the green issue Continued from page 25 GoPrint saves trees Disposable water bottles are taboo When students print to public access printers, they use GoPrint Print Management, a centralized system that helps the college Just say “no” to water bottles. Thanks to the Whitman maintain a more flexible fleet of printers that use paper more sustainability Advisory Committee’s Take Back the Tap cam- efficiently. The system works like this: students get $50 in free paign, bottled water is no longer available in vending machines, printing credit each semester. Black-and-white prints are and both Whitman College and its food service, Bon Appétit, no charged at 5 cents per page, and 4.5 cents per side for double- longer sell it on campus. sided printing. Color printing is 50 cents per side. students get free black-and-white printing in December and May. When students click “Print,” a GoPrint dialogue pops up, students Whitman College Bookstore goes bagless approve their print jobs and the fee is charged against their printing credit balance. This approval system reduces aban- To reduce waste, the bookstore no longer hands out synthetic doned, unnecessary and unintended print jobs, thus saving sacks to customers. The store sells a canvas bag as a school- paper. During the fall semester of 2008, before Whitman College spirited and environmentally friendly option. Technologyservices implemented GoPrint, students printed out 868,182 pages. During the spring semester of 2012, students printed 585,760 pages, and GoPrint saved 121,900 sheets of We care for our cyclists paper. That amounts to saving about 15 trees, not to mention a whole lot of ink and toner. Whitman’s small size and abundance of sunny days make it a pedestrian and cyclist friendly campus. With more than 750 designated spaces to lock up bikes, the ratio of bike parking Advantage Whitman spaces to car parking spaces is 1.5 to 1. supporting a campus community that is crazy for bikes, the college’s outdoor Program Whitman’s tennis enthusiasts can always play under the sun – provides a technician who assists with bike maintenance and even when it’s raining. A 21-kilowatt photovoltaic solar array repair, so Whitties can keep on rollin’. resides on the roof of Whitman’s Bratton Tennis Center. Launched on sept. 1, 2009, the system produces enough energy to reduce the building’s power consumption by 20 percent. To The bike share program gets rolling see sustainability in action, visit tinyurl.com/whitmansolar to witness the solar array’s power output and carbon dioxide Penrose Library not only checks out books, it checks out bikes. reduction in real time. Whitties can check out a bright yellow bike, a helmet, a lock and a light for a day through the bike share program. security harvested abandoned bicycles around campus, and the outdoor Our buildings meet LEED standards Environmental Leadership Fund paid outdoor Program techni- cians to fix them up and give them snazzy paint jobs. Whitman insists that all new construction on campus be designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards. Buildings that meet these standards imple- My mug is your mug ment green building design, construction, operations and maintenance. The reid Campus Center, the Hall of science When Whitman students order lattes from the coffee station in addition, the Baker Ferguson Fitness Center, the Fouts Center reid Campus Center, they no longer have to be served in paper for Visual Arts and the sherwood Athletic Center were designed cups with plastic tops. In early 2012, the student group Campus and constructed to measure up to these criteria. Climate Challenge started a mug share program, which was funded by AsWC.students get $0.20 off their beverage when they use one of the blue mugs arrayed there. once they’re done, The Outhouse brings the outdoors inside students simply leave their mugs behind. The program may be expanded to more campus locations. The Environmental House was established in 1981 as part of the campus’ Interest House Community and is affectionately known by its residents as the outhouse.students living in the outhouse Education is a key focus on environmental and ecological issues by educating Whitman students about the environment. one such effort rests Campus Climate Challenge is an Associated students of in Whitman’s recycling program, spearheaded by outhouse Whitman College-sponsored club that focuses on local and residents, where members spend saturday mornings retrieving international climate change. The club seeks to spread aware- recycling from across campus. ness about climate change through education and activism. The club has participated in the distribution of compact fluorescent lightbulbs in low-income areas and has taught lessons on We get extra credit for our credits climate change in local elementary schools as part of the Cool the schools program. In 2006, students voted on the renewable Energy Initiative, which requested that the Board of Trustees increase semester tuition by $5 to invest in renewable energy through Pacific Whitman only purchases recycled paper Power’s Blue sky Program. Whitman was the first college in Washingtonstate to take part in the wind credit program, which The college uses Process Chlorine Free paper made of 100 puts money toward the development of renewable energy percent post-consumer recycled fiber. The college goes through projects. In 2010-2011, Whitman purchased approximately 35 840 cases a year, and each case uses approximately .6 trees per percent of its electricity from wind credit programs – 27 percent case, meaning in addition to saving energy and water, this choice from renewable Choice Energy in Boulder, Colo., and 8 percent of paper saves 504 trees a year. from Pacific Power. 26 Whitman Magazine
Whitman Magazine July 2012
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