As part of its goals under Climate Action Plan 2.0, the Office of Sustainability has been meeting with faculty members to expand the opportunities for teaching, learning, and researching sustainability.  This has included one-on-one meetings, partnering with Penn's Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) on sustainability discussion sessions, and providing participating faculty with summer research assistants  through the Integrating Sustainability Across the Curriculum (ISAC) program.

At the close of Dr. Bethany Wiggin's spring 2013 course, Utopian Visions, students wanted to know what she was going to do for an encore.  Dr. Wiggin, Associate Professor of German in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, had used the study of German and American utopian communities to touch on wide-ranging environmental topics such as land use, resource management, public education, and political and legal enfranchisement. The course left students enthusiastic for more opportunities to develop connections between environmentalism and the humanities, but with few courses to choose from.

Enter the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities.  This new co-curricular academic fellowship engaged seven inaugural fellows in the mission "to generate local and global awareness and engagement in the emergent area of the environmental humanities." 

For the past six months, the seven 2014-2015 Fellows, Aaron Guo ('17), Allison Bart ('15), Austin Bream ('17), Jose Romero ('15), Leah Davidson ('16), Stephanie Busnelli ('16), and Tan Chan ('15), have created a blog and developed academic content around for their individual projects in Environmental Humanities.  Read their blog entries and learn more about the program at www.ppehlab.org/get-involved

Penn's Green Living certification program recognizes students for their individual efforts to live a sustainable lifestyle, awarding Gold, Silver, and Bronze level certifications and rewards from neighborhood restaurants such as Picnic and Shake Shack. Since introduced in all College Houses and Sansom Place in the fall of 2013, Green Living certifications have grown from 150 to nearly 260 certified students and staff living in College Residences.

"This growth is largely due to the program's partnership with a team of Management 100 students during fall 2014," says Emily Wei, an intern in the Penn Sustainability Office . The Wharton freshman team, also known as the "Green Team," supported the Green Living program through the development of marketing materials and strategies to expand integration into the Penn residential community.

The Green Team successfully created and implemented various marketing campaigns, relying heavily on a sophisticated use of social media. Over the span of five weeks, the Green Team's "Tip Tuesdays" and "Photo Fridays" posts on the Green Campus Partnership Facebook page reached over 22,000 people, received over 1,000 "likes" and shares, and garnered 101 new subscribers to the Green Campus Partnership page. Another marketing tool the Green Team developed is the promotional video (http://www.upenn.edu/sustainability/news/six-tips-green-living-video), which creatively presents tips on how to "live green."

The Green Team created an outdoor living display at GreenFest to promote the program and educate visitors about sustainable living.

The Green Team concluded its partnership with Green Living by providing a final report and presentation that highlighted their efforts and offered recommendations for improvement. Their marketing strategy suggestions and recommendations will be utilized in the future to further improve and expand the program.

Special thanks to Green Team members Carl Palmquist, Nicholas Marine, Carl-Oscar Gustafson, Jose Gedeon, Ivan Sanchez, Laura Gao, Suriya Sharma, and Hin Polcharoen for their hard work.

The practice of composting is growing on Penn's campus. Post-consumer food waste is collected in Houston Hall, for example, and this type of composting is also part of some offices' qualifications for the Green Office program. This spring, the collection of pre-consumer food waste will be piloted in the retail restaurants along 40th Street. Education on composting for those who do food prep at Harvest, Smokey Joe's, Greek Lady, and Hip City Veg has already begun, with plans for collection of this type of waste to begin near the end of April.

This composting program is designed to collect kitchen scraps used in food preparation and keep it out of the waste going to landfills. Penn's Facilities & Real Estate team and the Solid Waste Management Working Group estimate that this new system could reduce by 50% the number of pick-ups by solid waste haulers from the restaurants on this block, cutting costs for waste collection services and the amount of fuel used by landfill-bound trucks. Collecting food scraps in specially designed compost bins - similar to those now used in Moravian Court - puts less organic waste into the regular dumpsters, greatly reducing the opportunity for pests. 

The expansion of composting to these dining establishments fulfills part of the Climate Action Plan 2.0 commitment to extend the University's sustainability efforts to our on-campus retailers.

The SEAS Green Team hosted a Book Swap in January where faculty, staff and engineering students were encouraged to clear out and trade up on the contents of their bookshelves. Karema Seliem, Building Interiors Coordinator at SEAS, called the Book Swap a low cost, fun, and zero waste event that encouraged re-use of recreational and educational books.

The Book Swap took place in the Levine Hall Lobby and was open to everyone. Participators were able to bring their used recreational books or textbooks to our tables starting at 11:00 am. Each table was labeled by book type and Green Team volunteers were present to aid in answering questions and guiding participants. The books were free to swap until 5:00 pm. In total, an estimated 200 books were donated and about 500 books were brought to the event and swapped. According to Karima, the Green Team received very positive feedback. "In fact," she said, "People are already asking when the next Book Swap will be."

All books left after the swap were donated. Textbooks were donated to Better World Books and The Vietnam Book Drive Project. Recreational books were donated to Books Through Bars. By diverting books from landfill, our donation alone to Better World Books saved 107 gallons of water, 23 pounds of greenhouse gases, and 36 kWh of electricity. 

A renovation of the first and second floors of Vance Hall has received LEED for Commercial Interiors Silver Certification. This building, located at 3733 Spruce Street, was constructed in 1972 and houses the Wharton School's graduate education program.

Design and program elements of Vance Hall that gained LEED points towards the Silver level designation include:

• Green Power.  Through the purchase of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), we ensured that the amount of energy this building consumes over the next two years is replaced on the electric grid by renewable sources, resulting in a cleaner and more sustainable environment.
• Daylight and Views.  Vance Hall provides building occupants with a connection between indoor spaces and the outdoors through the introduction of daylight and views.  The design of the spaces allowed for 90% of the 21,000 sf project area to have access to natural daylight.
• SMaRT Certified products.  SMaRT Certification is a rating system which evaluates a product's full life cycle and effects on the global environment and economy.  By specifying products which have SMaRT Certification, we are supporting the use of sustainable products and stimulating the development of certified sustainable products.