Campus

From Sustainability

Welcome!

If you're viewing this page after receiving the sustainable campus postcard, thanks for visiting. There's lots of information here to support efforts towards a more sustainable campus.

Please display the postcard on your door or noticeboard, then read on for more suggestions.

Why support a more sustainable campus? >>>

Take the lead: talk and teach >>>

Reduce your own impact >>>

Support an existing working group >>>

Sign up for campus sustainability news updates >>>

Feedback? campus-postcard@mit.edu

Why a more sustainable campus?
Because of MIT’s global reputation, we each have a responsibility to act sustainably through pioneering research and educational excellence, as well as in our daily lives. By conserving energy and making other behavioral changes, we can create a more sustainable campus - and send a powerful message about our Institute’s leadership.

Why me?
As an employee of MIT, you help shape the campus culture. Through your work, you can support and inspire students and colleagues who want to make the campus more sustainable. Together, we can make our campus a beacon for universities and organizations across the world.

What is the postcard project?
Faculty and staff make a great contribution to MIT's campus sustainability effort. But this often takes place behind closed doors and without most of the campus community knowing about it. The sustainable campus postcard gives everyone on the MIT payroll an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to a more sustainable campus. 4,700 postcards have been mailed to faculty, administrative and support staff, from students in two sustainability groups.

What should I do with the postcard?
Please show your support for a more sustainable MIT campus! Display this postcard on your door or noticeboard. Write an email to tell us when your postcard is up, we'd love to photograph you beside it - campus-postcard@mit.edu.

If you don’t want to display this postcard, please drop it back into the internal mail so that we can re-use it. Your comments are welcomed and appreciated even if you choose to not display the postcard.

Why support a sustainable campus?

Take the lead: talk and teach

Reduce your own impact

Support an existing project

Sign up for news updates

Take the lead: bring sustainability into your teaching and research

Consider changing your research agenda! As a professor at MIT, we are privileged to be able to choose the research problems we work on. Within the confines of your discipline, you might find it worthwhile to think about what you can contribute to the problems of sustainability and climate change. We are faced with broad scientific, technical and human problems -- it will take all of us to address them.

If you teach, TA, or assist a course: incorporate sustainability into the curriculum, and encourage campus sustainability as a focus for student projects. Many successful campus sustainability projects have grown out of class project work or independent studies.

Take the lead: convene a meeting with your colleagues to discuss sustainability

Get together with your colleagues and friends at MIT and figure out what you can do together to help create a sustainable campus.

  • Talk about purchasing policies within your working group (buy green, buy less)
  • Brainstorm a list of facilities issues and delegate someone to submit work orders online
  • Where are your recycling bins? In the right loations, they will encourage recycling.
  • Agree a policy about turning off lights in common areas.
  • Could you order better food for events, with less waste and more sustainable food sourcing?

If you run into bigger issues that can't be covered in your group and need attention by senior administrators, communicate them to the MITEI Campus Energy Task Force, wtttaskforce@mit.edu.

If you want further information on available resources or volunteers to help turn sustainability ideas into campus initiatives, contact one of the existing student initiatives, or send a message to campus-postcard@mit.edu and we will connect you with the right people.

Take the lead: audit your department's GHG footprint

Do you know your department's carbon emissions? Use the GreenSAP Department GHG toolkit to calculate an initial estimate of emissions from building occupancy, travel, waste, recycling and commuting. Contact audit-toolkit@mit.edu for more details.

Water cooler discussions...

Shouldn't MIT sign the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment? Why not?

Is MIT doing enough to Walk the Talk on energy and the environment?

Do we need a Green Fund, like our neighbors up the street?

Why do we have this water cooler anyway? Isn't filtered tap water cleaner?

Why support a more sustainable campus?

Take the lead: talk and teach

Reduce your own impact

Support an existing project

Sign up for news updates

We can all make the MIT campus more sustainable through our daily actions. For example, just turning off unused lights will reduce the load on the campus co-generation plant, which reduces the amount of CO2 emitted.

Close your fume hood sash

One fume hood uses about 700KWh per month, the same amount of energy as a single-family home in Cambridge. Closing fume hoods when not in use has saved $50K per year in energy costs in Building 18 alone.

Turn off the lights

MIT's campus uses over 226 GWh of electricity and emits nearly 300,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, and 32% of this comes from lighting. Turning off lights in classrooms, labs, and offices when not in use can help reduce this number by at least 15%.

Shut down your computer

There are about 20,000 networked computers at MIT. Adopting power-saving settings can reduce MIT's total energy savings by 4%, with savings of 500Wh per year for an average desktop with 17" LCD monitor. See IT Energy @ MIT for more details.

Advocate!

Talk to your department head or supervisor: tell her that it is important to incorporate sustainability into purchasing decisions. Advocate for integrating sustainability into campus operations and activities by communicating support for energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emission reductions, and other sustainable initiatives on campus.


More individual actions

Some other suggestions:

  • Make your desk paperless, or paper light. Don't print e-mail!
  • Print double sided
  • Use your own mug when filling up your coffee
  • Use the revolving door
  • If you know of problems with the electrical, heating, cooling, or other systems that might be wasting energy, tell Facilities - call FIXIT or submit a work order online.
  • Use a desk lamp instead of overhead lighting - and get a CFL from Office Depot.

For changes you can make at home, see Sustainability@Home.

Why support a more sustainable campus?

Take the lead: talk and teach

Reduce your own impact

Support an existing project

Sign up for news updates

Connect with the Campus Energy Task Force

The MIT Energy Initiative recognizes that solutions for today’s energy challenges are going to emerge not only from the research laboratories and classrooms but also from practice-based management innovations that focus on minimizing the energy footprint of energy-intensive institutions such as MIT. Acting on that recognition, the Energy Initiative has established an innovative campus energy program that opens MIT’s campus as a learning laboratory to develop and showcase leading approaches for significantly reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Read more about the Campus Energy Task Force, apply for funding, channel students towards campus projects.

Join the Working Group on Recycling

The Working Group on Recycling works on issues around recycling, reducing and reusing goods on campus. Efforts include identifying and addressing gaps in understanding about recycling as well as gaps in recycling resources and creating ways to increase recycling at MIT. It's a great venue for staff to get involved with recycling efforts.

Support a student working group.

Students across the Institute 'walk the talk' by providing energy and leadership on campus sustainability from all angles - these groups benefit from faculty and staff support and expertise. What can you offer in the following topics areas?


Why support a more sustainable campus?

Take the lead: talk and teach

Reduce your own impact

Support an existing project

Sign up for news updates

Email campus-postcard@mit.edu to join our low-volume updates-only mailing list. We won't publish your email address.

Other ways to find out more If you'd like to join a discussion list about campus sustainability, the generator mailing list is a good place to start. Several of the student groups have topic-specific mailing lists.

Find out more recent news about campus energy projects featured by MITei.

Read more elsewhere on this wiki about the variety of sustainability projects - the front page is a good place to start.

Want to volunteer? Questions? Concerns? Doubts? Come and chat at the weekly Green Room meetings in the Forbes Cafe, Stata Center on Tuesdays at 6pm during the semester.

Next semester, come to the MIT Generator and encourage students, staff, and faculty you know to do the same. This is a place to join a project team working on campus sustainability, or to start one of your own.

Beyond campus
Get politically active! The sooner we have strong "signals" -- from the market place and from government -- that so called "externalities" -- carbon output, waste, water use -- are not "free", the faster we will fix them. Tell your friends: write to your congress people: organize. We are leaders in our communities. We have a responsibility to act.

Who sent this postcard?

The postcard was designed and distributed by students in GreenSAP and SAVE, two student-led groups working on behavior change and campus sustainability issues. Many thanks to the MIT Energy Initiative Campus Energy Task Force for support. Printed by Red Sun Press in Boston, a worker-owned cooperative using 100% recycled paper. Distributed to every faculty and staff person on the Cambridge campus in early May 2008. To give comments or request more copies, campus-postcard@mit.edu

Content on this page written by students and faculty working on campus sustainability. Think we're missing something? Disagree? Join in! email us.





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