April
18 , 2003 Mount
Holyoke Helps Create More Sustainable World
| 
Photo:
Fred LeBlanc
The
College’s new gas/electric hybrid vehicles are more
fuel-efficient and produce fewer smog-forming emissions
than traditional cars. |
The arrival of Earth
Day 2003, celebrated around the world April 22, finds the College
continuing and expanding its commitment to environmental stewardship
and its important leadership role in helping to create a “greener”
and more sustainable world. From the reuse of a single sheet of
paper, to the design and construction of the $34.5-million science
center project, to efforts to infuse nonenvironmental courses
with environmental elements, the College is practicing what it
preaches—and preaching what it practices.
“We’re trying to proliferate the notion of environmental
sustainability across all units, academic and institutional,”
says Thomas Millette, associate professor of geography and director
of the five-year-old Center for Environmental Literacy. “We’re
not only teaching sustainability in curricular aspects but also
practicing it in terms of construction projects and operations.
As an institution, we’re paying attention to how we behave
and making changes in our actions.”
In fact, if you listen closely the next time one of the College’s
new gas/electric hybrid vehicles glides past, you just might hear
the sounds of a revolution in the low hum of its electric motor.
The two Toyota Prius sedans, earmarked for use by student organizations
and faculty and staff members travelling on College business,
joined the College’s fleet earlier this month. Their groundbreaking
hybrid technology—the vehicles automatically switch between
a seventy-horsepower gasoline engine and a forty-four-horsepower
electric motor, or use both in tandem—allows them to get
up to fifty-two miles per gallon of gasoline while emitting fewer
smog-forming emissions. In fact, the California Air Resources
Board, the strictest in the nation, has designated the Prius as
a “super ultra low-emission vehicle,” emitting 90
percent fewer tailpipe gases than “ultra low-emission vehicles.”
Because the gasoline engine recharges an onboard battery pack,
the vehicle never needs to be plugged in.
| 
Photo:
Jim Gipe
The
largest gift ever received by the College was made in support
of Mount Holyoke’s new science center. An anonymous
alumna made a pledge of $10 million toward this project,
making possible the “green” Kendade Hall, the
hub of the new center. Marion Craig Potter ‘49 pledged
$5.5 million to the science project, representing the second
largest gift in the history of the College. Kendade’s
dramatic atrium, shown here, is named for Potter. |
The purchase of the
hybrid vehicles is “perfectly in line with the goal of the
institution to be a good environmental steward,” says Paul
Ominsky, the College’s director of public safety, who chose
the vehicles when it came time to replace two conventional Ford
Taurus sedans in the fleet.
Certainly, the most visible evidence of the College’s commitment
to the future well-being of the planet are the two major building
projects now under way on the campus: the new science center,
which included the construction of Kendade Hall and the reconstruction
of Carr Laboratory and Shattuck Hall, and the reconstruction of
Blanchard Campus Center. Kendade and Carr, now complete, and Blanchard
and Shattuck, which are to reopen in the fall, are “green
buildings,” built in accordance with Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria established by the United
States Green Building Council. Based on well-founded scientific
standards, LEED emphasizes advanced strategies for sustainable
site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials
selection, and indoor environmental quality.
In physical terms, following LEED criteria means that the flooring
underfoot in Kendade’s dazzling new atrium is not petroleum-based
vinyl, but a product made of rosin, wood flour, and other renewable
raw materials that can be harvested with little energy consumption.
It means that students, faculty, and staff can commute to campus
by bicycle, knowing they can shower in Carr. And it means that
90 percent of all regularly occupied spaces in Blanchard will
have direct views to the outdoors, lessening the need for artificial
lighting. These details, and hundreds more, put MHC in the vanguard
of the movement toward environmentally responsible building. In
fact, the science center was the twenty-third project registered
under LEED; today, there are nearly seven hundred projects on
that list. “We were one of the pioneers with LEED,”
says John Bryant, director of facilities management for the College.
Outside the classroom
walls, the College has focused on efforts to better employ the
campus as a vast, “green” laboratory for the study
of landscape ecology. Through the CEL’s establishment of
curricular trails, campus networks of data collection stations,
faculty and students can get access to information about weather,
tree growth, water quality, and even the migration of American
eels through campus waterways as they return to saltwater to spawn.
| 
Photo:
Thomas Millette
Through
the CEL’s establishment of curricular trails, campus
networks of data collection stations, faculty and students
can get access to information about weather, tree growth,
water quality, and even the migration of American eels through
campus waterways as they return to saltwater to spawn. Here,
Stacie Davis ’05 (left) and Suzanne Moum ’05
gather data about invasive plant species at one collection
station. |
Far from being limited
to environmental studies, the data collected on the curricular
trails, accessible to anyone who can use a Web browser, has made
possible the study of issues in history, economics, and a variety
of other fields. To bring the outdoors into the classroom, the
center has focused on developing ways to infuse nonenvironmental
courses with environmental elements, in effect “greening”
the curriculum. That effort, launched this year in a limited number
of courses, has great potential for the broader curriculum, says
Millette. This fall, he said, a faculty seminar is planned “to
get interesting ideas from faculty members on how to ‘green’
the curriculum from the social science and humanities side of
things.”
Changing patterns of behavior is the focus of an entire array
of initiatives, one of the most visible of which is the recycling
program launched by the Campus Conservation Coalition (CCC) and
the Five College Recycling Program. Today, corrugated cardboard,
cans, bottles, paper, batteries, computer components, foam packing
material, and magnetic computer discs and other data supplies
are removed from the waste stream.
The CCC, which works closely with the CEL, is focused mainly on
educating the community about campuswide issues related to recycling,
energy, water conservation, and other pressing environmental concerns.
The group oversees the campus Kill-A-Watt competition, a contest
between residence halls to conserve electricity, and has set up
a paper binder in the library that can be used to create pads
from paper with one blank side that might otherwise be discarded.
Through its Volunteer Days, the CCC gives students an opportunity
to come together to make a difference on campus. One recent project
involved researching and recommending strategic locations for
recycling bins.
Meanwhile, another quiet revolution is taking place within the
residence halls. Gone are the traditional chemical cleaners, swept
away by a wave of solutions that are nontoxic, noncorrosive, noncombustible,
and nonreactive. The cleaners, part of Rochester Midland Corporation’s
Enviro Care line, contain no hazardous ingredients, glycol ethers,
petroleum distillates, suspected carcinogens, or ozone-depleting
compounds. They are also free of phosphates, which can kill life
in rivers, streams, and oceans by causing “algae blooms,”
and are less expensive than the chemicals they replace. Rochester
Midland is the first company in the world to be certified by Green
Seal, an independent nonprofit organization that identifies products
and services that cause less toxic pollution and waste, conserve
resources and habitats, and minimize global warming and ozone
depletion.
“Mount Holyoke is the first college in the area to go with
this kind of cleaning program,” says Dave Williams, MHC
superintendent of environmental services. “Many others also
want to move in this direction and are looking at Mount Holyoke
to see if they can take this step, too.”
There is a mission
behind all of these actions, one articulated in the Talloires
Declaration of the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable
Future, of which MHC and 102 other institutions in the United
States and Canada are signatories: “Local, regional, and
global air and water pollution; accumulation and distribution
of toxic wastes; destruction and depletion of forests, soil, and
water; depletion of the ozone layer and emission of “greenhouse”
gases threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living
species, the integrity of the earth and its biodiversity, the
security of nations, and the heritage of future generations,”
the statement reads. “These environmental changes are caused
by inequitable and unsustainable production and consumption patterns
that aggravate poverty in many regions of the world.
“We believe that urgent actions are needed to address these
fundamental problems and reverse the trends. Stabilization of
human population, adoption of environmentally sound industrial
and agricultural technologies, reforestation, and ecological restoration
are crucial elements in creating an equitable and sustainable
future for all humankind in harmony with nature.”
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