New Student Sustainability Advisor Positions in Colleges

For students living on campus, college life involves living, studying, and socializing in the college community they're affiliated with. In each of the housing areas, students produce waste and use resources in their day-to-day lives. At a campus where "environmental responsibility" is a part of our mission, UCSC colleges have created new Student Sustainability Advisor positions to support environmental responsibility on-the-ground.

"The SSA's primary role is to raise awareness and offer educational opportunities about ways campus residents can positively affect and contribute to UCSC’s sustainability goals," says Silas Snyder, Safety, Training and Conservation Coordinator for UCSC Housing and Dining Facilities.

Though many of the colleges are working toward zero waste goals, have gardens, or participate in composting, community life in the ten colleges at UCSC is about to get even greener, thanks to the new Student Sustainability Advisor (SSA) position that is currently open for applicants.

The SSAs will collaborate with campus sustainability leaders and residential life program staff and students to bring sustainability programs and awareness more to the forefront of residential life at UCSC. These student leaders will expand the team of people working on meeting the University's various conservation commitments, like the green house gas, landfill reduction, and water reduction goals. To learn more about the SSA position and find out how you can apply, please contact Silas Snyder or apply to ER #6782 the Employee Request System here.

May 2012 Sustainability Profile: The Paper Towel Debate

Did you know that paper towel waste makes up 40% of the trash that UC Santa Cruz produces--by weight? Even if you didn’t know that, anyone who’s ever used a restroom stocked with paper towels knows how quickly those trash cans fill up with half-dry paper towels, which are often barely used to their maximum absorbency before another paper towel is pulled from the dispenser. We hardly think about it in our day-to-day lives, especially since many people use cloth hand towels at home. In the dorms at UCSC, however, paper towels are in every bathroom, and they are a huge contributor to campus waste.

Five years ago as a freshman in Stevenson College, Aidan Ward noticed the wastefulness of the dorm paper towel dispensers. Since then, he’s been working on getting the disposable towels removed and encouraging fellow students to bring their own cloth hand towels to the restroom. After years of various tactics, and now with the support of Path to A Greener Stevenson (PTAGS) and the Sustainability Office’s Zero Waste Team, paper towels have been removed from dorm restrooms in Stevenson’s Sustainability House (Casa Segunda) in the first phase of a pilot program aimed at removing all paper towels from residential dormitory restrooms on campus.

Sound like a shocking proposal? In fact, the paper towel debate is a hot topic among UC housing managers from across the state. On April 17, during the UC Housing System Facilities Summit at the University Center on the UCSC campus, a system-wide meeting of housing managers focused on sustainability initiatives. When Chris Attias, UCSC Director of Housing Services & Facilities, began discussing waste reduction and paper towels during his presentation on UCSC housing and sustainability topics, hands went up around the room with details about various UC campuses’ experiences with the paper towel waste issue.

Sanitation Concerns
The first question that arises in discussions about paper towels is why they’re there in the first place, and the answer is sanitation. A number of years ago, paper towels were installed in the UCSC dorm bathrooms to decrease the likelihood of people getting sick. Paper towels can help with sanitation because they get the germs off of your hands completely after washing, and both the paper towel and your germs end up in the trash. There’s also, of course, a convenience factor, but the main concern regarding their removal in the dorms for is sanitation.

A paper towel dispenser in a Stevenson Casa Cuarta restroom. You can see how full the trash bin next to it is with used paper towels. "These Come From Trees" signs are posted on many of the paper towel dispensers in dorm restrooms, but paper towel waste remains a huge contributor to overall campus waste.

Sanitation concerns are certainly not an unknown obstacle to Ward’s campaign to remove the paper towels. As a freshman, and again last year, Ward purchased used hand towels at thrift stores and hung them in bathrooms throughout the Stevenson dorms in hopes that students would use them instead of paper. He asked other RAs in Stevenson to tell their residents to wash the hand towel whenever they did laundry so that it would be washed regularly. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing when the towel had last been washed, and there was a concern among students and staff that the towels weren’t being cleaned or were being contaminated with germs. So the towels were removed.

Why Not Compost?
One of the next questions that comes up regarding paper towel waste is, Why not compost them? As we just learned, paper towel waste is 40% of the waste stream by weight, which seems enormous since paper towels weigh so little. “It adds up,” remarked Silas Snyder, Safety, Training and Conservation Coordinator for UCSC Housing and Dining, after sharing this statistic during the UC housing managers meeting. The paper towels are compostable, but because of the large amount of them being thrown away, they will not break down. For compost to work, there has to be enough carbon-rich, wet material to break down the drier materials. On a small scale, this is possible to achieve, but there are just too many paper towels in the waste stream for this to work in the dorms.

Hand Dryers
What about hand dryers? This is one solution that Ward discussed with PTAGS, but the cost, noise, and energy-use were concerns that just didn’t make sense when paper towels could just be removed instead. At other campuses, hand dryers were actually piloted in one dorm bathroom, but because they’re noisy and so close to students’ living quarters, students in the pilot dorm were reluctant to use the dryer and requested that the paper towels be put back. A Sustainability Director at UC Davis actually researched the data on electric dryers versus paper towels, and found that if the paper towels were composted, they would have a smaller net carbon footprint. Additionally, dryers require maintenance, which adds to their overall cost.

Simplest Solution
The simplest solution seems to be to remove the paper towels. One of the UC housing managers mentioned that they simply do not have paper towels in their dorm bathrooms. Another housing manager from UC Davis said that they have lockers and cubbies in their restrooms, like the cubbies in UCSC dorms. Students can leave their personal toiletries and hand towels in these cubbies so they don’t have to remember to bring them with them. Even if students don’t have their cloth hand towel with them, as long as they wash their hands well, letting them air dry is another great solution. 

The Pilot Program
With the help of PTAGS, Ward submitted an official proposal for a pilot program, which was well-received by Sue Matthews, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Colleges, Housing and Educational Services, who expressed her concerns but has approved the initial phase to gather results on waste reduction and student and staff response. Changes such as this can cause pushback from custodial staff who stock and clean the dorm restrooms, but fortunately, Ward has been in communication with the Sustainability House custodian regarding the change and the steps required to measure the paper towel waste. So far the process has not generated any negative responses.

Two weeks ago, signs went up in the Sustainability House restrooms that read: 

A sign in one of the Sustainability House restrooms where paper towels have been removed as part of a pilot program to reduce paper towel waste and encourage students to think and behave more sustainably.

Paper towels are no longer being stocked in the Casa Segunda restroom dispensers, but a small stack is there in case of emergencies. PTAGS purchased a few hand towels for students who didn’t already have one, but other than that, students are expected to bring their own hand towel to the restroom or do without. Later in the quarter, PTAGS will conduct a survey for students to see how they feel about the change. Zero Waste Team member David Boyle has been active in working with PTAGS to obtain data from the waste generated from the Stevenson dorms, and he will continue to work on this project for the rest of the quarter. If all goes well with the pilot program, PTAGS plans to expand the project to all of the Stevenson dorms and, eventually, to the entire campus.

Hopefully the pilot program will be a success in Casa Seguna. It's fitting that the program begin in this house, since it's Stevenson's Sustainability house, "a house where events and community involvement tends toward creating a more sustainable college,” Ward remarked. He lives in this house as an RA, so he will be able to experience the paper towel removal project first-hand. “It’s all about encouraging students to adopt sustainable behaviors. Hopefully they’ll stick.”

Aidan Ward standing with a new sign in a Sustainability House dorm restroom. Only one stack of paper towels are being set out each week by custodial staff to encourage students to bring their own hand towels. The paper towels are there for emergency spills.

With the paper towel removal project and its future expansion possibilities to all of UCSC, sustainable behaviors such as using cloth hand towels in place of paper towels in the restroom will become a day-to-day reality for students in the dorms--and hopefully these sustainable behaviors will follow these students throughout their lives.

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Aidan Ward will be graduating this year with a bachelor’s degree in health science. His plans after UCSC include “playing music as much as possible” and attending medical school. We wish him the best of luck in his future, and we thank him for the great foundational work he’s done in making Stevenson, and UCSC, a more sustainable community.

This Sustainability Profile was written by Melissa Ott, Internship Coordinator Assistant and Newsletter Editor for the Campus Sustainability Office. If you know of a person or group on campus that you think we should profile, or if you would like to be profiled, please email Melissa.

February 2012 Sustainability Profile: East Field House Gym Lighting Retrofit​

Next time you’re exercising on the east side of campus, check out the new lighting in the East Field House Gym—it was retrofitted over winter break with lights that will reduce energy consumption in the gym by 43% and cut down on maintenance and electricity bill costs. The project was funded last spring by the UCSC Carbon Fund, a funding body that was founded in 2010 and which uses Measure 44 money to fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conduct relevant research, or carry out education and behavioral change programs.UCSC Green Campus interns conducted the research and oversaw the project with the help of the UCSC Physical Plant. The idea for the retrofit came from the Sustainability Inter-Org Retreat last winter. Green Campus performed a similar retrofit at the West Field House, so the Green Campus team identified the East Field House Gym as a site in need of an upgrade to energy efficiency. Green Campus interns Abbas Mohamed, a fourth year, and Erin Linney, a third year, were assigned the project. 

The brand new, energy-efficient lighting in the East Field House Gym

“It was my first day on the job. When I started, I didn’t know anything about sustainability or lighting,” Abbas, who was the Project Coordinator and has since been promoted to Team Manager, said during an interview at the East Field House in January. “Now, I’m passionate about lighting."

East Field House Gym Retrofitting Project Coordinator, Abbas Mohamed

Abbas and Erin conducted research during winter quarter last year and drew models of the gym using software to download details and predict lighting levels and energy usage with different types of lamps. After coming up with all the figures regarding cost, carbon emission reductions and more, they submitted their proposal and were awarded funds to install new induction lamps in the gym.

Their Carbon Fund proposal states that “An important part of the project is to provide a more welcoming atmosphere and better light quality for sports events…By tackling lighting efficiency in a sports gym, we will reach out to a diverse group of students.” In addition to the social benefits, their estimated annual green house gas savings for the project are 3.41 tons CO²e, which over the course of the induction lamps’ life (25 years) will come out to 85.35 tons CO²e. In terms of money, they estimate $95,782 savings over the course of the lamps’ life, taking into account the fact that these new lamps require little to no maintenance, especially compared with the lamps that were in place before the retrofit.

The project is near completion. “We are still waiting for the company to send the wire guards which will be placed on the lamps to protect them from an airborne ball,” Erin, who now holds the position of Facilities Project Coordinator for Green Campus, wrote in a recent email. “Also, we will be receiving a large PG&E incentive check for the estimated saving of 14,860 kWh per year. The PG&E incentive money will be returned to the UCSC Carbon Fund to finance more projects which reduce our campus greenhouse gas emissions.”

If you have an environmental project that you need funding for, consider applying for the Carbon Fund. More information about the Carbon Fund’s mission and application process can be found on their website.

The Green Campus team. (Erin Linney, who worked on the East Field House Gym Lighting Retrofit project, is pictured on the far left in the front row. Project Coordinator is on the far left in the second row.)

To learn more about Green Campus and other projects they are working on, please visit their Facebook page.