The College Sustainability Movement

I wrote the following post during June of 2009; however, I never ended up submitting it to anyone to be published, so I thought that I would share it here:

While I was delighted to read about the many excited money-saving, sustainability initiatives being undertaken by colleges and universities in the recent article For Colleges, Small Cuts Add Up to Big Savings by Tamar Lewin on June 18, 2009, the tone of the article was disheartening. Prefacing the list of cuts that the colleges are putting into place as "smaller, quirkier economies" indicated that the initiatives were obscure or perhaps even nonsensical. This type of article offered an opportunity to highlight a major shift in business practices that is occurring throughout higher education institutions. That is, of course, the sustainability movement.

The term sustainable is often used synonymously with green, environmental, eco-friendly, and other such generic terms on which marketing and PR offices have recently capitalized. Fortunately, most college and university administrators have realized that sustainability requires more than just good intentions and the odd press release. Instead, they have started to understand that economic, social, and environmental concerns are all inextricably linked to one another and the overall viability of a business.

As an example, a poorly managed or inefficient HVAC system at a college will cost more money to run, create an uncomfortable work and study environment, and produce far more atmospheric emissions (either directly through combustion or indirectly through purchased electricity). All of these factors in turn affect the viability of the college in ways ranging from decreased employee productivity and lower customer (student) satisfaction to increased insurance premiums due to more severe weather associated with climate change.

Evaluating the economic, social, and environmental implications of a budget is commonly referred to as evaluating the "triple bottom line". This principle was actually explained reasonably well in When Balance Sheets Collide With the New Economy by Denise Caruso on September 9, 2007.

As noted implicitly in the results of the College Sustainability Report Card 2009, many higher education institutions began to take a triple bottom line approach to their budgets and operations prior the economic meltdown in 2008. In fact many colleges and universities had already begun to take on purely environmental initiatives such as the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which commits the signatories to developing a plan for climate neutral operations.

This is not to imply that economic pressures have no bearing on such initiatives. On the contrary, economic difficulties have forced schools to reprioritize their projects. This typically means putting simple, cost effective measures such as energy efficiency and behavioral programs first on the list and shuffling the big-hype, more expensive projects such as installing photovoltaic solar panels toward the end of the list.

In the same way that "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra puts waste management in the correct order, "efficiency, behavior, source" (although not as catchy and often in different words) has become the mantra of sustainability officers at schools (and for-profit businesses) across North America. As the analogy follows, trying to put up solar panels without replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights is like recycling paper while setting the printer to only print in the top-left quarter of the page.

Student environmental organizations have been notorious for championing behavioral changes on and off campuses for decades, but student groups have recently been joined by college administrators enacting efficiency initiatives in what may ultimately be considered the tipping point in campus sustainability.

Efficiency programs save money and moderate environmental impacts regardless of user habits, so even though they have a higher up front cost than behavioral initiatives they tend to have a quick ROI and returns often far exceed the initial costs several times over. This allows the school to either save money or at the very least avoid the effects of an ever increasing energy load and variable utility costs. In either case the schools are able to devote more money to future energy initiatives (known as a revolving loan fund) or to their primary mission (educating students).

With all of this in mind, it seems that many of the programs mentioned in Tamar Lewin's article are not so quirky after all and are likely part of the larger sustainability movement. A movement that requires all involved to stop assuming that conventional methods are correct and to begin valuing environmental and social benefits at least as much as economic benefits.

In response to:
For Colleges, Small Cuts Add Up to Big Savings
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: June 18, 2009
In the New York Times