By: Katie Koenig<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data dashboards are incredibly helpful to check out what institutions are doing when it comes to energy efficiency, renewable energy, and waste diversion. Still, not every institution offers these convenient web pages, like Emerson (yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the institution doesn\u2019t publish that data, there\u2019s very little you can do to find it without petitioning for it or advocating for greater transparency. However, oftentimes, there is data that\u2019s being published and it just hasn\u2019t been collated into a single, convenient webpage or resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes, you just have to do a little bit of internet sleuthing. One way to start is by searching for more specific terms like \u201cinstitution sustainability\u201d or \u201csustainable stats.\u201d Waste diversion, energy efficiency, and carbon emissions are all specific aspects of emissions and pollution statistics that may be published individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sustainability team at Emerson publishes waste diversion statistics regularly. We have Weigh the Waste events in the Dining Hall every month to collect data on the amount of waste produced during an average dinner period, broken down by types of waste, and we publish each month\u2019s results on Instagram<\/a> as they come in. Less frequently, we also publish articles on this blog that take a look at longer-term waste trends<\/a> in the Dining Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every year, Emerson also participates in WasteNot Emerson for the intercollege recycling competition, Campus Race to Zero Waste<\/a>! Those results are also published, and you can even search \u201cWasteNot Emerson,\u201d \u201cCampus Race to Zero Waste,\u201d or even \u201cRecycleMania\u201d (the old name for the competition) if you\u2019re looking for this data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emerson also publishes sustainability data through both mandatory and voluntary reporting mechanisms. Boston\u2019s Building Emissions Reduction And Disclosure Ordinance<\/a> requires that buildings over a certain size report their energy and water usage annually. 10 of Emerson\u2019s buildings are subject to BERDO. In addition, Emerson participates in voluntary emissions reporting through Second Nature<\/a> as part of our membership in the Climate Leadership Network<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I also want to highlight certain types of sustainable certifications that colleges can get for their campuses and campus life. LEED certifications<\/a> determine the sustainability levels of buildings\u2019 construction and management, in short. Platinum is the highest rating, and the rarest to boot. You can also search for \u201ccarbon neutral\u201d colleges to see which ones have successfully reduced and offset all of their carbon emissions, making them a net zero emitter<\/a>. Second Nature is an organization that certifies this type of claim, same with the U.S. Green Building Council<\/a> for LEED certifications, so it can help to confirm these claims through third party certificates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My goal here is to demonstrate that, even when it\u2019s hard to find specific information and statistics about institutions\u2019 concrete efforts to improve their sustainability performance, that information still exists. In addition, my suggestions for search terms and examples of specific certifications should make it easier to actually find that information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I admit that it\u2019s very convenient when institutional data is collated and presented in an understandable, clear fashion, but the barrier to find it otherwise isn\u2019t as high as it may initially seem. Sometimes, a bit of Googling can go a long way!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Katie Koenig Finding Information Data dashboards are incredibly helpful to check out what institutions are doing when it comes to energy efficiency, renewable energy, and waste diversion. Still, not every institution offers these convenient web pages, like Emerson (yet). If the institution doesn\u2019t publish that data, there\u2019s very little you can do to find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3509,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-programs","tag-by-katie-koenig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1265,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Conclusion<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n