Sustainability

Short Summary

Many of the college’s recent and current building projects have met high standards for environmental sustainability, including Alumnae Hall (LEED Gold) and Whitin Observatory (LEED Silver). The Pendleton West renovation is on track to earn LEED Gold. The college adopted Green Building Standards in 2014 which recommend LEED Gold (minimum) for future building projects. Improving the sustainability of buildings not included in the current Campus Renewal plan will be challenging. These buildings share two critical issues: a lack of individual building metering and a large backlog of deferred maintenance. Without metering it is difficult to track energy and water consumption. Without strongly addressing the deferred maintenance backlog, the college struggles to catch up on maintenance at the same time as it attempts to keep buildings functioning. The result is a costly waste of energy, time, and personnel power. The crucial challenge is to balance catching up on the maintenance of its buildings and their infrastructure with keeping up with predictable repairs to building systems.

What We've Done

Future Goals

Short Summary

One of the most pressing global challenges that Wellesley students will face in the twenty-first century is global climate change. Wellesley College has and will contribute to efforts to address climate change through its activities as an educational institution: the courses and programs we offer, our faculty’s research, and the work of our students and alumnae will be our most important contributions to addressing climate change. The college also aims to align its institutional practices with these efforts. Building on Wellesley College’s long-standing commitment to global leadership, energy efficiency, environmental responsibility, and financial stewardship, this plan proposes that the college adopt goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 37% by 2026 and 44% by 2036 from a 2010 baseline. These targets should be re-assessed at least every five years, and long-term planning for achieving carbon neutrality should be pursued.

What We've Done

Future Goals

Short Summary

Our vision for sustainable dining is to maximize the percentage of food purchases from sustainable sources, so that we are able to serve nutritious and tasty meals with low energy and water footprints; and to produce little to no food and non-food waste. Toward that vision, we have set four general goals: 1) create a system for data collection; 2) increase the sustainability of food and utensil purchases, 3) decrease overall purchases and waste generation, and 4) create a Food Committee to implement strategies and monitor progress. We have established criteria and gathered data to evaluate how sustainable our current practices are (e.g., a majority of seafood purchased is sustainably harvested), and we are setting goals for the future (e.g. using environmentally friendly detergents for all food services). Sustainable food is often more expensive, but decreases in waste production and eating patterns may somewhat offset increased purchasing costs.

What We've Done

Future Goals

Short Summary

Wellesley College’s beautiful landscape at the edge of Lake Waban is a resource as precious as any financial asset we own. To achieve landscape and watershed sustainability, we must intensify past efforts to make the campus a more sustainable landscape, promote sustainable and educational human interaction with the landscape, and improve our management of water resources. The College should aim to establish an ecologically sustainable campus landscape through both design and maintenance, building on the 1998 Campus Master Plan and updates. The outdoor campus environment can and should become a living laboratory by incorporating the upcoming Global Flora project; increasing academic research carried out on the soils, water, flora, and fauna the landscape contains; and improving signage in keeping with campus aesthetics to showcase the treasures it offers. Watershed management can be enhanced through improved monitoring; finding an alternative to potable water for the Silver Thread and Paramecium Pond; modifying management of snow, ice, and stormwater; and updating irrigation systems.

What We've Done

Future Goals

Short Summary

Our vision for improving the sustainability of purchasing at Wellesley focuses on reducing high-volume purchases, such as paper products toner, and other office products, encourage re-use where possible, and establishing goals for the purchase of environmentally preferable products. For instance, in ten years we aim for 90% of office paper at the college to have at least 30% recycled content. A new Sustainable Office certification program rewards such activities. Such strategies may result in increased costs, but by reducing consumption will make those increases manageable. Waste disposal represents both a significant expense and opportunity for sustainability at the college. The first step toward this goal is carefully monitoring the college’s waste stream. In addition to smaller steps, like phasing out plastic bags and certifying zero-waste events, a comprehensive review of waste management practices will lead to long-term goals for waste diversion and recycling (which currently lag peer institutions).

What We've Done

Future Goals

Short Summary

Transportation accounts for one third of all of Wellesley's carbon emissions. The largest contributing factor, by far, is student travel to and from campus. As the College values our culturally and geographically diverse student body, student travel will remain a dominant emissions factor. The other significant emissions factors are college-funded academic travel, the college-owned fleet of ~100 vehicles, and faculty/staff commuting. We envision a three-pronged approach to reduce emissions: increasing campus awareness of transportation emissions, maximizing the efficiency of campus vehicles, and introducing systematic tracking of college-funded travel. Widespread emissions awareness facilitates alternative transportation options (e.g. carpooling to work or travel by rail to a conference). Tracking college-funded travel allows us to measure our progress over time. These strategies will align the campus community on a long-term path toward continually reducing transportation's role in Wellesley's carbon emissions.

What We've Done

Future Goals

Short Summary

The college’s wells, the source of our potable water, are located within the Charles River Basin, a highly stressed environment. The trend is for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to reduce the college’s withdrawal volume. Since 1999, the college has achieved a 39% reduction of potable water consumption. Several measures will further reduce water consumption: Installing a recirculating feed system for Paramecium Pond will constitute an additional 8% reduction in potable water reduction from the 1999 baseline. Metering all campus buildings for water will aid the implementation of water conservation measures; currently 44 out of 65 buildings are not metered. Implementing conservation measures in the campus infrastructure, such as the proper maintenance of steam traps in the heating system and low-phosphate additives in the water supply system, will also reduce consumption. A concomitant water issue is the phase-out of bottled water purchases on campus as more hydration stations that filter water and facilitate the use of refillable water bottles appear across campus. Water conservation is also an important educational issue — many students call home places where water is more scarce.

What We've Done

Future Goals

Featured Alums who have Contributed to Sustainability