Beginning on Friday, September 25, LVC will be in a competition against Gettysburg College and Harrisburg Area Community College to see who can recycle the most plastic bottles and aluminum cans.  The competition will conclude on Friday, October 2.  The winning school will win $1,000.00 from Coca-Cola.  There will be numerous red and white containers placed throughout campus to collect plastic bottles and aluminum cans.  A daily tally will be displayed in the Mund College Center showing where we rank compared to the other colleges. 

Special thanks goes out to S.A.F.E. - Student Action For Earth who will be emptying these containers on a daily basis so that you can recycle more plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

We thank you in advance for your participation.  Please help LVC beat Gettysburg and HACC!

Here is a list of the buildings where these containers will be located.

As a learning institution, Lebanon Valley College embraces the goal of environmental sustainability and commits itself to efforts that will ensure sustainability for our local and global community.  To this end, the College, with the direct support of the Sustainability Task Force, will work to:

• Establish academic courses and other curricular/co-curricular programs related to sustainability.
• Foster environmental stewardship and encourage responsible consumption.
• Implement environmentally sustainable practices in our facilities, operations and capital projects.
• Raise the environmental and sustainability awareness of all members of the campus community through programs and the dissemination of information.

Tuesday, April 21

3.00 pm – 4.30 pm. Speaker for the Earth.

John Dernbach. Distinguished Professor of Law. Widener Law School.

Neidig- Garber 203.

Professor Dernbach specializes in environmental law, climate change, and sustainable development. Amongst a distinguished career, he has served as director of the Policy Office at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The Policy Office is responsible for developing and coordinating policy and regulatory initiatives for DEP, including the integration of sustainable development concepts into DEP programs. He has also held positions at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources and the American Lung Association of Michigan and joined the faculty at Widener in 1993.

Professor Dernbach has written widely on environmental law and sustainable development. He has written more than thirty articles for law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, and has authored, coauthored, or contributed chapters to eleven books. He is the editor of Agenda for a Sustainable America (Environmental Law Institute Press, January 2009) and Stumbling Toward Sustainability (Environmental Law Institute Press 2002), comprehensive assessments of U.S. sustainable development activities that include recommendations for future efforts. Professor Dernbach’s talk will concentrate on these recommendations from his new book, Agenda for a Sustainable America.

11.00 am– 1.00 pm. Think Healthy Bar and Landisville Farms. 

Landisville farms will be in the East dining hall at the Think Healthy Bar with samples of their organic produce. The Chefs will be preparing recipes for people to taste during the lunch period in this location. Landisville farms will also be handing out brochures to promote their local cooperative. The Sustainability Task Force has established LVC as a weekly drop-off point for the cooperative and hopes LVC members will drop by and consider signing up for a weekly delivery during the months of June to October.  

Wednesday, April 22 - Earth Day 

12.10 pm. Tree planting.

Come and join us at the Western end of Neidig- Garber for a ceremonial tree planting.

11.00 pm – 1.00 pm. Think Healthy Line and Landisville farms. 

As above.

12.30 – end of day. Get Down and Dirty - Recycling Display.

The students of SAFE (Student Action for the Earth) have secretly performed “Get Down and Dirty”. They performed trash diving to collect recyclable material not recycled in 3 dorms on the night of Friday April 3 (Silver, Funkhouser and Hammond) and 4 dorms on the night of Sunday April 5 (Silver, Vickroy, Mary Green and Keister). Professor Grant Taylor and the students of SAFE will be constructing a visual representation from the material around a tree in the courtyard outside Mund.

The members of Student Action For the Earth (SAFE) work to educate their peers, both on and off campus, about sustaining and promoting environmental protection and awareness. Relying heavily on public events and social interactions, SAFE strives to make the campus of Lebanon Valley College “greener” in every aspect of college life.

One such way that SAFE calls attention to sustaining our planet is through its Down N Dirty project. This event was recently held on the weekend of April 3-5. Four SAFE members, Maria Jeannette, Chase Ferrario, Amanda DeVilliers, & Heath Lettich, suited up to find out how recycling conscious the students of LVC are. Sorting through trash from the six traditional residence halls, the students pulled out whatever recyclables they could find. Over the course of the weekend, 12 full bags of recyclables were found mixed in with regular garbage.

Facilities Services incorporates many energy management techniques and strategies into daily operations and construction/renovation of College facilities

Heating and cooling

• By far the largest consumer of energy on campus is for heating and cooling buildings.  Therefore, we continually strive to implement building operational improvements that reduce energy consumption, improve building envelopes to reduce heating/cooling requirements, replace inefficient equipment with high efficiency units and design energy efficiency into all new construction and major renovations.
• Large construction projects such as the recent addition/renovation of Neidig-Garber Science Center and Stanson Hall, while not registered under the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) program, have many sustainable features in design and construction techniques.  Some examples are: energy recovery systems, high efficiency heating/cooling equipment, well insulated walls & roof, low-e insulated glass and sophisticated control systems that allow for reduced run times and better temperature control.
• Replacement of the Mary Green, Funkhouser and Silver roofs, including significant upgrade to roof insulation.
• Replacement of the old drafty windows in Mary Green with tight fitting, low-e insulated units.
• Vickroy windows will be replaced during summer 2009 with high efficiency units, thus greatly reducing the electric space heating load.
• Replacement of through wall heating/cooling units in Silver with high efficiency units.
• Replacement of the chillers that serve NGSC and Bishop Library with state-of-the-art ultra high efficiency units.  These units produce the required cooling for these building using half the electricity consumed by the old units.
• Major upgrades to the Lynch HVAC systems and controls as part of the lower level improvements.
• Upgrades to the control systems at Bishop Library and Heilman.
• Water heating systems installed in recent years as part of construction or renovation have been of the very high efficiency type.
• Numerous water coolers have been replaced in the past three years with units that consume one-third the amount of electricity.

Lighting

• Many exit signs have been replaced with LED type, which consume one-tenth the amount of electricity.  All new exit signs are specified as LED.
• LED lighting was installed in Vickroy and Silver bathrooms as part of renovations over the past two years.
• Indoor lighting is continually being upgraded to higher efficiency sources.  Older fluorescents are being replaced with newer high output units, incandescent is being replaced with fluorescent, metal halide lighting in the athletic center is being replaced with induction units, which are two times more efficient.
• Occupancy sensor lighting controls are being retrofitted and installed in new construction to reduce the on time for room lighting in many campus buildings.
• Many outdoor lights have been converted from metal halide to induction units throughout the campus.

Water conservation

• Low volume toilets and waterless urinals have replaced older high water use units in many campus building and for all new construction.  We estimate that we have reduced water consumption in the past year by over 1.5 million gallons as a result of these changes.
• All shower heads on campus are of the low flow type.
• Many restroom faucets have been replaced with automatic units that only flow while hands are in proximity to the unit.

Grounds & Athletic Fields

• Composting – During the summer of 2008 the grounds staff started composting all yard waste created via our campus landscape maintenance work.  This includes grass and shrub clippings, leaves, branches, spent flowers.  The site is located east of the gold parking lot.  Our goal is to eventually use the finished compost on our landscape beds and turf areas.  If enough compost can be generated we could offer the excess to the college community.
• IPM – Integrated pest management strategies are being used by the grounds staff for pest control on the campus turf, trees, and shrubbery.  This program has been in place for a number of years and we have seen a reduction in the amount of chemicals used for pest control on the landscape.
• Alternative fuels – We are looking at the possibility of using alternative fuel for our power equipment.  Propane and electric powered equipment are two options that are currently being investigated. 

Custodial Cleaning Activities

• Almost all of the cleaning products used by our staff are considered “green”.  Some examples are H2Orange, Alpha PH, and Accumix Stride Cleaner.
• We have recently changed our cleaning cloths to a microfiber type, which has greatly reduced the energy needed for laundering these cloths.
• All of our paper products—paper towels, toilet paper, etc.-  are a very high post-consumer recycle content.
• Trash can liners and door mats are all manufactured from recycled materials.

Laundry

• All replacement washing machines are of the very low water capacity, front loading type.  We anticipate that all older units will be replaced in the next three to four years.

Local / organic foods-- In order to meet the needs of students with special diets, Dining Services purchases vegan and gluten-free food products from the local Annville Health Food store.

Trayless initiative -- Cafeteria trays were removed from the main dining halls and the Underground locations to curtail food waste and support energy/utility savings in the dish room area. This initiative started January 5, 2009 and will run until the start of Spring Break. Analysis and feedback will be reviewed to determine effectiveness and its viability as a permanent program change.

Switchover from Styrene to Green paper products in the MDR, UG and COJ operations-- Foam products were removed from food outlets and replaced with eco friendly products such as: dessert/soup dishes, coffee cups, entrée plates and to-go containers. The goal is to utilize compostable/recyclable products that are cost-effective options for the campus community. Because this is a relatively new market there are many suppliers to whom ecologically friendly products are an ‘add on’ to their item line, and there are suppliers to whom it is more their core business, with a wider range of prices between the two. The process started on February 5, 2009 and will remain on-going throughout the Spring semester. Product lines may change throughout the semester to determine the most effective and practical approach.

The campus recycling program has been significantly improved in methods and procedures over the past year. Incorporation of the “Single Stream” approach has resulted in LVC sending 34.18 tons to recycling in a 4 month period, compared to 14.93 tons prior to the improvements to the program (a 130% increase).

The attached report outlines the improvements made in LVC's recycling.

RecyleInfo04-09 .pdf (45.32 kb)