Sustainability At Purdue University

    Sustainability  at  Purdue  University   Team  Green  Bean   Josh  McKinney   Jessica  Melton   Ryan  Scott

 

Green  Roof  in  Tokyo       ENGL  421  -­‐  Francis  Tobienne,  Jr.   10-­‐30-­‐2009   Team  Green  Bean    

 

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Table of Contents 1. Title Page 2. Table of Contents 3. Executive Summary a. Importance of Green Research b. Green Buildings Overview c. Community Outreach Overview d. Interviews Overview 4. Research and Data Gathered a. Green Buildings i. Mechanical Engineering Building ii. Schleman Hall b. Community Outreach Efforts i. Recycling ii. Energy iii. Storm Water Management iv. Purdue Green Week v. University of Vermont c. Interviews 5. Works Cited 6. Annotated Bibliography

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Executive Summary Importance of Green Research Around the world, “going green” and “sustainability” are key words that are heard often. But what do they mean? In short, humanity is at a crossroads. What with global warming, the scarcity and price of oil and other nonrenewable resources, “going green” and “sustainability” apply to those who want to help the world continue to be a habitable and hospitable place. Alternative transportation, green roofs, recycling, and other community-based efforts pave the way for a brighter, greener, sustainable future. The members of Team Green Bean have looked into the efforts Purdue has made thus far in securing itself as a green university. They have also looked into the future regarding how Purdue can make a more lasting impact on its campus and the community around it. Researchers have put many hours into this field of study, and their efforts and ideas will be summarized herein. To focus this discussion, Team Green Bean chose three main points of interest: Purdue’s green buildings, community outreach efforts, and interviews with researchers and teachers of sustainability.

Green Buildings Overview In 2011, Purdue will open its first certified green building. The Roger B. Gatewood Addition to the Mechanical Engineering building will add space and sustainability to part of Purdue’s Campus, and Team Green Bean looked into the particulars. The green Team  Green  Bean    

roof of Schleman Hall and other possible green building projects were also analyzed. The importance of green buildings is not to be understated. Buildings account for 48% of the total energy consumption in the United States and it is imperative that this energy either be reduced or put to better use than it is now.

Community Overview

Outreach

The only way for Purdue to be totally green is to have the community within and surrounding it be green as well. Team Green Bean has researched the strides made by such organizations as the Boiler Green Initiative (BGI) and the University of Vermont in capturing the attention of the community and getting help in the effort to go green. Recycling and energy awareness are just a few of the topics that are important to the sustainability of Purdue and of the community, and those, among others, will be covered, as well as how Purdue can continue to maintain the community’s support in its endeavors.

Interviews Researchers and teachers of sustainability at Purdue are vital because they can share their knowledge with students, the community, and university officials alike. Team Green Bean conducted two interviews with staff members integral to the green movement at Purdue, Dr. Fu Zhao and Dr. Robin Ridgeway. These interviews shed light on Page  3  

what is like to teach sustainability and how being green is important to the university.

resources and sensitivity to their impacts. According to the USBGC, LEED “provides   building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building              

Research and Data Gathered Green Buildings Mechanical Engineering In 2011 Purdue University will open its first green building, the Roger B. Gatewood Addition to the Mechanical Engineering building. The $33 million addition will add just over 40,000 square feet to the building, or about 55 percent more room. Along with the new laboratories, classrooms, and student areas, the building will also bring a first to Purdue’s campus – a certified green building. The Roger B. Gatewood Addition will the first building on Purdue’s campus to be constructed to the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council, a non-profit organization which focuses on cost-efficient and energy-saving practices for green buildings. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has created an internationally recognized certification system called LEED which was designed to improve several environmental metrics including energy savings, water usage, carbon dioxide emissions, improvement of indoor environmental quality and the stewardship of

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design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.”   LEED essentially is a points system for construction engineers and architects which allows building creators to tally up the positive green design decisions to achieve one of the four different LEED levels – Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum. For The Roger B. Gatewood Addition to be LEED v2.2 Certified, it must achieve 26 of a possible 69 points. To achieve these points, Purdue is implementing several items including a higher solar reflectance roof, low-flow plumbing fixtures, construction materials with recycled content, Green Label Plus carpet, wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and paint and sealants certified to reduce indoor air pollutants.   Though the Mechanical Engineering building’s addition will be the first certified green building at Purdue, there have recently been other green construction projects on campus.   1

 

Schleman Hall The green roof atop Schleman is a plant-covered surface designed to both retain                                                                                                                           1

http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CM SPageID=1988 Page  4  

water from rain and insulate the building and is the result of a $68,700 grant from State Farm Insurance . As a side effect of the natural materials used, the building’s roof will actually last longer than if it didn’t have a green roof. The roof includes monitoring equipment powered by solar panels designed to check the efficiency and performance of the roof and provide data for make design decisions for future green roof projects on campus. Though the future of green roofs at Purdue depend on the data gleaned from Schleman Hall, Purdue is already considering green roofs on the Horticulture Building, Mann Hall, the Armory, and other new construction.   2

 

Community Recycling Outreach Efforts Recycling programs have long existed at Purdue, and in the last few years have grown in both importance to students and faculty and participation. In 2008 Purdue’s recycling rate was 26 percent, which resulted                                                                                                                           2

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in keeping 500 tons of trash out of landfills. The recycling rate at Purdue increased to 37 percent in 2009. The end goal for Purdue is to recycle 100 percent of its waste. Purdue Grounds have set a goal of a total of 65 percent recycled waste by 2014, so clearly the goal of 100 percent efficiency is many years off.   To encourage the increase of recycling, Purdue Grounds installed 31 new recycling containers across the West Lafayette campus. Furthermore, there is a pilot program in Freehafer Hall, which puts recycling containers instead of trash cans at the desk of every staff, and faculty member in the building. The only items not recycled in Freehafer Hall are those containing liquid, food waste, or food wrappers. These items can be thrown away at trash cans in common areas. The recycle bins are emptied twice a week by a custodial crew and creates no additional required labor. This pilot program is expected to be expanded and go campuswide in 2010, greatly increasing the recycling   efforts of all staff and increase Purdue’s overall recycling rate significantly.   Another initiative Purdue is taking to increase campus-wide participation is joining Recyclemania! in 2010. Recyclemania! is competition between other colleges and universities to see who can recycle the most during a ten-week period in the spring 2010 semester. It is hoped that students will want to participate and that their involvement will carry over after the ten-week period.   Purdue also has a few rather unconventional recycling programs that are not immediately apparent when one first comes to campus. The remnants of over 500,000 meals each month from Purdue Page  5  

dining hall go to the West Lafayette Waste Treatment Plant and are there recycled into methane. University Residences also have recycling programs for those living in dorms. University Residences spends $3000 weekly for its employees to check and sort recyclable goods, including cardboard, plastic, and paper. Housing and Food services provides customers with refillable bottles and uses only 100 percent recycled fiber napkins. The Purdue Memorial Union uses green cleaning chemicals and now has a sustainable floor that requires fewer chemicals for maintenance in its Commons area. Purdue’s Veterinary Hospital has created compost with its used animal bedding and manure.   Another success for recycling at Purdue has been a collaborative project between Boiler Green, Purdue Athletics, and Purdue Refuse and Recycling. Together, these groups have worked together to setup a recycling program for Purdue home football games at Ross-Ade Stadium. On game days volunteers begin at 8AM and continue working until an hour after the game ends to collect recyclable waste and encourage fans to recycle. In 2008, there were a total of 150 volunteers that put in 710.5 hours. The result of their efforts was a total of 45,140 lbs of recycled waste that didn’t end up in a landfill . Through the first three games of the 2009 football season the program is on pace to recycle of 52,000 lbs of waste by the end of the season.   3

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Energy The Boiler Green Initiative (BGI) is a Purdue sponsored organization dedicated to helping Purdue and the surrounding community become green and sustainable. Energy is the main subject of one particular focus group, specifically energy used in lighting Purdue’s buildings. Their objective is to ultimately use sunlight more effectively, reducing the buildings’ energy needs. To aid them in achieving this goal, they plan to find data on the percentage of light bulbs on campus, in the surrounding community, and in public buildings that are energy efficient. They will use this data to write a new report that analyzes what can be done to light buildings more efficiently and to make recommendations on using daylight as an effective lighting source. They will invite a professor from the Department of Architectural Engineering to give a lecture on how buildings can be better suited to use daylight as a more effective way of lighting than light bulbs. After compiling all their data and gleaning more information from research, they will apply for grants to hold an efficient light bulb exchange to invite the community to learn more about their findings. This will increase awareness in the Page  6  

community and on campus about how to conserve energy using daylight and efficient light bulbs and will be an integral tool in Purdue going green

taking care of storm water before it can become a public health hazard. Hopefully, too, it will encourage community members to create rain gardens of their own.

Storm Water Management

Purdue Green Week

The Boiler Green Initiative also has a focus group relating to storm water management. Storm water is the runoff water that gathers after a rain storm and flows into drainage ditches, storm sewers, reservoirs, and other large bodies of water. Along the way, storm water can collect debris and all manner of pollutants, such as motor oil, pet waste, and lawn chemicals. Polluted storm water runoff is the biggest threat to the world’s drinking water, as most of this runoff flows into our public drinking systems. There are many ways to help rid storm water of its potentially damaging effects, and rain gardens are one of them. Rain gardens have two main functions. They collect water from storms that might otherwise be directed into a public drinking system and they then filter out the impurities. Rain gardens also collect large amounts of water to release back into the ecosystem safely, instead of causing overflow problems in public sewers and water collection areas. Overflow problems can also gather impurities from surfaces but this can be avoided by using a rain garden. BGI is helping to bring rain gardens to Purdue by first installing one at Hillel House. They are also beginning to draft and design a second rain garden at a location yet to be determined. By providing rain gardens to Purdue’s campus, BGI is ensuring that the community will pay attention to the importance of safely

One of the main ways Purdue stays in touch with the community and gains ideas is Green Week. This year, Green Week was September 21 through September 25, and many events were scheduled to demonstrate to the community all of Purdue’s efforts to go green. This shows a sense of accountability on behalf of Purdue to the area in general. The foci of this year’s programs were environmentally friendly programs and changing habits that waste energy. The dedication of Schleman Hall’s green roof and the idea to establish the university as an arboretum were just a couple of the events that focused on environmentally friendly programs at Purdue. BGI and Physical Facilities also teamed up for an interresidence hall energy competition to see who could save the most energy. All of Purdue Green Week’s programs could be deemed a success just by them being held at all. This is one way to get the community involved, and Purdue went all out to make sure it set the bar for years to come. By holding a Green Week every year, Purdue will be accountable for its green actions or inactions, and the community will be invited to see all of these up close.

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University of Vermont With all the efforts Purdue related groups have made to ensure that the community is involved in Purdue becoming green and sustainable, one wonders if even more can be Page  7  

done. The University of Vermont had an idea. Through two community events and one online survey, the university gathered over 1,500 participants throughout the area. Participants’ visions of a sustainable community and university were gathered, and a mission statement and plans and designs were implements according to those visions. This research suggests that a more effective way to bring about change within a university comes from the community as a whole, not just those few groups on campus who actively seek change or those beings in power. When the community as a whole has the opportunity to share their voice, it can be quite empowering and as such can be an important tool in helping universities plan to go green.

Bio: Dr. Fu Zhao is employed as an Assistant Professor by the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. Fu teaches Mechanical and Ecological Design Engineering. He has earned four college degrees: a B.S. and an M.S. in Thermal Engineering both from Tsinghua University, China; and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering both from the University of Michigan.

Interviews Paraphrased Interview Transcript Interviewer: Josh McKinney Topic: Sustainability in Teaching Date: 10-08-09 Guest: Dr. Fu Zhao

Q. To begin, could you give a brief overview of your experience in sustainability? Well, here at Purdue my research is primarily in sustainable design and manufacturing. My focus isn’t merely on developing new technologies to tackle the challenges we face today, but consists mostly on the redevelopment of old ideas and advances. By taking what we learned in the past and re-engineering these technologies for the benefit of the environment today, we can

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help reverse the damage done. I would say that 90% of my research on this topic focuses on the functionality of old designs. The other aspect of sustainability that is important to me and to our futures is education. Most of my academic career has been centered on sustainable engineering, clean and environmentally conscious manufacturing and biomass energy. When I began teaching at Purdue in January 2007, I mostly taught Mechanical Engineering to undergraduate and graduates. What I noticed over the next two semesters was that the majority of my students, all but one, in my environmental classes was mechanical engineering students and not the variety I was hoping for. After talking with my peers and students, I was told my classes were to dry and did not bring any excitement to ecological design and awareness. So for the fall 2008 semester I revised my curriculum. Since then I have noticed a much larger enrollment into the program as well as a greater interest from students outside of engineering about the program. By educating students on sustainability we create awareness for engineering’s impact on the environment and build a platform for sustainable future.

Q. What do you mean by engineering old technologies”?

“re-

Take for instance recycling biomass into energy. This is not a new idea. Yet converting biomass into energy posed many problems in the past and still does today. Turning corn and soybean fields to switch grass for a biomass boiler sounds sustainable, but you had to give up acres of a crop to make room Team  Green  Bean    

for the grass. This drives up crop prices and also is energy intensive. My interest is in taking bio waste already available and using it to efficiently produce power to the grid. Easy does not describe the solution. Unfortunately it takes power to make power. What we as engineers need to focus on is how to take the least amount of energy to produce the maximum amount of energy. One example is to take a tractor, plant a crop, fertilize and harvest the crop just to burn it to produce energy. The amount of energy required to get the plant from a seed to the boiler greatly exceeds the amount of energy received from the crop. Being sustainable doesn’t just mean recycling; we must focus on the life cycle of our energy resources.

Q. How important is sustainability to Purdue? Being sustainable is very important to Purdue. Even though Purdue is just a blip on a map, we can create a large impact on campus and around the world by providing a model for sustainable design. Since we are starting with an old campus, we have to take many factors into account. With tuition increasing every year, every dollar needs to be spent to create the maximum amount of efficiency in our facilities and our projects. We need to focus on being sustainable which in turn helps the environment, our campus and our wallets.

Q. Yesterday the Sustainable Endowments Institute gave Purdue a B-minus in sustainable efforts. Do you think that Purdue’s efforts are in the right or wrong direction?

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Purdue is most definitely on the right path to sustainability. The grade from the article is correct, but I don’t think it gives justice to what we have accomplished here. The other campuses that were in the same grade range as Purdue have not even come close to achieving all we as a campus have accomplished and plan for.

Q. Do you enjoy teaching sustainable engineering? Yes. I do admit that the amount of students I have now does burden my grading load, but I enjoy teaching students from many different backgrounds and degree programs. Teaching future engineers to be environmentally responsible in their design is essential for being ‘green’. Yet to be completely successful, we must have the majority of the students conscious of their role in sustainability. Just because other students are not engineers doesn’t mean their decisions in their future careers do not impact our ecology. Paraphrased Interview Transcript Interviewer: Josh McKinney Guest: Dr. Robin Ridgway Topic: Sustainable Future for Purdue Date: 10-09-09

Robin oversees and advises Purdue and Wade Utility with environmental compliance and state/federal regulations. She received her Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Purdue.

Q. Could you give a brief description of your job here at Purdue? Well, my official title is Director of Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship. Basically my priority is to take sustainability ideas proposed by my bosses or companies doing business with Purdue and make them into a reality. When it comes to a new upcoming project, our campus is focusing on the most energy efficient way to build it. I find myself being the question asker in most situations. When the Mackey storm water project was in development, I asked the questions that helped shape the most sustainable design. Don’t get me confused with an engineer though. My role is not the details of the design, but the critic of its performance and efficiency. If we don’t ask ourselves “does this activity effect our air quality or water supply?” then we will not know the long-term impact of our decisions.

Q. Why is LEED important and how is Purdue planning on implementing the standards outlined by LEED into the older buildings and facilities on campus? Bio: Dr. Robin Ridgway is employed by Physical Facilities at Purdue University. Team  Green  Bean    

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The new LEED standards are for new building construction. These standards provide a strict set of engineering and construction guidelines to maximize the efficiency of the building and its facilities. The new Robert B. Gatewood wing of the Mechanical Engineering building will follow these new standards and will stand as a model for future construction at Purdue. Where we run into problems are with the older buildings on campus. Since the buildings were not constructed with LEED standards around, they are sound, but not efficient. Our goal is to retro-commission the old buildings to perform like a new LEED certified building. To achieve this goal we are looking at any and all aspects of sustainable design. The hard part is that we have no reliable way of knowing how much energy each building consumes on a daily, monthly or yearly basis. Each building will have a unique set of challenges to make it more efficient. The way we are planning on attacking this huge task is a three-step strategy. First, we must retro-commission to increase building efficiency. Next comes metering. By metering the buildings input of energy, we can determine how and where to increase efficiency. The last yet most critical for short and long term projects is the Qualified Energy Savings (QES) upgrades. Purdue was picked for the program to help strengthen our role in sustainability as well as the campus budget. This program lets Purdue borrow up to $10 million for energy saving projects. The projects are designed to pay the money back within 10 years. Team  Green  Bean    

The benefit of borrowing money and being able to pay them back in a timely manner proves that there is money to be saved. When the loans are paid off, then all the savings will be new capital to fund more ‘green’ projects around campus. For us this is a win/win for our sustainable future.

Q. Is ‘going green’ for Purdue an asset or liability for the campus as a whole? Faculty? Students? If we can increase our sustainability correctly, financially we can put the campus in the equal or a little in the black. Even though we will not be saving money in the short-term the financial rewards are not far off. We must stay progressive and move fiscally outward to create new developments in sustainability. So I do see the efforts of university to be an asset to the environment, community and eventually our budget. From a faculty standpoint, I would say that our new ‘green’ initiatives have already started showing progress. With efforts from the Boiler Green Initiative and staff we have placed recycle bins at every desk. When at work, recycling styrofoam, paper, plastic or cans is as easy as throwing them in a divided trash can. We have noticed a significant reduction in trash collected from the buildings while our recycling center has seen a great increase in recycled materials. If faculty can recycle easily at work, then there is no reason to throw anything away. From a student standpoint, recycling is not hard and its benefits can be seen around campus. The asset to students is a cleaner campus with the reduction of trashcans and

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knowing that they can contribute to a better, more sustainable Purdue.

Q. Dr. Fu Zhao posed a question for my interviews and I would like to ask you, paper or plastic? Oh well I hope I don’t disappoint him! When I am done with my plastic and paper bags, I re-use them around my house. I mostly use my paper bags to put my recyclables in. For the used plastic bags, they are a must when I clean out the cat box for obvious reasons. I know there is no perfect answer to ‘paper or plastic’ debate so I recycle them as many times as possible.

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Works Cited 1. Boiler Green Initiative. Purdue University, 2009. Web. October 15, 2009.

2. Oskvarek, Jonathon. “Activities promote ‘green’ programs, habits.” Purdue Exponent 18 Sept. 2009 3. Pollack, Noah, Eileen Horn, Robert Costanza, and Matt Sayre. “Envisioning helps promote sustainability in academia: A case study at the University of Vermont.” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 10.4 (2009): 343-53. Print. 4. Ridgway, Robin. Personal Interview. 9 October 2009. 5. Sustainability at Purdue University. Purdue University, 2009. Web. October 15, 2009.

6. Zhao, Fu. Personal Interview. 8 October 2009.

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Annotated Bibliography Our issue is that of how Purdue University has gone green, and how the community has been impacted or has helped the efforts. Our print and electronic sources have been very helpful in answering these questions, and our interviews have given us a broader base of knowledge to pull from. We still need to find some more sources about how the community has been involved in Purdue’s sustainability efforts, but these sources have given us a great start.

Boiler Green Initiative. Purdue University, 2009. Web. October 15, 2009. The Boiler Green Initiative website has information on a number of Purdue recycling and green projects. It has information on the details of the green roof on Schleman Hall as well as plans for future roof projects. The site also has hard numbers for the recycling programs at Purdue football games. It also has information about the various green initiatives that BGI is working with Purdue to implement, such as alternative transportation, carbon neutrality, and energy saving. We will use this in our paper to discuss the efforts Purdue has made to go green and the possible efforts it could make in the future to make the university more sustainable. Oskvarek, Jonathon. “Activities promote ‘green’ programs, habits.” Purdue Exponent 18 Sept. 2009 This article describes Purdue’s 2009 Green week and its activities. We will use this information in our White Paper to show the activities Purdue is making available to students and the community to support their green initiatives. This is a good resource because it provides necessary information to the community about how to get involved in going green and emphasizes the efforts Purdue is making to achieve its goals. Pollack, Noah, Eileen Horn, Robert Costanza, and Matt Sayre. “Envisioning helps promote sustainability in academia: A case study at the University of Vermont.” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 10.4 (2009): 343-53. Print. Although we didn’t purchase complete access to this article, the abstract provided some good ideas about involving the community in universities’ sustainability efforts. This research project’s methodology included community events and online surveys to discover what community members envisioned a green university to be. We will use this article in highlighting how important the community is to determining how and what should be done to make Purdue a sustainable university and how how the community can help Purdue focus its efforts. Ridgway, Robin. Personal Interview. 9 October 2009. Dr. Ridgway and I discussed the many difficulties of modernizing Purdue to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Topics of the interview include Dr. Ridgway's role on campus, the next big project for Purdue and the complications of the LEED standards. We will use this interview to Team  Green  Bean    

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help show that Purdue is teaching students to be green and that faculty and staff are making an effort for the university to be sustainable.

Sustainability at Purdue University. Purdue University, 2009. Web. October 15, 2009. The Sustainability at Purdue website is a great resource which links to many papers, articles and more regarding green efforts at Purdue. Of particular help to us have been the articles from details of Green Week 2009 which detail Purdue recycling programs, green roof projects, and other local community programs. It also links to Purdue’s housing and food service sustainability, which we will discuss in our paper concerning measures the university has taken to go green. Zhao, Fu. Personal Interview. 8 October 2009. Dr. Zhao and I discussed the teaching aspect pertaining to sustainability at Purdue University. Topics of the interview include Dr. Zhao's area of research, his involvement in Purdue's efforts and if Purdue is directing their efforts in the right direction to become a sustainable campus model. We will use this interview to argue that Purdue is making strides to become sustainable and a model in the community for green efforts.

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