Green Buildings

// projects / green buildings

Check out the green dorm website.

We have been working with Stanford administrators to figure out if they can renovate the houses to make them use less resources. They will automatically implement a project if it will pay back its costs in 5 years by reducing energy or water use. For more information, go to: Guidelines for Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Guidelines for Sustainable Buildings.

—Emily Humphreys has been looking at getting hand dryers instead of paper towels in the dorms, since these are much easier to maintain and use much less resources. Some problems with hand dryers are that they take a while to dry hands (and use electricity). One solution would be to use the Xcelerator dryer (or some similar product) but we have heard that it is very loud (but haven't actually listened to one ourselves). This is an ongoing project.

This was written by Emma Yuen in March 2006. If you have any questions, or would like to replicate this project in your school, please contact Emma at nutrient@Stanford.edu.

The following is old material from a few years back:

As a result of SSS's original campaign (in 2000), the Stanford Guidelines for Sustainable Buildings were written by a committee of students, faculty and administrative staff and published in March, 2002. The guidelines are available on-line at: http://cpm.stanford.edu/pdp.html

There guidelines are a great guide for building sustainably, but there is no required enforcement, and no standard published metrics so that all buildings can be meaningfully compared. The Environmental Stewardship Committee has the charge of implementing The Guidelines, but they have no real power over the actions of project managers (who coordinate all building projects, and whose main job is finishing construction on time and within an upfront cost budget).

What can you do?

Send email to Vice Provost of Land and Buildings, Bob Reidy (reidy@stanford.edu) and ask that they

1. Publish metrics to chart Stanford's improved building performance,
2. Use 'Life Cycle Cost Assessment' to determine acceptable design choices based on their effectiveness at reducing resource consumption and cost over the full life of a building, and
3. Change the incentive structure be so that project managers receive bonuses when their buildings perform well, i.e. have reduced operating costs due to reduced draw on utilities.

Another avenue to improve the sustainability of development on campus is to have a true visionary leading the charge. David Neuman, Stanford's Univeristy Architect, left his position last winter and has yet to be replaced.

Send email to Vice Provost of Land and Buildings, Bob Reidy (reidy@stanford.edu) and President Hennessey (hennessey@stanford.edu) and ask that Stanford hire a new University Architect who has experience in green building and sustainable design and shows vision for making Stanford a leader in sustainable campus planning.

Feel free to model your request off the letter we delivered last December.

Increasing the number and coordination of student interns in administrative offices affords great opportunity to students and connects departments that would otherwise be quite distant. View our Proposal to the Environmental Initiative and the ideas for further projects resulting from the SSS-sponsored Student ted Course, Sustainable Habits.