Bates College
OP-11: Sustainable Procurement

Our 2022 Sustainability Plan, which is approved at the highest level, by the president and board of trustees, and is applied instituion-wide, provides guidance on green procurement across multiple sectors campus-wide:

Operations
Fully integrate sustainability practices into college operations.
The decisions we make running our daily operations determine how large (or
small) our environmental impact is. From the food we eat, to the water we
use, to our landscaping choices, to our recycling and waste management, the
operations of our campus offer some of the biggest opportunities for cost
savings and sustainability gains.

Procurement
1)Focus on optimizing health, utilizing resources efficiently, reduction
of waste, and minimizing costs.
2)Continue to use green products where possible and minimize single-use
items where alternatives exist.

Dining and Campus Events
Decrease the environmental impact of our dining service and campus events.
Over the last decade, Dining, Conferences and Campus Events has made
enormous gains in terms of sustainability — diverting more than 80 percent
of their waste stream away from the landfill via composting and food wastereduction measures. They have also increased their percentage of local and
organic food, and drastically reduced their number of takeout containers.
Over the next decade, the goals are:
• 30 percent reduction in packaging with a focus on plastics.

Recycling/Waste
Through a variety of education and policy initiatives, we hope to send
less material to the landfill over the coming decade.
Currently, Bates recycles roughly 30 percent of its campus waste, diverting it
from the landfill or incinerator. This is done through our single-stream recycling
program, our campus composting initiative, and our movement away from
single-use items.
• Increase recycling rates 20 percent by 2030, via sorting education,
standardized bins and signage, and a targeted phase out of single-use items.

Buildings
Create buildings that improve the overall quality of life. Increase the
energy efficiency of our built infrastructure, including adopting Energy
Use Intensity targets (how much energy a building uses per square foot),
and updating our standards for all new construction and renovation
projects. Avoid materials that contribute to human illness or exacerbate
climate change.

• Evaluate construction materials that sequester, rather than release, carbon
dioxide in their manufacture. Explore the use of structural materials like
mass timber as a replacement for steel and concrete.
• As our buildings are meant to house and shelter our students, staff, and
faculty, it is also important that they are safe and healthy spaces. It is
important to promote climate and people-friendly building products, for
the health of our community and our environment. We will work with our
contractors to exclude Red List materials, which are classified as hazardous
to human health and the larger ecosystem, as well as encouraging use of
refrigerants with low greenhouse gas warming potential.

New Buildings
• Evaluate construction materials that sequester, rather than release, carbon
dioxide in their manufacture. Explore the use of structural materials like
mass timber as a replacement for steel and concrete.
• As our buildings are meant to house and shelter our students, staff, and
faculty, it is also important that they are safe and healthy spaces. It is
important to promote climate and people-friendly building products, for
the health of our community and our environment. We will work with our
contractors to exclude Red List materials, which are classified as hazardous
to human health and the larger ecosystem, as well as encouraging use of
refrigerants with low greenhouse gas warming potential.
- Sustainability Roadmap

We use LCCA criteria for building materials, food products, paper, and electronics comprehensively. For building construction, we build to LEED Silver standards, and so are required to consider building materials with a low life cycle cost. Our new sustainability roadmap mandates that the college consider LCCA in building materials for all new construction.
Other sectors of the college, such as dining, make purchasing decisions based on LCCA for our food choices.

All new cleaning products must be Green Seal or UL ECOLOGO certified and/or Safer Choice labeled (or local equivalents for institutions outside the U.S. and Canada). Our new head of custodial services has just negotiated a new contract with a Gorham, Maine based cleaning company which uses environmentally friendly cleaning products. More info on their products here -

http://www.cleaneasier.com/sustainability

Procurement
Focus on optimizing health, utilizing resources efficiently, reduction
of waste, and minimizing costs.
• Continue to use green products where possible and minimize single-use
items where alternatives exist.
- from Sustainabiltiy Roadmap

Recycling/Waste
Through a variety of education and policy initiatives, we hope to send
less material to the landfill over the coming decade.
Currently, Bates recycles roughly 30 percent of its campus waste, diverting it
from the landfill or incinerator. This is done through our single-stream recycling
program, our campus composting initiative, and our movement away from
single-use items. • Increase recycling rates 20 percent by 2030, via sorting education,
standardized bins and signage, and a targeted phase out of single-use items.
Expand campus composting program by 2030 by 25 percent. • Education: engage first year programs, and promote a green certification
course campus-wide.
• Zero Waste Events: sponsor at least one zero waste event per year. Focus on optimizing health, utilizing resources efficiently, reduction
of waste, and minimizing costs.
• Continue to use green products where possible and minimize single-use
items where alternatives exist.
- from Sustainability Roadmap

All our new buildings are built to LEED silver equivalent, and so are constrained by the LCCA materials, as well as demo procedures and runoff policy. We take into account factors such as: global warming potential of building operation, refrigerant ozone and GHG potential, acidification of land and water sources, water purity impact, and depletion of nonrenewable energy resources. We take into account the material life cycle costs - those embedded in the material, as well as the travel involved. See also OP-3, 4, &22. In addition, we only hire AIA 2030 architectural firms for our new buildings.

From our Utility Management Plan:
Sustainable Building Practices: All future construction, remodeling, renovation and repair projects will be designed with consideration of optimum energy utilization, low life cycle operating costs and compliance with all applicable energy codes and regulations. LEED guidelines are helpful in this regard. These considerations must be integral to the process of establishing the project budget. These sustainability elements must become part of the baseline budget – not alternates. Bates Energy Manager will participate in the budgeting and design processes to help inform the design team as to the energy efficiency impacts of choices being made and to help ensure choices are made based on life-cycle costs.

Bates has committed to EPEAT devices for the majority of our new devices.

Our Dining, Conferences, and Campus Events (DCCE) department is not outsourced to a third party vendor. Internally, our DCCE department favors local suppliers and organic farms for food sourcing if cost and reliability are not prohibitive. The Dining Commons commits to choose vendors that allow for responsible disposal of discarded resources.

From the Sustainability Roadmap:
Over the last decade, Dining, Conferences and Campus Events has made
enormous gains in terms of sustainability — diverting more than 80 percent
of their waste stream away from the landfill via composting and food wastereduction measures. They have also increased their percentage of local and
organic food, and drastically reduced their number of takeout containers.
Over the next decade, the goals are:
• 30 percent reduction in packaging with a focus on plastics.
• 25 percent reduction in energy consumption through the purchase of more
energy efficient equipment.
• 25 percent reduction in food waste through education.
• To increase percentage of local and organic food where possible.

From the Sustainability Materials Flow/Dining website:
"Bates’ Dining Services has become a model of environmental stewardship and has successfully created a system that conserves both water and energy and diverts a majority (over 80%) of its waste from the solid waste stream.
Here are just some ways they do it:

- develop close relationships with local vendors such as Stonyfield Farm who are organic and also collect and recycle containers
- establish a pre-consumer food waste composting program with a farm in Lisbon, ME
- establish a post-consumer food waste program with a pig farmer in Poland, MECommunity outreach program which allows extra food portions prepared to be shared with local homeless shelters and soup kitchens
- buy local and organic products when possible including Oakhurst milk as well as fresh and local fish, meat and produce
- 3 star certified as a green restaurant since 2002. Read on at the link below:
https://www.bates.edu/news/2013/07/31/green-restaurant-association-three-star-sustainable-dining/

From the DCCE website (covid 2020 response):

"We will continue to compost pre-consumer food waste (e.g., cold kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc.) and divert cardboard/tin/glass/plastic/pre-consumer paper from the waste stream.

The biggest change is that we will no longer be sending post-consumer food waste (i.e., unconsumed food) to the pig farmer.

We will not be opening the dish room this fall and have moved to single-use serviceware. We chose a line of single-use products that are made from 100% recycled paperboard.

While these products will not be diverted from the waste stream, we are doing our best to be good environmental stewards at the forefront. As you might imagine, this was a hard decision for us to make, considering that we have been a nationally recognized leader in sustainability since 2000, but weighed against the safety of our employees, there was no other choice."

https://www.bates.edu/dining/

From the Sustainability Roadmap:

Transportation
Decrease our emissions from transportation, by both increasing the
efficiency of our vehicles and decreasing our total miles traveled.
Recent projections from Efficiency Maine suggest that one in six vehicles on
the road in the next decade will be electric. Bates’ fleet electrification will
help decrease our carbon footprint and reduce our vehicle maintenance
costs, since electric vehicles (EVs) have been shown to cost roughly 40
percent less than that of internal combustion vehicles to maintain. Fuel costs
are 50 percent less for an EV so this switch will also decrease internal fuel
costs. With decreasing EV costs and increasing state and national incentives,
we will see new opportunities in this realm in the next few years.
• With 14 charging stations on campus, Bates is a leader in EV charging
stations per capita. Bates will continue to lead in providing EV charging
for our community. New parking lot construction will include EV charging
stations and conduit infrastructure for future EV charging expansions.
• Increase our fleet efficiency through a transition to electric vehicles
where possible.

With electric vehicle ownership
expected to rise at Bates — 75% percent
of campus survey respondents are
considering or planning on the purchase
of an electric car — Bates students saw
an opportunity to give campus charging
capability an extra boost. Their work
securing grant funds for charging
stations means Bates now has 14 EV
charging stations (up from 10 in FY21).
• Support the exploration of remote working options to draw down our
commuter footprint. Our staff and faculty commuting activities account for
over 1,300 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually — which
on average is about 25 percent of our total emissions. Our experience with
COVID-19-mandated remote work beginning in 2020 has shown that a
balance of in-person and remote work can be an effective strategy.
• Create a more streamlined method to accumulate data on staff air travel.
• Work with departments to explore post-pandemic possibilities for assessing
the need for certain air travel. There may be opportunities to reduce the
need for air travel, thereby cutting carbon emissions and cost, freeing up
employee time, and reducing staff fatigue.

From our published Climate Action Plan 2010 -

"In order to meet our carbon neutrality goals. . . we will replace the boilers at Bates’ main steam plant with a biomass cogeneration systm to provide steam heat, hot water and electricity once construction begins south of Campus Avenue, a move that requires greater capacity at the steam plant. Implementing this recommendation would reduce our net GHG emissions (after RECs) more than 80 percent and its completion will define our date for achieving climate neutrality.Our on-campus central plant and infrastructure provides steam for heating and domestic hot water needs to over 80 percent of the structures on-campus. Emissions from the physical plant represent 39 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions."

"We have undertaken immediate actions to reduce our emissions including setting LEED Silver equivalent as a baseline for all new construction and purchasing almost 100% of our power from Maine renewable resources."

For Transportation, also from our published Climate Action Plan:
"Faculty and staff commuting comprises 4 percent of our GHG emissions, or 726 MTCDE. Mitigation strategies to be pursued include the following:
• work with local and regional bus services to develop stops at Bates
• create incentives for carpooling, vanpooling and local bus use
• create a Web-based tool to facilitate carpooling
• participate in Go Maine’s Commute Another Way to Work Week
• reserve desirable parking spaces for hybrids, electric vehicles and/or carpools
• encourage telecommuting and/or compressed work schedules where appropriate
• minimize the number of new parking spaces anticipated with renovations and new
construction under the Campus Facilities Master Plan
• continue to encourage local living (rental properties available to faculty and staff) to
encourage walking/bicycling to and from campus"

We also have a stated goal of supporting the electrification of our vehicle fleet, as well as promoting electric vehicle use by offering an ever-increasing number of electric vehicle charging stations. We currently have 4 Level II charging stations and roughly five electric vehicles.

Here's an excerpt from our Utility Management Plan -

"1. Increase the use of alternative fuels and technology for College owned vehicles. Examples include electric vehicles and vehicles capable of using bio-gas.
2. Encourage van-pooling
3. Provide charging stations for electric vehicles."