Penn’s Green Office Certification Program: Version 2.0 |
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April 15, 2014, Volume 60, No. 30 |
In the two years since the introduction of Penn’s Green Office Certification program, 71 offices have been certified, covering more than 1,400 employees. Of these, four offices have achieved Level 4 Green Office—the highest level—meaning they have invested a substantial amount of time, effort and, often, budget, in bringing environmentally sustainable practices into their day-to-day operations.
Penn’s Green Office Certification Program encourages campus offices to adopt environmentally sustainable practices on a daily basis. Offices represent a significant portion of the University’s energy and material use and waste production, so quite a difference can be made if offices cut down paper use, choose reusable dishware, implement composting and recycling of a wide variety of materials and take advantage of natural light, among others.
These actions and others are part of a now updated checklist of environmentally sustainable actions that count towards Green Office Certification. “Actions initially listed as innovations in our first checklist have become more commonplace, and tools once rarely used are now readily available,” said Andrea Kreiner, sustainability consultant to the Green Campus Partnership. She points out how Penn’s Managed Print program had not existed in 2011 when Green Office was launched, but now it gives offices a way to control paper and printer usage, saving money for every office signed up. As another example, she adds that “zero-waste events were unheard of,” but notes that large programs in Alumni Relations and the Wharton School are now regularly planned to skip the landfill.
Feedback on the existing Green Office Certification Program was gathered from key staff in Purchasing, IT and Transit and from a focus group of sustainability coordinators and lead staff in certified offices.
Improved actions in Green Office 2.0 will be used for new certifications, as well as offices that will apply for re-certification. View and download the new Green Office Application and Checklist from the Green Campus Partnership website, www.upenn.edu/sustainability/
For those who work in Penn’s labs, green guidelines exist for those environments too. Check out the Green Labs @ Penn Program.
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