During a visit to campus this winter, Thomas Gilbert ’96, executive director of the Highfields Center for Composting in Vermont, talked to students and local community members about building sustainable food systems. Photo: senior Eugene Cho
for most students, concern for the environment is a fact of life. “I would say the students are coming in with more awareness than they were 10 years ago,” Jane observes. Today’s Loomis Chaffee students see things like energy-efficient bulbs as realities, not concepts, she says. After all, when today’s students were toddlers, compact fluorescent lightbulbs cost $19 apiece, but by the time these students were old enough to read price tags, the bulbs cost closer to $5 apiece. And it’s not uncommon today to find CFLs for less than $2 each. Perhaps that is why students readily embrace changes such as relighting the campus and installing low-flow shower heads. “The kids are great about it, but it’s our generation that are horrible about it,” Jim says, bringing to mind a talk he heard at a conference about environmental consciousness. The speaker advocated changing behavior at the college level because the youngest generation of adults quickly accepts a more sustainable lifestyle as the norm while their parents already are set in their ways. After hearing the talk, Jim wondered why behavior couldn’t change even earlier than college — on a boarding school campus. Raising awareness of the benefits that environmentallysensitive behavior brings to a community as well as to the planet is an important part of the Sustainability Committee’s work. Toward that end, Jeff and the committee bring a guest speaker to campus every term. Pruittiporn “Pat” Kerdchoochuen ’07, a senior at Yale and the former president of Project
Green, returned to campus this fall for a public screening of the documentary Fresh and discussion of her work in sustainability at Yale. Tom Gilbert ’96 visited during the winter term. A founding member of the Center for an Agricultural Economy in Hardwick, Vermont, Tom helps lead communities in the Hardwick area in redesigning their local food system using composting. During his visit to the Island, he worked with students, met with the Sustainability Committee, made a presentation on building sustainable food systems, and spoke at an evening meeting open to the local community. He is continuing to advise the committee as well as assisting with the environmental science students’ waste management analysis. And in April, the Alliance for Climate Education is scheduled to present an all-school convocation about climate change. Members of the Sustainability Committee also want to display energy meters for the campus in a central location. The whole community, then, could see and find motivation in the kind of real-time information that Jim Yocius sees on the monitors in his office. In the not-too-distant future, committee members also hope to see LED bulbs in all outdoor lights on campus and window quilts in most buildings. Both innovations advance the argument that sustainability can enhance people’s quality of life, their advocates say. LEDs are the next wave in energyefficient lighting, Jim notes, and because they switch on to full brightness, LEDs would work well as motion-sensored
outdoor security lights in places such as parking lots. When no one is in the parking lot, the lights could stay off, cutting down on light pollution and saving energy. LEDs would use 75 percent less electricity than the existing metal halide outdoor lights. Although not on motion senors, the outdoor lights around Founders Circle have used LEDs for the last two years as a pilot program. Window quilts, retractable shades that insulate windows from the inside, improve people’s quality of life by keeping rooms warmer in the winter while also conserving energy, Riker explains. A couple of particularly drafty dormitory rooms already use window quilts, and during the conversion of Longman Studio into Longman House dormitory last summer, the school installed the insulating shades in the building’s large windows to conserve energy and keep the rooms at a comfortable temperature. At about $50 apiece, the window quilts are a significant expense for the school, James acknowledges, but he hopes the school will invest in them, particularly for the single-paned windows of the campus’ older buildings.
Deep Roots The idea of sustainability is not brand-new to the Island. After all, cows once grazed in the Meadows, and students worked
in the barn where Chaffee Hall stands today. Hay still grows in fields at the south end of campus, providing feed for a local farmer’s cattle. The cycle of soil to crop to food to compost and around again is part of the school’s heritage. Innovative energy use also has roots on the Island. A bank of solar panels installed behind the Powerhouse in 1975 helped heat water on campus until about three years ago, when the fluid that transferred the generated heat leaked out of the system. Replacing the fluid would have cost more than $50,000, Jim says, and co-gen can fully heat the campus’ domestic hot water and pool water. The thermal solar panels preheated the water, which then needed additional power to reach full temperature. The school looked into making the panels photovoltaic, Jim says, but the angle is wrong, and more than half of the height of the bank of panels is in the flood plain, which was acceptable for the thermal panels but is not safe for solar panels that make electricity. Like the solar panels, co-gen was ahead of its time when it arrived on the Island in 2004. Edward Kirk, former head of the Physical Plant Department, was the moving force behind co-gen, Jeff says. Motivated by the two-fold aim of saving the school money and doing right by the environment, Ed and former Chief Financial Officer loomischaffee.org | 29