growing season. Business that day was brisk.
As sustainability becomes one of the hottest topics in classrooms across the country, Stanford is taking a big step toward pushing green thinking forward on its own campus.
In a move to synthesize sustainable campus operations from the top down, the Department of Land, Buildings and Real Estate has announced the hiring of a campus sustainability executive director along with a radical restructuring of Facilities Operations. The position, yet to be filled, will be the first dedicated to overseeing the university's sustainability programs.
The change, announced by Jack Cleary, associate vice president for academic projects and operations in Land, Buildings and Real Estate, will split Facilities Operations—the department that manages everything from energy and water conservation to transportation to landscaping—into two groups. The new executive director will lead the Department of Sustainability and Energy Management (SEM) in overseeing the Utilities Division, which governs energy and water use; Parking and Transportation Services, which runs the transportation demand management programs; and Cardinal Cogen, the campus power plant. A second new position, the sustainability programs manager, will be created in the SEM department to help promote outreach activities with the Stanford community.
The Department of Buildings and Grounds Maintenance (BGM), the second group, will be headed by the current associate vice provost for facilities, Chris Christofferson, and will manage landscaping and building maintenance.
"It's a natural progression," said Bob Reidy, vice president of land, buildings and real estate. "The opportunity to change our organization is driven by a desire to do the right thing. Now we want to improve and focus on sustainability at a very high level, and we're very excited about getting a highly qualified person to help us think through these things."
High on the agenda of the new SEM department is an initiative to develop and implement a carbon reduction program for the university, Cleary said.
"Carbon is really the basis of it. All of the other sustainable initiatives that we're doing—green building, green procurement, recycling—all of that feeds into this umbrella of carbon reduction," he said.
Launched last fall, the program has finished its first stage, the creation of a campus carbon inventory, which details the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted from various sources, said Susan Kulakowski, campus energy manager in the Utilities Division. Buildings are the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions due to their heating and electricity needs, she said, but other sources are also included, such as university vehicles, laboratory chemicals, emissions from commuter traffic and even methane from garbage dumps.
The inventory will be the first step toward "developing informed and responsible goals—goals that we can actually achieve—and then implementing a plan," according to Cleary.
Final numbers for the inventory are expected to be published in August on the California Climate Action Registry website, Kulakowski said. If all goes well, reduction targets will be set by the fall.
"There's definitely a need to think strategically about how you manage the university and its resources," said Jeff Koseff, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and co-director of the Woods Institute for the Environment. "And you want someone whose business it is to think full time about what we're doing and how we're going to meet those goals."
The program is part of a shared effort between Stanford and the Ivy League schools to figure out "what is the best way to cut down on carbon emissions," Cleary said. At a conference last week, key personnel from several universities met to talk about standardizing the process of implementing a greenhouse gas reduction plan. "I think Stanford is positioned to be a leader in this group," he added. "That's our goal."
Organically arising sustainabilityWhile Stanford is just beginning to centralize its efforts to create a green campus, sustainable practices are far from new to those running the cogs and wheels of campus. The latest move, Koseff said, is the culmination of work that has been in progress for a long time.
Awards for sustainability dot the websites of Stanford's various departments. Stanford Dining was the first university food service to be certified as a Green Business in 2004 by Santa Clara County. The Stanford Recycling Center received the National Recycling Coalition's Outstanding School Program Award in 2002. Parking and Transportation Services has won the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Best Workplaces for Commuters prize for the last five years for its innovative transportation demand management program.
And just last year, the Sustainable Endowments Initiative awarded Stanford an A- on its sustainability report card, one of four colleges from more than 100 surveyed that received the top grade given.
Nevertheless, there is a perception that Stanford lags behind its peers in its commitment to sustainability, Koseff said.
"We have used a more conservative approach of developing the possible solutions and strategies first, and then going public with them," he said. "But I think Stanford has demonstrated that it is committed to it though all its programs."
Green FestA fair in White Plaza last Friday, the Green Fest, organized by Students for a Sustainable Stanford in conjunction with various university departments, brought many of the university's hidden green workings into the spotlight.
Julie Muir, director of the Stanford Recycling Center, exhibited recycled plastic pellets while answering questions about which waste can go into which containers. Campus recycling is "steadily going up," she said, noting that 60 percent of waste was recycled at Stanford in 2006.
Food composting, piloted in 2003 as a collaboration between Stanford Recycling and Stanford Dining, has spread to all seven major dining halls, several row houses, Tresidder Memorial Union and the Graduate School of Business café, Muir said. Food waste, along with tree clippings, once decomposed, eventually cycles back into campus landscaping, she said.
Dining facilities further pushed the frontiers of recycling two weeks ago when Union Square (in Tresidder), the CoHo and a number of other cafés adopted compostable serviceware, according to Muir. "Paper" plates made of sugar cane fiber extract and "plastic" utensils and containers made from corn or potato starch are designed to biodegrade in weeks and can be composted along with the food, she said.
At another booth, Brodie Hamilton, director of Parking and Transportation Services, described Stanford's aggressive programs to reduce traffic and promote alternative transportation. The initiatives—including free Caltrain passes for off-campus commuters, free shuttles as far as the East Bay and cash payments to Stanford employees who pledge to take alternative transportation—have driven the rate of drive-alone commuters down from 72 percent in 2002, when they were first launched, to 54 percent, he said.
Under one roofIn the past year, the university has taken steps toward creating a centralized sustainability program. Last spring, Provost John Etchemendy approved funding for a two-year, full-time sustainable foods coordinator at the suggestion of the Stanford Student Community Garden Group, a student group dedicated to bringing local and sustainable food to campus, said Erin Gaines, a member of the organization.
In October, Stanford launched the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability as one of four major focal areas of The Stanford Challenge, thereby declaring its institutional support for environmental research and academic programs.
"The role of the initiative is primarily an academic one, focused on seeking solutions and educating leaders," Koseff said. "But at the same time, I think it has helped create an environment where we can start thinking about what we locally can do in order to address these sustainability issues. You know, if you're going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk."
To walk the walk, a coalition of personnel from more than 20 university departments has been meeting monthly to deliberate on campus sustainability, Koseff said. Extending beyond the span of Land, Buildings and Real Estate, the Sustainability Working Group—including representatives from the Woods Institute, Residential and Dining Enterprises, Law School, School of Medicine, Graduate School of Business, Athletics and the Associated Students—is the first coming together of the various sustainability players on campus.
Beyond being a forum for collecting ideas, "it's going to help us understand and develop our plan," said Cleary, a member of the group.
Cleary added that he is open to meeting with students anytime to discuss campus sustainability. A summary of sustainability initiatives at Stanford, which will be published in a report by the end of the year, is currently available online at http://sustainablestanford.stanford.edu/.
"We believe there's more and more knowledge out there about how to lower our impact on the environment, all the while still growing the support for the academic vision," Cleary said. "It's an evolution."
Annie Jia is an intern at the Stanford News Service.
