Thanks in part to an ambitious and enthusiastic group of Washington University School of Medicine’s employees, the school is a “greener” place than it was one year ago.
The school’s Sustainability Awareness Committee is celebrating its first anniversary by acknowledging the many positive changes made on the campus since it launched in March 2009.
Fitting with the group’s initial charge as the Energy Awareness Committee, the School of Medicine has made tremendous strides in energy savings over the past year, building on improvements made over the past 18 years. The Facilities Management Department has been retrofitting light fixtures in School of Medicine buildings by removing the old magnetic ballast and T12 fluorescent bulbs and replacing them with electronic ballasts and T8 fluorescent bulbs. That one change is expected to save between 20 percent and 40 percent per light fixture, said Jim Jackson, project engineering manager in the Facilities Management Department.
That adds up to thousands of dollars in savings for some larger structures at the medical school. The estimated annual energy savings for the Bernard Becker Medical Library is $60,000; for the Clayton Avenue garage is $37,000; and for the Metro Garage is $16,800.
As an incentive to make energy-saving changes, AmerenUE is expected to provide the School of Medicine with a nearly $50,000 rebate for the lighting retrofit project in the McDonnell Sciences Building, which has an anticipated annual energy savings of $80,000. In addition, the lighting retrofit project in a group of five buildings – Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, West Building, 4488 Forest Park, Renard Hospital and Supply Room – is expected to save $96,000 a year in energy costs and is expected to garner $65,000 in rebates from AmerenUE.
Energy savings are happening at the department level as well. A case study of a lab in the McDonnell Pediatric Research Building showed that about $2,000 per year could be saved by turning off lab equipment such as water baths, heat blocks, centrifuges and other equipment with heating elements and compressors when not in use. Lighting modifications alone could save nearly $1,000 annually, the case study showed.
Based on the case study, if the same level of savings could be reached in all of the 570,000 square feet of labs at the medical school, the school could save more than $2 million a year, resulting in a more than 7 percent reduction in energy costs across the campus.
Focus on labs
To share the results of the lab case study and potential energy savings campus-wide, Jim Stueber, director of facilities engineering, and Jerry Pinkner, research lab manager in molecular microbiology and head of a subcommittee focusing on labs, will speak to representatives from each lab, called Lab Sustainability Advocates, at the School of Medicine each week in April.
“The presentation is designed to connect people with energy awareness and to show them that the culture can change,” Stueber says.
At the presentations, Stueber and Pinkner will ask each lab’s manager, a postdoctoral researcher and a graduate student to commit to making energy-saving changes within their labs and report their efforts back to the lab subcommittee. They will also provide each lab with a tool kit, which includes promotional flyers, stickers to put on equipment reminding lab members to turn it off when not in use, a list of best practices and an energy-auditing tool.
Sharing the success
Stueber and Walt Davis, assistant vice chancellor and assistant dean for facilities, are now sharing the School of Medicine’s sustainability success as a model for large organizations. On March 9, they presented the successes of the Sustainability Awareness Committee to about 75 with corporate and regional leaders at the King Center at the Bernard Becker Medical Library.
Getting students on board
Students at the School of Medicine are also getting involved in the sustainability effort. Neil Munjal, a second-year medical student, and Jennifer Reeves, a first-year medical student, are representing the students on the Sustainability Awareness Committee. They have been working on a variety of initiatives, including having water-bottle fillers installed on water fountains in student areas and encouraging students to bring their own dinnerware and utensils for student lunches to reduce waste. They are also encouraging students to bring their own coffee mugs to class and working with Central Information Technology Services to switch all the printers in the student study areas in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center to print double-sided as the default.
“We are also planning how we can get involved with first-year orientation next year to inform students of simple steps they can take to live more sustainably while in medical school, including a sustainability survival kit complete with a reusable dish and coffee thermos that they can wash and store at school in order to reduce paper and plastic waste,” Reeves says.
Buildings going green
The School of Medicine buildings are also going green. The Genome Center’s data center on Newstead and Duncan avenues was the first “green” building on the medical school’s campus and has received the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold status by the U.S. Green Building Council. The Barnes-Jewish Institute of Health at Washington University School of Medicine also has LEED Gold status.
Recycling makes impact
A recycling pilot was conducted from October 2009 to January 2010 in the McDonnell Pediatric Research Building, Clinical Sciences Research Building and Clinical Sciences Research Building North. Those buildings created more than 30 tons of trash per month. Collecting paper products from those three buildings and selling them to a recycling vendor earned enough money for the School of Medicine to cover the cost of recycling glass, plastic, cans and cardboard from the three buildings.
Pinkner worked with Ivory Reed Jr., director of support services, on the pilot program. Together, they determined that if more than half of the trash produced by the three buildings could be recycled, it would reduce trash expenses by about $60,000 per year and cut the waste stream to landfills by half.
The three-month pilot recycling program kept 2.63 tons of white paper and cardboard and 2.45 tons of comingle (glass, plastic and cans) out of landfills, Reed says.
Managing resources
Changes toward reducing waste and packing materials are also being made in Purchasing Services. Starting April 1, Purchasing Services and Staples implemented a minimum order threshold of $25 to reduce the amount of packing materials and boxes being delivered to our campus in support of sustainability initiatives and to better manage delivery and packing costs providing leverage to retain competitive contract pricing and to delay any consideration of fuel surcharges or delivery fees.
To get involved in the School of Medicine’s Sustainability Awareness Committee, contact Wendy Flusser at flusserw@wusm.wustl.edu.
For more information about the university’s Strategic Plan for Environmentally Sustainable Operations, visit http://wustl.edu/sustain/strategicplan.html.
Visit http://powerofone.wustl.edu for energy-saving tips for the office, lab and home; recycling information; energy conservation recommendation forms and more.