SUNY Campuses are going green

Is the College at Brockport keeping up?

A wise frog once said, “It’s not easy being green.” Well, no offense to him, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. As global warming becomes more apparent, people all over the world are changing their ways to help save the planet.

Thanks to people like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, the problems of the environment have become mainstream. It we don’t change our ways, eventually, we’ll be sunk, literally.

Thanks to the Governor’s Executive Order 111, SUNY schools are trying to reduce every emission by 35 percent by 2010.
There are 64 campuses in the SUNY system and all are taking steps to conserve energy.

SUNY schools in total use 90 million gross square feet in 2,829 buildings. This roughly adds up to consuming as much energy as 67,000 homes. In 2007 alone, 10 percent of SUNY’s budget was used to pay more than $300 million in utility costs.

Currently, the College at Brockport is a leader in environmental sustainability due to extreme energy saving programs. As of 2007, Brockport has light sensors and timers installed in all newly renovated spaces on campus. Brockport also uses florescent lightbulbs which have to be changed less frequently and are the most cost efficient. BASC is helping too, by buying food from local markets.

The townhomes are also key in the conservation of energy on campus. The newly constructed townhomes have geothermal heating and cooling. Not to mention the new townhomes are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certifiable according to the U.S. Green Building Council’s designation for new construction.

Brockport also has an on-campus environmental club, Environmentally Conscious Organization for Society (ECOS), formerly known as BEAN, that helps promote environmentally sustainable practices like recycling.

Brockport’s recycling program, which was started in 1990, is very strong. Since its inception, the school has recycled more than 2,850 tons of material. Recycling costs $30 per ton — as opposed to the $75 per ton cost for disposing solid waste. The annual cost for waste disposal in 1990 before the recycling program was $66,000 — $14,00 over the alloted budget. Currently, the annual actual costs for waste disposal is approximately $39,000. This is thanks to the estimated 327 recycling bins currently on campus. Recycling is extremely easy and important. It saves the planet and saves money.

Brockport already has the Green Campus Initiative (www.brockport.edu/gci). GCI is attempting to establish local resource reduction conferences.

Facilities and Planning have started decreasing carbon emissions by getting hybrid vehicles for the campus. While this is still in the early stages, the use of hybrids demonstrates the College at Brockport’s devotion to becoming greener.

We at The Stylus have come up with some more tips to help the College at Brockport further their trip into greener pastures:

• Replace dorm windows with better installated ones. This will make the rooms less drafty and in the long run, it will cut down on heating costs.

• Promote composting food scraps from the dining halls in order to decrease the amount that ends up in land fills.

• Increase carpooling for off-campus students. You can find promotion for carpooling on the Brockport Human Resources Web site, www.brockport.edu/hr.

• Stop sending useless things in the mail. Most of the time, no one reads those “It’s almost time to come back to school” notices we get. It’s also a waste of paper to send everyone sheets about winter session after registration has already started. It just gets thrown out — save a tree!

• Update all dorm faucets with motion sensors like in public bathrooms. This will cut down water costs immensly.

We hope you are proud of the steps your school is taking to save the planet — The Stylus sure is.