Efforts to make Columbia’s campus green seem to have paid off though Barnard’s efforts lag behind, according to one organization which rates schools on their environmental programs.
The College Sustainability Report Card, which evaluates the “environmental friendliness” of colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, gave Columbia an A- and Barnard a C-. The scores were based on data collected by the report from June to August of this past year.
Overall, 15 schools earned a top mark of A-, including Stanford and four other members of the Ivy League. Among schools in New York state, Columbia was the only to earn an A-, with New York University earning a B-, and Fordham earning a C-.
The University has seen improvement on its environmental report card—it received a B in 2006 and a B+ in 2007.
“We’ve made really great strides,” said Nilda Mesa, assistant vice president of environmental stewardship at Columbia and adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs.
As much as the report underlines the University’s achievements, it also reveals hurdles to achieving campus sustainability.
“We’ve found the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings,” Mesa said, pointing out the aging infrastructure of Columbia’s buildings.
To increase green initiatives for buildings, the University is involved in a number of projects. It has just finished construction on one green building and is currently planning to build four more. Administrators are also working with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program to ensure that the buildings on the new Manhattanville campus will comply with sustainability standards.
“Each year the students coming in are more and more excited,” Mesa said of the University-wide effort. “Everyone really is pulling together.”
Attempts to bring a greater sense of environmental consciousness to dining halls include not using plastic foam and converting used cooking oil into biodiesel. Yet some other efforts, such as the recent decision to remove trays from dining halls, has met opposition.
“There are other ways of promoting green living at Columbia without making meals inconvenient,” Austin Williams, CC ’11.
Across the street, Barnard’s programs were tested for the first time.
Lisa Gamsu, vice president of administration and capital planning for Barnard, said she was unsure of the reasons for the discrepancy between the grades obtained by Columbia and Barnard.
“I don’t know (we are not that different if you think about the scale of operations), but I suspect it had something to do with the way the data was collected,” Gamsu said in an e-mail.
Last June, Barnard and Columbia both signed Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2017, a standard twice as strict as that recommended by the Kyoto Protocol. Columbia is currently taking inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions and finishing an action plan.
Although the environmental stewardship programs at Barnard and Columbia are “completely separate,” the schools are working together on PlaNYC 2030, according to Mesa.
However, neither school is near becoming carbon neutral. “We’re really grappling with how to make this happen,” Mesa said, adding that carbon neutrality is “50 years out.”
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