As I've been looking through literature, I realized we might not have water conservation on the list.
Watershed protection
Soil and drainage way preservation
Porous paving
Contaminated runoff
Stormwater management
Runoff harvesting
Rainwater harvesting
Graywater systems
Blackwater treatment
Water reclamation/catchment
Indoor water conservation
Outdoor water conservation
Some of these could relate to building design, landscape, education, policy, etc., but others seem to be just about water.... so should we divide them up accordingly or just create a new category for that guy who hasn't come to class yet? ;-)
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2 comments:
I agree that these are sustainability issues, but can we link them easily to GHG emissions?
I think it's linked in that water heating is one of the largest sources of energy use and even the energy used to get the water pumped from the Ohio River, cleaned, pumped to campus and then treated at treatment facilities is significant.
Also, the Presidents Climate Commitment states:
We believe colleges and universities must exercise leadership in their communities and throughout society by modeling ways to minimize global warming emissions, and by providing the knowledge and the educated graduates to achieve climate neutrality. Campuses that address the climate challenge by reducing global warming emissions and by integrating sustainability into their curriculum will better serve their students and meet their social mandate to help create a thriving, ethical and civil society. These colleges and universities will be providing students with the knowledge and skills needed to address the critical, systemic challenges faced by the world in this new century and enable them to benefit from the economic opportunities that will arise as a result of solutions they develop.
So I believe UC should be a model for other campuses to look at sustainability more holistically, taking in to account that it's not only climate change that threatens our planet, but the depletion of natural resources (such as the 1% of usable fresh water on the planet) and the degradation of ecosystems through contaminated runoff and development, among other things.
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