It's not easy being green

Michael Hamburger, co-chair of the IU Task Force on Campus Sustainability, knew IU was a campus committed to improving sustainability, but it wasn’t until he received 200 applications for the task force’s internship program that he realized the magnitude of enthusiasm.\n“We were worried that we wouldn’t get enough applicants to fill the positions because we announced the internship in the middle of the semester, but we got hundreds of very engaged, bright and high quality students,” he said. “That, for me, was proof that there’s an incredible bounty of human energy here to solving these problems.”\nIU has made significant steps in improving campus sustainability, but there’s still a long way to go, he said. The Sustainable Endowments Institute’s annual sustainability report card, released two weeks ago, serves as a guidepost for how IU can improve. The report card uses eight different criteria to assess campus sustainability. Each school earns grades in every individual category and one overall mark. IU received an overall grade of “C”, and while not ideal, it is an improvement from last year’s “D+”. \nThe Environmental Protection Agency defines sustainability as ideas, aspirations and values that encourage people and organizations to become better stewards of the environment and promote positive economic and social growth. Hamburger said sustainability is not about a few specific policy changes, but is about universities having a new global-scale perspective on the impact of their actions and a long-term view of the life of the university. \n“I feel that this is an attempt to respond to a really pressing societal challenge,” Hamburger said. “In order for us to maintain a high quality of life for our children and grandchildren, we have to make some changes in the way all of us conduct our lives.” \nAdministrative support for sustainable practices is one area that IU has struggled with. Last year’s overall “D+” on the report card can be largely attributed to the administration’s complete drop in funding for IU’s Council for Environmental Stewardship. To improve sustainability efforts, the IU administration created the Task Force on Campus Sustainability six months ago, which was charged to bring students, faculty and staff together to make assessments and prepare a report on future directions the University needs to take to improve sustainability. \nThe task force will release the first draft of the report in the coming weeks, which Hamburger said will hopefully lead to some permanent tructure to support sustainability.\nWhile the implementation of the task force helped IU’s grade move up, IU still earned a “C” in the administration category this year. Paul Sullivan, IU’s deputy vice president for administration and co-chair of the task force, said that there has been extensive support from the administration but the “C” grade might be credited to the fact that IU does not have a permanent sustainability office.\n“It’s not clear to us exactly how they come up with these grades because they don’t explain the criteria to us,” he said, “but if you look at other schools that did well in administration, many of them have permanent sustainability offices.”\nSullivan said that a permanent office is one of the recommendations that the task force proposed in their sustainability report. \nPenn State was the only Big 10 school ranked by Sierra Magazine as one of its top 10 most sustainable schools. Penn State, which has a permanent sustainability office, earned high marks overall by the Endowments Institute and an A in the administration category. David Riley, director of the Center for Sustainability at Penn State, said administration plays a key role in campus sustainability and is a major reason Penn State performed well.\n“Our president, provost and chief financial officer are all very committed to increasing sustainability, and I don’t think you find that at many institutes,” Riley said. “Without this kind of commitment from administration, it’s an uphill battle.” \nRiley said from a recruiting standpoint alone, universities should value campus sustainability.\n“This generation is very attuned to environmental issues,” he said. “I feel like it will be harder to attract top students to any school if environmentalism isn’t a priority.” \nRiley also said that there is a large return on many investments associated with sustainability. In fact, IU’s only individual grade A on the Institute’s report card was in the area of investments. According to the report card, IU aims to optimize investment return and currently holds investments in renewable energy initiatives.\nMia Williams, a member of the task force and director of landscape architecture at the University Architect’s Office, said that while the university does face challenges in sustainability, IU’s administrative efforts have created major positive changes. \n“Many steps are being made in the right direction, but it will not be like flipping a switch for an institution this size,” she said. \nWilliams said increasing the number of drought-tolerant grasses and perennials, including more composted leaves in planting mix and moving to a drip irrigation system that uses less water than the old system, are actions IU has taken to improve sustainability.\nHamburger said IU’s “D” grade in the climate change and energy category is not fully deserved. Changing to low-energy fluorescent lighting in most office buildings and investing in an energy-efficient boiler system for the Central Heating Plant are two of IU’s major improvements in this area. IU is also looking at constructing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified energy efficient buildings on campus.\nIU has done remarkably well in transportation, said SPEA graduate student and task force member Jenny Sumner.\n“Just in general we’ve seen IU bus ridership increase every year which is amazing,” she said. “In the future ... we’ll need to look at issues like how you can increase ridership, increase routes and make access that much easier.”\nImproving campus sustainability requires involvement from faculty, staff and students, Hamburger said. He said he’s seen a lot of enthusiasm on campus on all levels, from the student group Volunteers in Sustainability to the upper levels of administration.\n“It’s easy to be daunted by the scale of the problems ... and changing some of the ways we do things, but I think what people are finding is that by making some strategic changes we can really make some significant impact on some of the problems we face,” he said. “It will be a gradual process, but we’re off to a great start.”