SGB, admins talk sustainability

Student Government Board hosted a campus-wide sustainability meeting yesterday to discuss what… Student Government Board hosted a campus-wide sustainability meeting yesterday to discuss what Pitt is doing to try to make campus greener.

Representatives from Litchfield Towers, Transportation Services, Housing and Food Services and Sodexho were present.

Free the Planet and Engineers for a Sustainable World represented the student viewpoint. Carnegie Mellon University’s environmental coordinator, Barbara Kviz, was also there in an attempt to get CMU synched up with Pitt.

The goal of the meeting was to talk about what all of these groups were doing and to try and coordinate their activities.

Indeed, a lot of what the groups are doing has not been largely publicized. For instance, Facilities Management has built rules against incandescent lighting (unless it’s necessary for research) into its construction contracts. It also has an Internet-based energy management system that controls the temperature in campus buildings and turns the temperature down at night and during unoccupied times.

Facilities Management also replaced carpet in Hillman Library last year with 35 tons of recycled carpet.

Pitt’s Transportation Services uses biodiesel to fuel all it’s shipping and receiving trucks. As far as campus shuttles and SafeRider, it contracts out for those services and is limited in what it can demand of their supplier.

Sodexho recently introduced reusable shopping bags in the Quick Zone. “Ninety percent of our business used to be takeout in plastic containers from Eddie’s,” said Sodexho manager Jodi Ludovici. “But now 80 percent of our business comes from Market Central where the plates and silverware are reusable.”

Ludovici also pointed out that the use of trays in campus eateries like Cathedral Cafe discourages the use of plastic bags, which are available if needed but offered second to the trays.

Recycling was a big issue that took up most of the meeting.

Pat Heffley, Litchfield Towers building superintendent, said motion-sensor lighting was put in all the lounges and trash rooms in Towers during winter break. The recycling process was also recently updated, Heffley said. All the buildings’ trash rooms now have blue recycling bins that are separate from the rest of the trash.

“I’m open to any suggestions you guys have,” Heffley said.

He was immediately asked about the reliability of collections, whether the recycling bags remained separate from trash bags. “If there’s all kinds of trash in with the recycling, then sometimes the recycling companies won’t want to take that,” he said.

Director of Housing and Food Services Jim Earle added that this often happens with the recycling bins in Towers’ lobbies.

“Students say they want to recycle but they don’t always recycle,” he said. “In the lobby bins, kids were just walking by and throwing trash in them, too.”

The new recycling bins in the dorms have been very effective, Earle added.

Geology professor Rosemary Capo said, “There has been some cynicism that Pitt doesn’t recycle, but as Barb Kviz at CMU told us, Pitt really does recycle, often better than other schools. Part of our job is to communicate that.”

Heffley emphasized spreading the word about recycling to incoming freshman. Student Government Board members Tom Hudzik and Gary Sanderson told Heffley about how they work with Student Life to give gifts to freshmen during orientation that encourage recycling.

Heffley and Earle said they also do that through Housing Services and offered to coordinate with SGB members.

“My door is always open,” said Heffley. He offered to share his recycling logos “for Pitt’s sake” and because “it just makes sense.”

The group agreed to meet again in the fall, saying that even though there were other sustainability groups this one was unique for bringing management, faculty and students together.

“We need to stay in the loop so this can continue,” Capo said. “It’ll start with outreach so students know and then move beyond that.”