Blue Devils going green

Duke has been looking a little green recently.

Signs in dorm bathrooms instructing students to “Make it a Quickie” as well as Duke’s new hybrid buses are examples of Duke’s ongoing “going green” project. New initiatives have furthered Duke’s attempt at a “green campus,” including the “Green Workplace Certification” program and Duke Environmental Leadership Program’s classroom renovation.

The newly established Green Workplace Certification process is run by Sustainable Duke Outreach Coordinator Casey Roe. The Green Workplace Certification recognizes offices and work areas on Duke’s campus that are actively working to reduce their workplace’s effect on the environment.

Roe said the process begins when a member of the office attends a free, three-hour “Leading for Environmental Sustainability” workshop, which she leads on a quarterly basis. The workshop participants leave with a checklist of “green” practices, and if a workplace can check off at least 40 of the 57 items on the list, it can apply to become a Duke Green Workplace.

“[We] started the Green Workplace Program so that [the representatives who attend the workshop] can actually engage their workers in a process to receive certification,” Roe said.

The Dean’s Office of the Pratt School of Engineering was the first office to receive the Green Workplace Certification in September. Kathy Kay, assistant manager for special events at the Pratt School of Engineering, attended Roe’s leadership seminar, along with two of her coworkers.

“[At the workshop,] we looked at each other like, ‘I think we have a green team,’” said Kay. “Nobody had yet gotten the Certification, so we said, ‘Let’s make this our goal.’”

Jim Gaston, a member of Pratt’s Dean’s Office “green team,” took the checklist provided at the workshop and formed a survey that was sent around to the office staff. The results indicated that the office already met the qualifications, and even slightly surpassed them. The certification process served to unite office members who were conducting green practices on their own.

“We already had a bunch of like-minded green individuals,” said Kay. “What really started out as a bunch of individual people is now more of a cohesive effort.”

After the Dean’s Office, the Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics next received the Certification, followed by the Office of Sustainability, the 8100 General Medicine Stepdown unit at the Duke University Hospital and the Duke Carbon Offsets Initiative Office.

Of the certification of the Hospital unit, Roe said, “We were really glad to see that not only does this program work for University offices, but that [the hospital] was also able to work with us on the certification.”

According to Roe, over 100 staff members have come to the workshops and the January workshop is already full, indicating that perhaps more Duke workplaces than the 5 already certified will soon be Duke Green Workplaces.

The Duke Environmental Leadership Program is also contributing to Duke’s “greening” efforts. When DEL decided to renovate a Duke classroom last spring, it looked to a group of students taking Deb Gallagher’s, professor of sustainable business strategy, class offered by the Nicholas School and Fuqua School of Business. The course, which was offered during the Spring 2011 semester, required that students complete a project, and one team of students was assigned to make recommendations for DEL’s greener classroom.

“They wanted to make it a more sustainable, greener classroom, but also a more professional environment for the executive education classes,” said Jennifer Weiss, a member of the team.

The team examined many categories of renovation including technology, furniture, lighting, wall coverings and floor coverings. After seven weeks, the students made their “greening” recommendations, and the classroom—classroom A158 in the LSRC—was renovated over the summer and is now being used. Renovations included using zero-VOC paint and providing furniture composed of recycled material.

“[The classroom] serves as a model classroom for the rest of the University [since it] shows that you really can make a classroom green,” said Weiss. “Other classrooms are looking to upgrade, and they can take a lesson from this classroom and do [their renovation] in a more sustainable way.”

Roe said that Sustainable Duke is continuing to make efforts to “green” Duke, including the campus farm project and inreasing the number of sustainability courses and extracurricular activities available to students.

“The biggest overarching [goal] is to build out from just looking at greenhouse gases,” said Roe. “We’re looking at all areas of sustainability.”