Sandy Bauman, Sustainability Coordinator UNT Health Science Center

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Our last guest speaker was Sandy Bauman, who has served as Sustainability Coordinator at UNT Health Science Center for the past year. She spoke about what UNTHSC is doing to promote sustainability, and lessons that she has learned as a sustainability coordinator.

The Office of Sustainability, an office of one, is trying to reduce the Health Center's environmental impact while saving revenue, educating the campus, and tracking environmental impact. Bauman believes that these activities fit into UNTHSC's mission to improve "health and quality of life." Promoting sustainable practices is especially important for UNTHSC since it has run out of land and they are continuing to grow.

The university has announced a LEED silver goal for its buildings, and one of its buildings has been LEED Silver certified. They have spent a lot of time working on the "basics" like windows, light sensors, and recycling programs, and have saved over $5 million in revenue as a result. They have also incentivized green practices by giving a 20 percent parking discount to LEFE vehicles and e-pass public transit discounts. They also promote tryparkingit.com as a ride share program.

The Office of Sustainability itself has put together a campus-wide sustainability committee and has put together several sustainability initiatives of its own. It helped expand the school's recycling program to include batteries, lamps, and inkjet cartridges, funds from which helped it procure prizes for some of its other activities. The office was also responsible for a large Earth Day initiative this year. Over 5000 pounds of electronics were recycled at the event. Their food event was a zero waste event, meaning that almost none of the materials used in the meal ended up in a landfill. Some other events included green booths, a repurposing photo contest, and a faculty office spring cleaning.

Bauman shared five lessons she has learned as sustainability coordinator. First of all, one should start small and prioritize so that progress is made. Secondly, a sustainability leader needs to celebrate successes and people so that the community sees the good in sustainable practices. Since sustainability is a nascent field that requires skills sets ranging from science to marketing, an effective sustainability leader needs to be a life learner. Related to marketing, one must frame sustainability appropriately and in meaningful ways so as to not turn off potential community leaders who may see sustainability as a far left ideology. Lastly, sustainability is a collaborative field, so networking cannot be overemphasized.

Ms. Bauman's presentation was a good way to wrap up the course. A lot of the initiatives that she brought up were similar to ones that previous guest speakers had mentioned, and her lessons learned, which were really suggestions for how to be a good sustainability coordinator, were spot on.