Data quality

I'm never sure how much estimating to do. This morning Ed Newman gave me tons of landfill trash projected from refuse contracts going back to 1973. The data points are for years the contracts were started, and do not include minor re-negotiations in the intervening years. For the Calculator I will place any missing years as the average of the years on either side. Landfill tonnage numbers since 2003 have been going up a lot, and Ed tells me that "around then" they started weighing the trash rather than estimating from volume.

There are dozens of different things that Campus Recycling collects and keeps out of the landfill (fluorescent bulbs, CFC gas, construction and development scrap, motor oil, toner cartridges, campus envelopes, etc) and they add more categories to that list each year. But what notes there are on quantities are in different units for each item (boxes of envelopes, crates of styrofoam, pickup trucks of reuseables) that I don't know how to convert to tons or cubic yards for comparison to trash. Ed showed me a conversion chart for items I'm willing to estimate. Still, data collection on that has been a lower priority than ITEM collection, and I'm missing data most years for everything not picked up by Athens Recycling. For the report I'll highlight a subset of years with relatively complete data and explain that there are probably similar numbers for other years. Doesn't change the Calculator tallies any, just how good we look.

Looking further into the calculator I found a column for Compost in the Offsets category! Compost just got much higher on my priority list, and will be a bigger part of my presentation.

Carbon Offsets

Hey All,

My friend Courtney started a tree planting club last year through the University. In total they planted 1400 pine saplings and this November they are planting roughly 20+ trees behind White's Mill.

Josh, can we use this as part of our offsets?

~Sarah

What they are doing can be what we will do

Nicole, Donny and I decided to devote ourselves this week to examining other schools' solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their campuses.

Here are two examples I found so far (I posted here so that we would not repeat each other's work)

1. Incorporate energy efficiency measures into design and operation of campus buildings

This is what many schools are adopting to help with alleviation of greenhouse gas emissions, such as the University of New Hampshire. UNH implemented several measures in its residence hall, including using energy-smart lighting system, revamping building control systems and energy education for maintenance and operations staff as well as the broader university community. According to UNH, through a series of retrofits and educational programs, it is estimated that the university saves $4 million annually in energy compared to national average.

The University of Vermont has a more detailed description about its carbon neutralization projects related to buildings management:
*The temperature and ventilation on most major buildings are controlled through time and scheduling programs with specified settings.
*All major buildings on campushave had lighting upgrades to T-8 or compact fluorescent light bulbs - incandescent lights are no longerinstalled on campus.
*Campus vending machines received an recent energy retrofit in 2003; eighty Vending Misers™ power down their lighting and cooling systems after 15 minutes of inactivity, preventing an estimated 176,000 pounds of CO2 emissions per year.
*In August of 2003 UVM replaced all laundry washing machines on campus with Maytag Neptune high-efficiency washers that each save up to $150 per year.
*The emergency exit signs in every campus building were replaced with LED bulbs during the 2003-2004 school year.

Campus buildings, including dorms, and the facilities inside should be considered as the core to the whole GHG reduction solution pack, because most of the energey consumption in school comes from these objects. It is also complex to develop detailed solutions for each building. But the main idea is clear: to have each equipment and each person who uses the equipment become energy efficient. Change the lightbulbs to LED bulbs, change the habit of keeping computers running all nights, remove unnecessary energy-consuming facilities...are all that can help carbon reduction.

2. Energy education for faculties, staff and students

The University of Vermont has a peer-to-peer education program with which students work in dorms to educate each other about reducing electricity use.
The UVM has also implemented the "Sleep is Good" campaign for computers, and placed mouse pads in all of the computer labs with info on the program. This is to encourage students to shut down their computers while they don't use them.
Similar projects also include a display using bikes to power appliances; lightbulb exchanges; and events.
The energy education looks particularly attractive to me. It will be a good idea, too, to have OU consider adding similar courses and holding similar campaigns for students, staff and faculties. Particularly, it is important to educate students who live on campus to save electricity in their dorms. Athens is a small town, so it will also be significant to encourage students to reduce their use of cars for transportation.

Data should be based on fiscal years

This is just a note to say that according to Jennifer Schroeder, program officer and webmaster for Clean Air-Cool Planet, the majority of colleges collect data based on fiscal years. I am posting this as a separate post because I think it is relevant to categories for which information included in previous posts about this issue is not.

This post is to establish post labels.