EFS Profiles
Educating by Example: Using The Natural Step
University of Texas at Houston
Houston, Texas
Purpose: Curriculum Change, Greening the Campus, Institutional Transformation
Please note that the copyright for this profile is retained by the institution.
Some might call the University of Texas-Houston's Health Science Center a rarity. Positioned at the heart of a state riddled with water problems, where beef cattle dominate the agricultural industry, and petrochemical production emissions are literally landing on New York City -- this healthcare institution is asking the question, "Are we creating health by creating so much waste?" Brian Yeoman, the Vice President of the Office of Facilities Planning and Development, explains, "I think it's the irony that creates the tension that creates the creativity that creates the passion that creates the opportunity for us."
Supported by upper management and a highly committed team, John Porretto, the Executive Vice President of Administration and Finance, has created an opening for significant change to occur at the University of Texas, Houston's Health Science Center. After just two years of employing the principles of The Natural Step to the administration of the University's Health Science Center (HSC), the results speak for themselves. The HSC has reduced emissions by 41,000 pounds, recycled well over a million pounds of waste, and saved nearly 12,000 trees and close to five million gallons of water. They are creating a model "green" building that uses local materials, renewable energy, harvests rainwater on rooftops, and partners with the regions' Native American population to provide sustainable forest products. In addition to lowering their impact on the earth, reducing their dependence on precious resources, and increasing their operational savings, the vision is to link innovation with education -- education at all levels.
Five years ago, the Health Science Center started seeking out new ways of revitalizing and reorganizing its administration. The strategy was to focus on finding opportunities to create significant organizational change and shift the perception that the institution was top-heavy. During this time, Porretto and Yeoman were introduced to the tenets of systems thinking, organizational learning, and The Natural Step by authorities such as Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Paul Hawken, Peter Senge, and Amory Lovins. The two returned to Texas inspired, energized, and ready to use The Natural Step framework to make the HSC an ecologically sustainable operation. The Facilities Planning and Development department was the obvious place to begin.
As an administrative entity, the Facilities Planning and Development department enables research, learning, and academic enterprise to occur. Department responsibilities range from managing capital projects with combined budgets of over $5 million to replacing toilet paper rolls. Porretto and Yeoman saw both the potential for profound change to take place and the need to educate a core team of people in the principles of The Natural Step to create a shared vision. In 1997, Yeoman attended the TNS annual workshop and saw the need for someone within the department to be focused entirely on sustainability. He created the position of Sustainability Officer and hired George Bandy to fill the role. Together they began diligently working to "educate, train, and inspire every member of the University, state, country, and earth to conduct their activities in a sustainable manner."
Education and Programs
In implementing The Natural Step framework, the TNS system conditions are used as guidelines for choosing the materials and services supplied to the University. By providing campus-wide, TNS-based educational programs and creating examples of sustainability, they are helping people understand the direction the institution is headed and why. For the past two years, free workshops and seminars on The Natural Step have been available to students, faculty, and suppliers. At the HSC, their strategy underscores a fundamental educational principle "teaching people to fish rather than giving them a fish," explains George Bandy, and the strategy is capturing the interest of the students.
As a result of increasing demand, TNS education programs are offered every sixty days, instead of once a semester. When program invitations are distributed, people call and ask why they weren't invited. Sustainability is gradually being introduced into the curriculum. In the School of Public Health, sustainability concepts are being integrated into courses, and recently a vacant professorship within the school has been redirected as a faculty position for sustainability. As more and more faculty are engaged, Yeoman explains, "Those faculty members are now extending the reciprocal courtesy and allowing me to lecture in their Management Policy classes. I'm talking in their Environmental Science classes and we're presenting jointly to the community. The net is: Yes, there is some resistance, there isn't a wholesale endorsement, but there is every reason to believe that we're making progress."
Working with the Supply Chain
Another necessary component of applying The Natural Step framework at the HSC is working closely with vendors to provide services rather than products. Yeoman makes the point that in today's world, "Full-service, service contracts are a revolution," and believes that the school has significant leverage with suppliers. "Our purchasing power provides an opportunity to influence the course of the market. We can move marketplace dynamics from the traditional sell-buy paradigm, where we understand price but not cost, to a cradle-to-grave paradigm, where the manufacturer owns the product and all environmental consequences for a lifetime." There is also a major educational opportunity there. By inviting vendors to TNS programs, the department is able explain the direction the University is going with their purchasing and the reasons why. The collaborative process enables the department to contract sustainable services as well as affect their vendors' internal processes. For example, at the first TNS-based training session, one vendor recognized that the boxes used to deliver his company's products were creating enormous amounts of unnecessary waste and costing it thousands of dollars a year. As a result, the company launched a trial bag delivery program, invested in bags, implemented new delivery systems, and has since instituted four more of these programs across the United States.
Building a Green Building
The construction of a Nursing and Biomedical Science Building at the HSC is offering a perfect opportunity to foster education through implementation, providing the critical link between sustainability education at the school and their facilities. The building will house the School of Nursing, Student Services, the Office of the Registrar, and the School of Allied Health in addition to serving student and faculty seminar functions. The objective is to design a facility that is a net energy producer; employs state-of-the-art green building techniques and technologies; generates operational savings; increases employee moral; and most importantly, illustrates wellness and health. For the next hundred years, this building aims to serve as a space where people walk in and feel they are in a place built for healing, caring, and nurturing.
According to UT Houston Architect Rives Taylor, "TNS was to us a very important find. It allowed us to merge not only a well-thought-out approach that had been tested and tried across the world, but also gave us a very good armature on which we could test our assumptions and understandings of everything - from how we buy things, how we use things, and also how we design things in this process." Ultimately the building will be a non-toxic workspace that includes graywater systems, a centralized recycling system, solar photovoltaic cells, daylighting features, moveable workstations, and reclaimed wood flooring. The project team aims to use "Texas materials" as often as possible and is working with Pliny Fisk and Gail Vittori, of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, to use a recycled cement mixture for the building's foundation. Fisk explains that conventional cement contributes between 9-10% of the world's carbon dioxide production, and instead will use an alternative cement type that consists almost completely of fly ash (a by-product of coal-fired power plants), that drastically reduces the carbon dioxide production, requires less material because it of its superior quality, and is made from 97% recycled material.
The Facilities Planning and Development department has launched a number of other projects and made operational changes to bring sustainable practices into the University. The largest savings so far have come as a result of varied energy conservation initiatives. Through the use of innovative procedures and advanced technologies, the school has substantially reduced its use of all heating and cooling resources, reduced current energy usage by 30%, and saved approximately $2 million a year in the process. Almost always, cost savings from such initiatives are reinvested in conservation projects, and recently helped the school secure funding for the largest installation of solar energy arrays in the Gulf Coast area. The energy system will provide a minimum of 20 kilowatts of solar power to the Nursing building and annually eliminate 65,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
As the Sustainability Officer, Bandy has lectured at Texas Southern University, Rice Prairie View, and Mississippi State University (MSU) where his presentation has inspired MSU to create their own sustainable campus. When asked to articulate his long-term goals, Bandy comments, "My dream would be that you don't even have to say sustainability, that everyone automatically understands what their role is and what their opportunities are to do the right thing as far as the environment is concerned, that it becomes just an automatic inclusion in what you do. I think at that particular point, my role at the institution would actually be complete... and I think that my dream is actually occurring."
According to Yeoman, "The Natural Step at the University of Texas Health Science Center is absolutely critical. We see it as a framework that surrounds all our activities." At UT Houston, the self-proclaimed Sustainability Dream Team is slowly but surely weaving the TNS framework into the fabric and culture of the institution. They use consensus processes to determine what they can agree on, what they can afford, and what makes sense to do. By educating and partnering with vendors, local schools, community groups, and the broader academic community, they provide every person and affiliate organization with the opportunity to learn, contribute, and practice sustainability. While likening themselves to "guerrilla fighters," their success depends on their understanding that change must happen gradually.
Sustainability Initiatives at The University of Texas - Houston Health Science Center
- using sustainable ceiling tiles made of natural perlite and no synthetic compounds
- switching from purchasing carpets to a carpet leasing program in which the manufacturer maintains the carpet and disposes of it in a sustainable manner
- replacing inefficient lights and lamps (including the 600 emergency exit signs that operate 24 hours a day 7 days a week) with more efficient ones
- retrofitting lighting ballasts by replacing electromagnetic ones with electronic ones
- obtaining a more flexible recycling vendor willing to recycle more materials, instantly reducing the University's unrecyclable paper waste by 60% and generating an additional 318,000 pounds of recyclable paper waste, in just one year
- instituting an office waste reduction program that evaluates and strategically reduces waste poundage based on the University's average daily, monthly, and annual landfill contributions
- implementing a hazardous waste reduction program that reviews all experimental protocols for their waste generation potential, employs benign alternatives whenever possible, stores any radioactive waste for decay, neutralizes acids and bases, sterilizes infectious waste material, affords significant cost savings, and is a highly successful model used in other school systems
- employing an integrated pest management contractor to minimize pesticide use on campus and instead use techniques such as planting baiting systems and interrupting breeding cycles
- contracting landscaping services to use compost waste as fertilizer in targeted areas and plants that require less water
[Editor's note: Profile written by Jill Rosenblum of The Natural Step/US. Used with permission.]
University of Texas Health Science Center Installs PV Systems
HOUSTON, TX - The University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHHSC) in Houston recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its two newest photovoltaic renewable energy production systems.?
During the last five years, the UTHHSC campus has reduced its steam consumption by 45% and chilled water usage by 30%. The cost savings achieved through energy efficiency measures have been used to implement renewable energy projects. The UTHHSC installed its first rooftop photovoltaic system (24 kW) at 7000 Fannin Street Facility on September 16, 1998. This system has produced 78,300 kWh of electricity during the last two years. Another 24 kW photovoltaic system has also recently been installed, as well as a wall-mounted awning 7.0 kW system. This project will be the largest installation of photovoltaic system in the Houston and the Gulf coast area.?
The University is anticipating that Phase II will produce 35,000 kWh annually of electricity, and the awning system will produce nearly 10,000 kWh per year. The combined system output will be nearly 80,000 kWh per year after the completion of the above two systems.
All three projects have received or are in the process of receiving grants from Department of Energy Sponsored Utility Photovoltaic Group PV "Round-Up" funds. The total amount of grants received towards these three projects will be close to $75,000. The University has also received $28,000 in grants from Texas State Energy Conservation Office for the PV Phase I project. John Hoffner from CSG Inc. in Austin is the design engineer for the above projects, and Ascension Technology in Massachusetts is supplying the photovolatic materials.
From the March/April 2001 issue of Environmental Design and Construction (www.edcmag.com)
For additional information:
As a public institution, the University of Texas-Houston strives to share
its learning, innovations, successes and models as widely as possible.
One way it achieves this is by producing an annual Sustainability Report.
For more information about sustainability efforts at the University or
to obtain a Sustainability Report, call 713-500-3415 or write to gbandy@admin4.hsc.uth.tmc.edu.
University
of Texas at Houston Sustainability Page
© 2005 Second Nature, Inc.
