Students help track campus commuting for national report
UW-L is much more environmentally friendly today than it was only four years ago, considering a report on its total greenhouse gas emissions.
UW-L released about 6 million fewer tons of CO2 equivalent gases into the atmosphere in 2014 than it did in 2011 — that’s equivalent to about 110 fewer households emitting CO2 over the course of a year, explains Rob Tyser, a UW-L faculty member who helped compile the report.
The report also points to transportation trends like students’ much higher use of alternative modes of transportation compared with faculty and staff. The number of bus miles students rack up in a year is about 50 times greater than that of faculty and staff.
The information was collected as part of a much larger project to track UW-L’s overall sustainability efforts from an economic, social and environmental perspective. That information was compiled for a
Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) report, which was submitted to Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in May.
Participating in STARS allows the university to compare itself to more than 700 other colleges and universities throughout the world that have received STARS ratings, improve its own sustainability and create a living laboratory for students to examine sustainability issues.
Students survey campus commuters, more
Students helped with a portion of the report measuring emissions produced when faculty, staff and students commuted to and from campus to get to work and for official business travel and other types of travel. These vehicle and motorcycle emissions accounted for about 20 percent of UW-L’s overall emissions or 7,700 metric tons of CO2 equivalent gases.
Students in Elizabeth Knowles’ business course and in Alysa Remsburg’s Environmental Sustainability course administered the survey to faculty, staff and students and then entered the data into a carbon footprint calculator, which uses standardized calculations to estimate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced. In addition to collecting useful research for campus, students learned teamwork, project organization, clear communication, data analysis and awareness of specific actions for sustainability, says Remsburg. Her course project was inspired by the STARS report, as well as a Regent’s Research, Economic Development and Innovation grant to do course-embedded research through UW-L’s
Undergraduate Research and Creativity office and the
Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning.
“We are trying to empower students with skills to make a difference with sustainability, which includes quantifying how are we doing, where our biggest problem areas are and marketing ideas for change,” says Remsburg.
To market the sustainable ideas, students created a website with
a self-guided walking tour of sustainability on campus. They also created videos to help students make choices for “green” living such as recycling, water conservation and reducing use of plastic bags.
Remsburg plans to have her students track more data for comparative purposes and work on more sustainability promotion projects next year.
The results: Students commute less; emissions are down
Overall, students total miles commuting each year was much less than staff even though they outnumber faculty and staff by a ratio of about 10 to 1. According to the report, it’s estimated that faculty and staff drove 11.2 million miles per year going to and from campus while students drove only 3.5 million miles per year.
Students also used more alternative means to get to campus. The number of miles students commuted by bus in a given year was about 50 times greater than that of faculty and staff. Students rack up about 58,000 miles of commuting by bus compared to only 1,100 for faculty and staff.
The report also measured gas emissions produced on campus from the heating plant and fleet vehicles, as well as from emissions used to generate electricity that was purchased from Xcel Energy. UW-L produced about 33,900 metric tons of CO2 equivalent gases in 2011 compared to about 31,200 in 2014. The decrease is primarily because the campus burned more natural gas and less coal in 2014 than it did in 2011, and natural gas is a much cleaner fuel. Also, the electricity UW-L gets from Xcel Energy is greener because the company is generating more of its electricity using renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power, explains Tyser.
Tracking emissions for the report provides UW-L with useful information to be more sustainable by reducing emissions, and ultimately contributing less to climate change, says Tyser.
“Since we started burning large amounts of fossil fuels about 150 years ago, CO2 levels have reached record levels, and humans are primarily responsible,” says Tyser. “Some people deny that, but that’s the clear consensus among climate scientists.”
He compares measuring CO2 emissions for STARS to tracking weight through Weight Watchers. “If you want to lose weight, you need to know your weight to begin with,” he says.
Tracking sustainability is fitting for UW-L where students have shown a commitment to sustainability through projects like the Green Fund, a special fund students voted to set up in spring 2008 for environmental-sustainability projects.
The campus has also acted sustainability through various commitments including two new buildings that both received prestigious national awards for their sustainable and energy-efficient designs — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.
For more information on campus sustainability, visit
UW-L’s sustainability website.
*The emissions report was prepared with data from various sources including Dan Sweetman, Environmental Health, Safety & Sustainability, and Alex Lueck, of Xcel Energy.
