CU/Green: Things Cedarville University should consider doing in order to be good stewards of the Earth.

The world's biggest desalinaation plant. The diameter of those membrane tubes is about the diameter of your hand. Flickr photo from Sasyl. CC.

Water supply quality

• Commission the engineering departments to do a study on the Village water quality. I hear some professors are wary of the water around here. The state EPA guidelines do allow for variation in quality.

Water filtration effluent control

• This site allows you to find those entities who have permits to discharge waste into waterways (although not necessarily treated human waste). This page details Cedarville University’s violations of its discharge permit. In summary, CU filters its water through sand filters before it gives it to us to drink. Periodically it flushes those filters and dumps the stuff that comes out of them (usually concentrated minerals like iron) into waterways. Well, CU violated acceptable levels of contaminant (like iron) discharge on these dates: June 30, 2008; Jul 31, 2008; Nov. 30, 07; Dec. 31, 07; Jul 31, 07; and a different type of violation on these dates: Feb 29, 08; May 31, 07; Apr 30, 07. The EPA contact who handles CU’s account said that it wasn’t human error and that we’ve fixed the problem every time. But we need to invest in better mechanical apparatus so violations don’t happen in the future.

Water conservation

• replace all urinals with waterless urinals, which, opposed to common sense, are more sanitary than water urinals. They’re obviously less costly to operate. I’ve heard in several places that the reason everyone still uses water urinals is because plumber’s unions are very powerful and it takes half the work to install a waterless urinal.
• install low-flow shower heads. These use about 1/3 the water of normal shower heads and aren’t really a sacrifice.
• We may not want to try to tackle this right now, but greywater reclamation is always available. We could use it on our landscaping, but not a University farm, since the chemical from soaps, etc. aren’t good for food.

Landscaping and decoration

• stop using lawn fertilizers and pesticides unless they’re very green-friendly, and then only sparingly. Allison McClain, President of the new environmental organization on campus, says she knows some students in the sciences who’re working on lawn-care substances that don’t wreak other habitats — such as Cedar Lake and its algae problem.

• For that matter, commission the engineering department to do a study on Cedar lake — I’ve heard it’s not a fully-functioning habitat with natural equilibrium. Let’s make sure it’s as healthy for all native organisms as it can be.

• We might rethink the types of grasses grown on the campus. Can we plant any that don’t require as much mowing or fertilizer or water?
• reconsider the nature of the indoor plant contract. Maybe replace some of the more tropical plants that use lots of water and/or fertilizer with more flora native to this region. (Also for a plant tip, see the section on indoor air quality.)
• revamp the tree-planting policy to reflect another mindset, one more like “why shouldn’t we plant a tree here?”

CU/Green: Things Cedarville University should consider doing in order to be good stewards of the Earth.

A prefab modular home. Flickr photo from Heather Lucille. CC.

Regular building maintenance

• Get ideas from LEED and other certification standards when purchasing new parts for buildings. (Read on for alternatives to LEED)
• Commission the engineering department to do a study on “green roofs.” Can our roof strctures support a few inches of soil and a bunch of plant life? It does wonders for water filtration and insulation.
• Mandate that all new paints be free of volatile organic compounds (VOC’s). That stuff is nasty — with high enough exposure to the right VOC’s (particularly for the painters), it can give you cancer and make your liver stop working.

Heating/cooling/insulation

• install geothermal heating and cooling systems. If they pay off in 15 years or less, they’re a good investment because they last much, much longer.
• have a weatherization inventory taken of all existing buildings. Supposedly this cost and the cost of actual weatherization is recouped very soon, as it tends to produce savings of about 30 percent on annual heating/cooling bills thereafter. Maybe this could be done before geothermal wells are installed, since their number could be lessened.
• Commission the engineering department to do a study: If we removed the tint from the windows on campus, how much more thermal intake would the buildings have in winter? What could we do to increase thermal mass that could be heated by the sun during the day and keep buildings warm at night?

Future building projects

• make a very serious effort on the next building project to engineer a building that is, if not LEED-certified, at least comes with lots of features of those that are. Now, you can be green without having LEED (as our newest building, to a certain extent, testifies to). But you can also have LEED while not truly doing well for the environment, as this article will tell you. So beware! (If you want additional resources on alternatives to LEED, the article there links to a few good ones.)

CU/Green: Things Cedarville University should consider doing in order to be good stewards of the Earth.

Flickr photo from stevevance. CC.

Clothing

• Encourage the CU community to buy second-hand. Not only will we reduce new-item consumption and decrease clothing in landfills, but we will decrease the demand for sweatshop labor and possibly stop caring as much about the latest “fashions.” Yes, we have to look good for employers (so buy one Brooks Brothers or Express suit for interviews and career day) but we shouldn’t be “about” our looks as much as we are currently.
• Disallow clothes to be washed in warm or hot water, as cold water is proven to clean just as well as cold water and requires no heating energy.

Consumer goods

• Encourage the CU community to reduce its consumption of material things. The “do I really need this?” philosophy epitomizes this, but we don’t all have to take on the 100 thing challenge. We should try maintaining libraries of things like tools and specialty electronics. If you don’t know what I’m talking about (“Product service systems”), Wikipedia doesn’t do as well as this Treehugger article at explaining it.
• Other simple guidelines could include “don’t buy it new if you can fix the old one — but better yet, maintain the one you have.”

• Tell prospective students and incoming freshmen that since we supply computers for everyone (and public ones in academic buildings), there really isn’t a need for a laptop during the stay here. (Tell them we didn’t used to suggest this before, so that’s why many older students have them.) What about taking notes in class? they might ask. Even though Blackboard use may naturally (or by edict) increase in the coming years, paper notes are the greenest option since laptops purchased as freshmen will almost be out-of-date by graduation, shortly to become deadly e-waste. (E-waste often harms disadvantaged people, according to this report by 60 Minutes.) If incoming students have the money for a laptop, encourage them to stash it away until they graduate, when they can get one that’s up-to-date. Maybe even offer them an interest-bearing account to stuff it in, so they’ll get more bang from their buck from that as well as from Moore’s Law.