Green Initiatives
The number of visitors who frequent the Campus Center on a daily basis make it a perfect venue to educate students, staff and community guests and to create awareness of how the Campus Center is becoming a more sustainable facility.
Current Projects
Examples of initiatives that have been a part of the Campus Center and Cafe include:
- Phase one of the reconfiguration of the Student Kitchen to maximize storage space will allow for the use and storage of real china and silverware, a more sustainable option for the Cafe and catering functions throughout the building.
- The Daylight Harvesting Project has begun which allows for the automatic shut down of lights throughout the building when adequate daylight provides acceptable lighting levels.
- Sustainable packaging and product distribution in the Cafe hae included things such as; use of melamin bowls at the salad station rather than paper or plastic; compostable paper plates, cold cups and to go salad and sandwich containers; hot cups are made with 10% post consumable waste and soup cups are eco containers; plastic clamshell containers are no longer used as sandwichs are wrapped in a paper/foil wrap; reusable plastic baskets are used for hot grill items when dining in; pitchers of water, soda and beverages are now used in place of plastic bottled beverages.
- The solar panel installation project, which began in November 2009. The solar panel installation had resulted in reduction of energy consumption in the Campus Center and cost savings to the college.
- The addition of the Dashboard Monitor with new interactive software provided by Lucid Design Group. With this tool members of the community will be able to monitor energy consumption and savings in the Campus Center as well as renewable energy production from the solar panels.
- Creation of a techno-recycle kiosk, where household batteries, CDs, inkjet cartridges, compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and small electronics can be dropped off for recycling.
- Facility-wide conversion from traditional to energy-saving power strips in administrative offices and student PC work stations throughout the Campus Center.
- Changes to the student banner program, resulting in the replacement of cloth banners (which end up in landfills) with paper banners, which can be reused as table covers for student programs.
- Administrative desktop "Go Green" waste receptacles in the Campus Center. The program supports a reduction of plastic (in the form of plastic trash bags) that would typically be found in landfills.
- Implementation of two-sided copy practices, significantly reducing paper consumption in the Campus Center administrative offices.
- Support of the light bulb exchange. The Campus Center's information desk has a recycle station, where students can swap incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).
- Daily configuration of Campus Center public e-mail stations to power on when the center opens and power off when the center closes.
- Ongoing flyer recycling. The Campus Center reuses every posted bulletin board flyer, turning them into small notepads or recycling into student banner letters in the resource room. Pads are free and may be obtained at the information desk while supplies last.
Green Resources
Information on environmental sustainability at Smith and beyond can be found at Green Smith and at the Smith Center for the Environment, Ecological Design & Sustainability.
