Green Office Certification Program: My Experience

This post was written by the Sustainability Office Green Office Certification Program Coordinator, Rissy Mathias. 

Working within the Sustainability Office has been an amazing experience that has shed light for me onto the inner-workings of the campus-wide plan of sustainability. UCSC is a campus that truly strives to integrate sustainability through student-led initiatives backed by staff involvement. Working in the Green Office Certification Program, I have enjoyed interacting with the staff and faculty of UCSC. This experience has helped me acquire skills such as interacting professionally and effectively outside of just my classroom experience.

My time at the Green Office Certification Program has allowed me to creatively tackle sustainability issues within this sector. My co-worker, Alana Mandrick, and I were able to integrate the evaluation of water practices into the certification program. Currently, we are finding a more efficient way to evaluate the energy practices of the offices on campus. We have done this by creating self-evaluation questions to receive perspectives from participating offices and by creating a system to check water systems within the office. This picture included shows some of the questions we ask office members on the self-evaluation calculator that they fill out during the certification process.

Photo courtesy of UCSC Green Office Certification Program

This was an important addition to the Green Office Certification Program, especially when the recent drought is taken into account. None of this would have been achievable without the promotion of creativity and the culture of innovation within the Sustainability Office.

5034 lbs Paper Recycled in Annual Disposition Day

At the Sustainability Office, one of our main focuses is student sustainability, but we are invested in the sustainability of all campus users, including staff who work in offices on campus. Think about the office setting; there are many ways to incorporate sustainability into your work life from practicing energy efficiency to reducing waste.

The Records and Information Management (RIM) and Policy Coordination Office is one of the leading green offices on campus. Each year they sponsor a Disposition Day event, offering the secured shredding, and recycling of confidential and restricted paper documents to UC Santa Cruz business offices. This year, 10 offices participated and 5,034 pounds (or 2.5 tons!) of paper were securely recycled.

We sat down with Diane Lallemand, who organized Disposition Day, and had the opportunity to ask her some questions about sustainability.

Diane and Evette -- Records and Information Management Office

What is your position on campus?

I am the Principal Analyst for, Records and Policy Coordination. I oversee the Chancellor's administrative archive. We preserve records of enduring historical value and those that show evidence of the University’s administrative actions. Over the past year we been curating the archive which includes document that date back to the establishment of the UC System. The other side of my job is campus-wide administrative policy. I handle the vetting and approval process of the Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC). This includes all of the campus policies that are not specific to a division or a department or an office, but those which apply widely and broadly to the entire campus. It does not include academic, academic personnel, admissions, or student policies. Its more about the business side of the university.

How does your position relate to sustainability?

Well, we're a pretty small group so the EVC office runs pretty clean and smooth. My part of it is the Records and Information Office. I'm the Campus Records Manager. Part of my job it to promote best practices in records management, while informing and outreaching about UC Records Management Policies. For example, vital records are those that would help us rebuild the University after a disaster. They require special handling and long term preservation. outreach to departments on how to classify, manage and properly dispose those records when it's time -- and our biggest outreach of the year is the Disposition Day event.

How did Disposition Day go this year?

It went really well. There were about 10 offices participating and the numbers afterwards were great. Each year, we sponsor the secured shredding of confidential paper documents. This is a great way let people know about the Records and Information Management office, our resources, and its an opportunity to ask about retention, and other burning records management questions.

Normally, departments would have to make their own arrangements for a confidential shredding service to pick up and dispose their records, but as a part of this sponsored event, it's free for all departments. This is now the 5th year of Disposition Day. We were actually the first UC that started it and now all the UCs, including UCOP, have a Disposition Day.

Is there anything you've learned this year that you want to do differently for next time?

We did get a higher level of participation this year than in the past, which was surprising because in general I thought departments wouldn't need to dispose as much since more are shifting more to electronic records, but there's still lots of paper processes happening on campus. I think there's so much potential to get more people involved. We had 10 departments participate, but I’d like to see even more departments involved. There are a lot of stale archives out there that need attention.

What advice would you give to an office trying to be more "green"?

My advice would be to look and keep looking for efficiencies in consumables and processes. Individuals can consider: do I really need to print that, can I print that two per page, or can I reuse the blank side? One area I would really like to see the campus tackle is the distribution of flyers and junk mail. Offices who haven't already should get in touch with the Green Office Program to find out more ways to incorporate sustainability into their daily business.

Click here to learn more about the RIM office.