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The Basics: What You
Buy and How You Clean
November/December 2007
by Carole Bass ’83, ’97MSL
Greening
a college campus is not a
one-size-fits-all proposition. In Yale’s custodial services and procurement
departments, two different approaches are on display. Call it culture vs.
systems, or “teach a man to fish” vs. “lead a horse to water.”
On the custodial side,
Bob Young is applying the scientific method. “We’re establishing a culture of
investigating being green,” Young says. “Early on, there was a big push from
the administration: 'These are the products we should buy.' I resisted that,
because my supervisors”—who report to Young and oversee the Yale custodians—“should
know why we’re buying these products. I wanted this to be an ongoing
investigation.”
| |
Custodial services
uses only recycled paper products. |
This
learn-it-from-the-bottom-up approach takes time. “It took pretty much all of
last year to do the tests and decide on what products to use, what products to
eliminate,” Young says. None of the green floor finishes that Young’s crews
tested made the cut. They simply weren’t durable enough. Nor has the department
found a non-toxic disinfectant. They’re adapting to a non-ammoniated glass
cleaner: it’s non-toxic, but it doesn’t evaporate quickly, so “you have to rub
twice as much.”
Young is happy with
the results of the year of testing. Since the summer of 2006, custodial services
has used only recycled paper products. More recently, the custodians have
adopted the non-ammoniated glass cleaner—as well as a general cleaner
that contains hydrogen peroxide, rather than solvents. They’re also testing a
mop that has a built-in supply of cleaning fluid, so it uses less water.
“You can have green products, but they
will sit on the shelf if people don’t use them,” says Young. “You’ve got to
have a green culture.”
Brenda
Naegel has a different challenge. The
procurement department’s lead person on green purchasing campus-wide, she has
been looking at these issues for five years. Nevertheless, “we haven’t made the
strides that we would like to see,” she says.
| |
Brenda Naegel in procurement has a simple
strategy: make it easy. |
“But we are going to
move forward,” Naegel promises. The biggest push at the moment is copy and
printer paper. “We asked the [Yale] community, for the last several years, to
use paper with 30 percent post-consumer recycled content,” she says. “Unfortunately,
only about 55 percent” do so. Only 1 percent use paper made entirely from post-consumer
content. The goal is to turn that 1 percent into 100 percent by the end of
2008.
Naegel has a simple
strategy: make it easy. In effect, make it the default, so that people have to
choose not to buy recycled
paper.
Cost is key. Her
department recently negotiated a price cut, making 30 percent recycled paper
slightly cheaper than virgin stock. (The 100 percent recycled has also come
down in price, but it still costs “significantly more.”) Convenience is also
crucial. On Yale’s electronic procurement system, Naegel has arranged to put
recycled paper “front and center.”
More broadly, Naegel
is undertaking a green investigation similar to the custodians' for products
and services that Yale buys in large volumes. Naegel says that suppliers vary
in their response to Yale’s inquiries. “Some of them are like, ‘We’ve got it
covered. When can we come in and do a lunch-and-learn and bring in the cupcakes
with the green icing?’ Some just don’t respond. Then there are those [who say],
‘You’re killing me. But I’m going to do it, because my other customers are
going to ask me for the same thing.’”  |
