As a part of the fifth annual National Campus Sustainability Day, the UT Sustainability Network and its umbrella organization Campus Environmental Center sponsored an outdoor festival Wednesday. The event was hosted on the East Mall and invited passing students and faculty to witness University projects that promote sustainable activities.
The booths included those set up by the Division of Housing and Food Service, Parking and Transportation Services, Project Management and Construction Services, as well as representatives from the center's 13 project organizations such as Green 'Horns and EcoReps.
The festival's focus was the concept of sustainable development as coined by the 1987 publication of the Brundtland Report, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
"This is the first time UT has participated in Sustainability Day," said Michele Hallahan, safety specialist for the Office of Environmental Health and Safety and one of the lead organizers for the event. "It's a great opportunity for us to get out and interact with the public while at the same time generating awareness and deepening people's understanding of global warming, pollution and carbon footprints."
At its most comprehensive definition, a carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by a product throughout its full life cycle. Hallahan said that humanity is almost at a crisis when one considers the tsunamis, the increasing strength of hurricanes, the wildfires in California and Australia and other recent phenomena.
"To be honest, I think the increased spotlight put on the real causes of these things is due in large part to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth.' His Nobel Peace Prize is well-deserved," she said.
The festival also coincided with the release of the College Sustainability Report Card 2008 from the Sustainable Endowments Institute. After assessing 200 universities, the institute graded UT's sustainability as a B-minus. According to the report card, the grade is higher than 2007's C-plus, but the categories of Food and Recycling and Green Building continue to keep the score down.
"We got off to a late start, but we are now up there with the median of contenders," said Emily Potts, construction services intern and architecture graduate student. "We've always had buildings that were built to be sustainable for 200 years, but the administrative level, not the staff level, only allowed the construction of [Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design] once things became quantified and the economic benefits could be seen."
The design, known as LEED, is a nationally agreed upon - but not mandatory - benchmark for constructing environmentally-friendly buildings. Construction issues LEED addresses include sustainable sites, water efficiency and indoor environmental quality, among others.
Potts said that structures like the Biomedical Engineering Building - currently under construction - will be LEED-certified and have features like non-potable water in toilets and the ability to harvest rainwater. Potts also said the Executive Education Conference Center is speculated to meet the LEED gold standard.
"We hope the advances in buildings like this will become the blueprint for others to follow. It behooves the educational mission of the University to pursue this," she said.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Web site, "sustainable development marries two important themes: that environmental protection does not preclude economic development and that economic development must be ecologically viable now and in the long run."
Be the first to comment on this article!