How sustainable is Stony Brook University, and what is the university doing to try to make itself more so? Like any college campus that operates, as we do like a small city, SBU faces many challenges, and it has made many strides in reducing its environmental footprint. Are we the “greenest” campus? No, but we are greener than most and we are constantly moving in the direction of smarter use of resources.
With student enrollments in excess of 24,000 and full and part-time employees at about 14,000, we make quite an impact. Founded in 1957, SBU’s fleet of buildings includes not only state of the art designs, like the Simons Center, but an older stock of structures, like the neighboring Physics Building, built back in the day when designers did not give the attention to conservation that today’s architects and engineers now routinely do. All campus buildings have been upgraded regularly over the years with new and improved equipment. More efficient lighting, energy efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems have been installed.
Campus buses use a mix of cleaner fuels; one even uses waste cooking oil from food services. Electric and hybrid vehicles have been added to the university’s fleet. Significant volumes of waste paper, cardboard boxes, beverage containers and other materials have been diverted from the waste stream for recycling. There is even a food waste composting project that has been underway for several years that turns such things as old melon rinds, spoiled salads and coffee grounds back into soil. Thousands of water-conserving devices have been installed in student housing and other campus buildings. This reduction in waste water discharge has helped make the state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant operated by Suffolk County for the University and the hospital run even more efficiently.
SBU’s co-generation plant is a marvel of applied science combining a high efficiency gas turbine with heat recovery and electric power which far reduces the air pollution burden that more conventional fossil fuel plants would impose. Even solar energy panels are making their way onto the campus. SBU’s “sustainability” mission and its accomplishments are prominently featured on its website in its efforts to regularly educate the university community about what all of us must do. Of course, we must do more.
All of us have seen the bad examples: inadequate recycling, wasted energy, lights left on, engines idling and the ever confounding use of noisy, needlessly polluting leaf blowers. This is where we get involved. We can make changes. We have a willing partner in the university. They want to reduce operations costs and operations impact and we can help. For example, our Sustainability Studies Program has engaged the University in a lighting audit project with four campus buildings this semester and a roof garden installation is taking place at the hospital. These efforts involve students, faculty and staff in close cooperation. “Sustainability” is an ongoing enterprise requiring all hands on deck.
Jim Quigley is a lecturer in Sustainability at Stony Brook.
