EPS GREEN TEAM

Notes from our August 16th and 23rd Meetings

Bikes:
Two bikes have been ordered and should arrive within the next few days. Gosia will bring a few maps from the Commuterchoice office.

Fall outreach:
BBQ on Sept.18 - we should have a display at the event: poster about the program; one of the bikes and info about Departmental bikes

Green Events Series:
October: Alex has confirmed his availability
November: Jason Luke (green cleaning)
December: no presentation
February, March, April - TBD
Jay Phillips (green initiatives at FAS)
Leith Sharp (green initiatives at harvard)
April/May: Rob Gogan (recycling)

Tours
Recycling Facility: Rob Gogan hasn't got back yet about the tour;
Green Roof at 29 Garden: Gosia will try to schedule a tour for the 2nd week of Sept.

Habitat for Humanity Sale
Harvard Habitat for Humanit is holding its annual yard sale on the Science Center lawn over 4 consecutive weekend (futons, couches, dressers, kitchen tables, etc).
Sat and Sun, 8.25 and 8.27, 9-3PM
Sat and Sun, 9.1 and 9.2, 9-3PM
Sat through Tues, 9.8-9.11, 9-3PM
Sat and Sun, 9.15 and 9.16, 9-3PM

Notes from our August 9th Meeting

Bikes:
Ben will order 2 men's bikes (large and medium) and works w/ Kathlyn on the content for the website (link to Commuterchoice, safe biking routes)
Sept/Oct- good time for the welcome party to introduce the bikes and remind people of our program.

EPS Green Team website access:
We're looking into giving access to modifying the website to all of us.
Christine referred us to Paul on this and suggested that we contact the EPS IT person about this.

Green Events Series:
October: Alex (Sarah will ask him to present about Allston)
November: Jason Luke (green cleaning)
December: Jay Phillips (green initiatives at FAS)
January: Leith Sharp (green initiatives at harvard)
April/May: Rob Gogan (recycling)

Trip to a recycling facility
Sept/October - we need to coordinate the logistics w/ Rob Gogan

Notes from our August 2nd Meeting


A few ideas for Green Event Series Speakers for the Fall Semester:
Leith Sharp (Allston Development)
Jason Luke (Green Cleaning)
Nathan Gauthier (High Performance Buildings)
Katrin Scholz (Green Roofs)
GSD Faculty Member (Green Architecture in Europe)
Other ideas?

Bikes
Ben will soon place an order for 2 bikes (it takes 1 month to have them delivered) and will check with Paul about access to the Geo Museum.

Outreach, new students:
Party to introduce the bikes in September
E-mail
Information on the website (by mid-August): biking info, tips on biking trails, etc. (Ben will talk to Kathryn about the content)

Notes from our July 26th Meeting


Green Catering
Sarah, Gosia and a few FAS Eco-Citizens met with Crimson Catering to discuss various ideas to green catering events on our campus. Crimson Catering & HUDS are already  working on developing a special green menu that will be released this Fall. We also talked about including a list of green tips in their confirmation e-mails (waste reduction; recycling; trays pick-up) and about confirming the numbers of people/buckets of ice etc. before the event.

Renovation Guidelines
We should invite the building manager to one of our meetings - to talk about the guidelines and our program in general.  The guidelines are focused on: Indoor Air Quality (low VOC paints; adhesives, etc.; filters for HVAC); materials (local, sustainable, renewable, recycled, salvaged); construction /demolition waste.

Green Roof, CCB
If this project goes through, we should use this opportunity to gain some hands-on experience with setting up green roof systems.

Notes from our July 12th Meeting


Mugs and Cups
We now have 10+ more mugs in the lounge area; sugar containers and biodegradable/ recyclable coffee cups.  We only need signs now to promote the use of mugs.

Bikes for EPS
Paul checkied in with Harvard's legal department about liability issues and things look promising now. We are looking into gettting 2 bikes.
Re -existing bike racks: there is no access to the rack in front of Hoffman due to construction. People don't use the ones behind the Museum cause there is no access to the building. We need to get access (just like the front entrance).

Green roof for the Hoffman-Mallincrodt Link
It has turned out that there are other roofs in CCB that are better suited for this in terms of safety (Link's roof doesn't have a parapet), visibility (Link is one of the highest structures in the area so the roof won't be seen and enjoyed by the community) and environmental benefits (Link's roof has high emissivity already now).

Hoffman Retro-Commissioning Report
Chris Trent from the FAS Energy Team met with Paul, Jason and Gosia on Thursday morning to talk about each of the recommendations put forward by DMI (the commissionning contractor).  Most of the measures they recommend are not a good fit for the building any more. For instance, because of a decrease in chilled water use, upgrading the CW system will have a very long payback now. Chris and Paul agreed that we should start by air-balancing the building.

Notes from our July 5th Meeting


Green roof for the Hoffman-Mallincrodt Link
One of the contractors got back to us with a list of questions. Once they have all this info, they will put together a project proposal for us. Gosia will meet with Mike and Jerry later today to get all the info we need (dead load available for the roof, waterproofing, etc.)

Bikes for EPS
Jason talked to Paul about this and will follow up on the information Kathryn brought - CommuterChoice subsidizing campus bikes.

Discouraging the use of disposable cups and sugar containers
Kathryn brought information about "econtainers" - not bleached, sustainable paper, biodegradable. Jason will compare the pricing with conventional cups.
More mugs: Kathryn and Sarah will ask folks to bring any spare mugs.
Sign: we will put a sign next to the mug rack to encourage the use of mugs.
Location: we will change the location of the mug rack to make it more visible& convenient and closer to the coffee machine. Jason will check with Paul and FMO.

EPS Green Renovation Guidelines:
Gosia will bring the first draft to our next meeting.

Recycled content blinds
Probably won't happen. No funding as the space will be fully retroffited and transformed into labs in a few years.

Timers or occ sensors on the fan coil units
Jason sent a request to Tom to put controls on the fan coil units so that they shut down when not needed. The controls are cheap and the payback will be very quick.

Notes from our June 28th Meeting


Wind
Jason sent a letter to Jay Phillips in support of the wind project. Because some of the FAS administrators are away this week, the final decision about the wind system will not be taken until next week.

New Projects
We prioritized the projects for the next months and here's how we divided them among ourselves:

Notes from our June 19th Meeting

Wind
Jason will draft a letter on behalf of our EPS Green Team and the EPS Department in support of the wind project and will send it to Jay Phillips and the OPR Group.

New Projects
Here's a list of projects that we brainstormed about at the meeting:
Next meeting
Thursday, June 28, 9am
Agenda:
1. Work-plan for next year; responsibilities distribution
2. Presentation about HGCI

Notes from our May 24th & 31st Meeting

Wind
It's slowly coming along. The good news is that both installation and connection/wiring costs are included in the cost estimate we were given. Aerovironment is working on image renderings. Jason will check with Paul if he's been able to discuss this project with Tony Shaw.

EPS Green Team Accomplishments,poster
We need to make a few edits to our "End-of-Year" poster. Gosia will have the new version ready before Commencement.

Student Outreach - Fall
Scott Miller suggested that we outreach to the students during the Study Card Day. Jason and Chenoweth are in charge or organizing this event. We should have a table & outreach materials there. Scott will also put us in touch with a few other EPS students who will be around next year and could be interested in joining our group. Gosia will follow-up on this.

Summer Campaigns
What are the campaigns/projects that we would like to work on throughout the summer?
Each of us will come up with a list of up to 3 projects that he/she would like to work on in the next months and we will discuss all those ideas at our next meeting.
These could be both new (e.g.weatherizing windows in Hoffman) and "maintenance" projects (to make sure that people keep doing the right thing: lighting, computers, recycling, green office supplies).

Next Meeting:
We will skip our June 7th meeting because of Commencement.
Our next meeting is then on: June 14, 9am

Notes from our May 15th Meeting


New Meeting Schedule
Starting from this week, we will be meeting on Thursdays, 9am. Same location.

Renewable Energy for Hoffman
The project proposal has finally come in and we will review it together on Thursday. It has all the information about the expected payback, electricity produced and potential rebates and grants that we could apply for. Unfortunately they didn't include the image rending of how the turbines are going to look. Gosia will follow up on this.

EPS Green Team Accomplishments poster
We reviewed our Accomplishments poster and decided to add two more sections: on the lighting and recycling infrastructure upgrades.  Gosia will bring the large (20 by 30) poster to the meeting and Sarah mentioned that we can print 11 by 17 color posters directly at EPS. If you have any comments - please send them along.

Green Cleaning Supplies
Philip Alvarado has confirmed that 90% of our cleaning products are environmentally friendly.

Plans for the summer & next year
We need to strategize for the summer and for the next year. What are the projects that we would like to work on? Who are the speakers we could invite to our next year's green event series? How to engage new students in the fall? These are some of the things that we will be discussing on Thursday.

Notes from our May 1st Meeting


Wind for Hoffman
No updates yet... Gosia e-mailed Jeff Wright last week and he hasn't got back to us with the proposal yet. We may want to e-mail his assistant too. Gosia will do it later this week.

Friday, May 4th Event
Meredith is working on our trophy and it should be ready for Friday. We will attach a small engraved plaque to the wooden base.

Recycling
According to Philip Alvarado's weekly reports we're doing very well with recycling. Last week, two people moved out from their office and recycled large amounts of their paper waste. This will help us boost our recycling rates even higher!

Double-Sided Copying and Recycling Quiz
Gosia has added your comments to our posters. Phoebe had a great idea to print them on 100% recycled, scrap paper. We will send double-sided copying guidelines and also the content of the quiz by e-mail  - from the EPS Green Team account.

Bi-weekly meetings
Sarah suggested that we meet every 2nd week. If anything important and urgent comes up, we will keep our weekly meetings.

Summer Projects
Back to AC units. There are a close to 200 of them at EPS and it might make sense to upgrade the HVAC system and switch to chilled water. Gosia will talk with the FAS Energy Team about measuring their energy consumption.

Monthly update on our Energy Consumption
It's going up again. We're doing well with cooling and electrcity, but heating killed us last month. This may be due to the cold weather in March/April - and as our data is not normalized, it doesn't reflect that...

Notes from our April 24th Meeting


Wind Energy for Hoffman
We met with the sales rep from Aerovironment on Thursday, April 19th to discuss their wind assessment for Hoffman. Wind looks much more promising than solar. We could put 6 small wind turbines on the NorthWest side of our roof, and each of them would generate more than 2000kWh per year. The payback would be just above 7 years – if we get an MTC grant. Plus we could get the Harvard Green Loan Fund. Gosia e-mailed Aerovirenment –asking them for a specific project proposal.

Energy Competition Celebration
Will be held next Friday, May 4th. Meredith Lanou, a student whom we met last week, is working on a special eco-trophy – made of recyclable materials. Gosia will touch base with her early next week to see where we are with the trophy. Sarah is going to look into ordering ice-cream.

Composting/Recycling at EPS
Based on the weekly waste/recycling audits done by our custodians – EPS is very
good with recycling and there are hardly any recyclables in our trash! This is great!
Following Rob’s presentation we talked about reviving composting but decided that for the time being we’re going to stick to recyclable plastic plates or will simply stop ordering plates – and will use 100% recycled content napkins instead.

Rob’s presentation
Rob Gogan, Harvard’s Waste and Recycling Manager, gave a truly inspiring presentation as part of the Graduate Students’ Lunch Seminar Series. He also mentioned VOC off-gasing in our elevator and encouraged us to take the stairs.

Reducing paper waste
As part of our recycling educational campaign, we will put together posters about double-sided copying/printing with instructions about how to do it.

Notes from our April 3rd Meeting

Recycling Program:
Philip has received our updated recycling form and his staff started gathering all the information on Monday. We should have the audit results by our next meeting.

Solar Contractor:
Still chasing them but not loosing hope that they will be able to come over on Friday or early next week.

Green Tour, 46 Blackstone:
Our Gree Tour is scheduled for Thursday, April 12th, 11:45 - 1pm.
We talked last week about scheduling the EPS van for pick-up, for 11:45.
Gosia will prepare the poster for the next meeting

Energy Competition:
We will hold off until next week to pick a specific time/date for our thank you event. The Competition poster in the lounge needs to get updated so Gosia will bring the new one tomorrow.

Notes from our March.27th Meeting

Recycling Program
We met with Philip Alvarado, the new Head of Custodians for Hoffman, Geo Museum and all the labs. From Monday to Friday next week, his staff will be tracking the volume of trash and recycling generated by Hoffman and will be also evaluating the percentage of recyclable items in our trash. Based on teh findings, we will roll out a special recycling educational campaign for EPS. We also discussed doing a hands-on watse audit later in the spring.

Green Cleaning
Philip has a wealth of experience with green cleaning practices and products, and will soon meet with Jason to talk about where we are now with our switch to green products in the restrooms.

Green Office Supplies
HGCI put together a list of environmentally friendly green office supplies and we will now promote them to all faculty assistants at EPS. Sarah will hand out to them a paper copy of the guidelines and we will also post them soon on-line for everyone's reference.

Notes from our March.20th Meeting

Green Event Series
The 46 Blackstone Tour will be happening on Thursday, April 12, during lunch time. We will be taking the EPS biodiesel shuttle to get there.  The Sierre Club Representative will be giving his presentation on May 8, 12-1pm.

Energy Competition
We will be having a special celebration: either wine &chese or ice-cream party. I will try to get Ben & Jerry donate ice-creams. EPS will be also getting a special trophy: a crystal globe or a bamboo bowl with a plaque.

Renewable Energy
The wind contractor will be meeting with us on April 19, 11am. The solar contractor is planning on coming to our campus next week.

Office Supplies & Paper conservation
We should have a campaign to encourage people to print less. Plus we will compile information on environmentally friendly office supplies to be distributed to all the staff/faculty assistants.

Notes from our Feb.20th Meeting


1)  Renewable energy for Hoffman:
* Solar panels &  Wind turbines

The prospects are bright for having a renewable energy system on our roof. Jason is still chasing GroSolar and Gosia e-mailed the AeroVironment sales rep about coming and doing a wind assessment for the roof. The wind technology seems to make more financial sense and with the payback twice as short as the solar panels. We only need to know how much upward wind the small turbines would catch. The MTC and NSTAR grants would cover 30-40% of the costs and hopefully, the EPS Department and the FAS Office of Physical Resources will partner to split the remaining costs.

We will miss the Feb. MTC deadline for grant applications but this will allow us to investigate more options. Especially that the wind technology is supposed to improve and get cheaper within the next 6 months.

2) Storm windows
Ben made all the measurements for the 4th floor storm windows and will be sending them along to the contractor.

3) Energy Competition
It's too early yet to celebrate, but with only one more month to go, it's very likely that Hoffman will win the energy competition! The most recent data is in and we achieved a 18-19% decrease in energy consumption in the last 5 months. The first two runner ups, Jefferson and Littauer are also doing very well but were ahead of them by at least 3%. What would we like to have installed as a prize? That this the question we may need to discuss some time soon.

4) Recycling Audit
We didn't actually talk about this&With Helen leaving Harvard and a new person taking over, it may take a while to finalize the logistics of the waste audit that we have been planning to do since September!

5) Green Cleaning
We are still in the process of switching to green cleaning products. Jason is following up on it.

6) Grad Students Seminar Series
Leith Sharp, the director of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, will give a talk entitled "The Challenge of Changing Our Institutions" on Tuesday, Feb.27. noon-1pm.

7) E-waste movie screening
The screening got rescheduled to Friday next week. Gosia has sent the updated posters to Jason who is going to post them on our EPS Green Team board.

Notes from our Jan.29th Meeting


1. St.Valentine’s Cosmetic Drive
We did it last year and it was very successful. So this year again, we will be collecting new/hardly used cosmetics and donating them to the women’s shelter.
Marcie volunteered to spearhead the campaign. In the meantime, Gosia will talk to Rob about the logistics of the campaign (when and how the cosmetics will be collected from our department) and update the website.

2. Interior Storm Window
According to DMI, contractor who worked last on year on the Hoffman’s Commissioning Report, interior storm windows may be the least of Hoffman’s problems. Because there is a number of other ventilation issues, we may not see payback from installing those windows any time soon.  However, replacing the large windows in the Faculty Lounge is still a possibility. Ben will follow up with the contractors to get a cost & payback estimate.
The FAS Energy Team will be implementing the report's recommendations in a few months, starting with the cooling fluid for the Chilled Water Loop – the project that has the highest initial costs but also a quick payback.

3. Solar Lighting Project
It seems to be totally within our reach! MTC and NSTAR are offering rebates. If everything goes well, MTC will cover all the costs of installing a 10KW system. Jason is in touch with GroSolar and will be sending them more information on the roof – so that they can put together a draft proposal.
According to the FAS Energy Team, the Hoffman roof may be undergoing a major renovation within the next 10 years. They suggested that we talk about this with Paul and mention this to GroSolar (or another contractor) so that they take it into account in the proposal.

4. Motion Sensors
Motion Sensors in the Geo Museum are different from the ones in Hoffman and it’s more complicated to change their settings (one needs a screwdriver).
Last week, Chris Trent from the FAS Energy Team showed Sarah and Jason how to change time delay and sensitivity. As there is a 15 min. or longer delay in some of the common areas on the 4th Fl. in the Geo Museum, Sarah will look into changing the settings.

5. Environmental Movie Screening
We will have a screening of 2 documentaries about exporting electronic waste to the third world countries movies at our weekly Friday pizza event, March 2nd. The movies were shown last week at the ongoing MIT Film Festival; each of them is 22 min. long.
Gosia has already contacted the organizers and CERP will have those movies for one full week: Feb 27-March.2

6. EPS Green Events Series
The student lunch seminars will be held on Mondays/Tuesdays or Fridays. Leith Sharp agreed to be our first speaker – she’s waiting to hear from us about the final schedule.

7. Energy Competition
The new posters are up. Hoffman comes 1st in the Competition with a 18.8% decrease compared to the baseline, before Littauer and Jefferson (both have achieved a 15-16% decrease).

Notes from our Jan.22nd Meeting



1. Wine & Cheese party last Friday
Great success. Approx. 30 people showed up. Sarah and Marcie, thanks once again for your help!

We may be having another party soon - the Energy Competition will end in  two months and based on the most recent data, Hoffman is the winner so far - with an average monthly energy reduction of more than 18%!

2. Interior storm windows: update from Ben about the contractors, next
steps
Ben contacted Paul from Northern Energy Services who said he'd get in touch with Nstar and seemed interested in helping out. He's been also playing phone tag with Alex from DMI who sounds like he will be helpful. He will call them again tomorrow.

3. Solar Panels project
Jerry Connors approved of our solar panel project so we can now follow up with the contractors. Jason contacted a few before but they didn't seem very responding. He also talked to the President of Gro Solar today and will be sending him some figures tomorrow.
Jason found out that the application for the 'design to build' grant for MTC is a service Gro Solar provides for a fee or on a contingency plan (which means they write the proposal and if it is accepted they complete the job).
Phoebe is going to check the MTC website to find out if there are any grant opportunities currently available and when the application deadline is.
Gosia will talk to the HGCI and HBS folks about the PV projects at HBS.

4. Green Events Series
Leith can't make it in the week of Feb.19. The seminar schedule will be finalized by the end of next week and Victor will lest us know when our kick-off presentation will be happening.

5. CFLs
Very few people responded to the e-mail Jason sent out.  It's probably because people are not using task lamps in our buildings.

6. Dual Flush Toilets
Victor and Jason tested them in a few restrooms and it seems that they don't work properly. Gosia talked to Jerry Connors and Mike Paterno and asked them to look into it.

7. Recycling bins
Sarah confirmed that the new recycling bins have arrived and have been placed around. Will be checking on two more locations in the Geo Museum soon.

8. Other
GSE students will be working this semester on changing Harvard-wide requirements for submitting Master and PhD thesis. As of now, they are all required to be single-sided. It seems to be a great initiative and is likely to have lots of support among the students.