Allegheny College

College Sustainability Report Card 2010

In 2006, President Cook formed the Taskforce for Environmental Responsibility, which, since its inception, has guided the college through the process of signing the Presidents Climate Commitment, becoming an early partner of the Clinton Climate Initiative, and hiring the school’s first sustainability coordinator in the fall of 2008. Allegheny established a green cleaning policy in early 2009.

Allegheny plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020. A series of energy- and water-saving retrofits have yielded a 9 percent reduction in the campus’s energy consumption. Geothermal heating and cooling systems operate in two campus buildings and the college purchases 15 percent of its energy in the form of renewable energy credits.

The college dedicates 40 percent of its food budget to local foods. Dining services offers sustainably caught seafood, fair trade coffee, and hormone-free pork, poultry, beef, and milk. An in-vessel composting system, which composts between 800 and 1,000 pounds of food scraps every day, also accepts the school’s biodegradable dishware.

College policy requires that all new campus buildings be certified LEED Silver, and the North Village residence facility has achieved LEED certification. The college plans to retrofit older buildings with new, energy-efficient features. The school has installed water-efficient technologies such as dual-flush toilets, waterless urinals, and low-flow faucets in many campus buildings.

Residential advisor training includes a workshop on sustainability, and the move-in team provides new students with information on composting, recycling, and energy and water use on campus. The student government has appointed an advisor on environmental initiatives and has established a Green Fund. A recent initiative of the student government class of 2010 focused on electricity use, working to secure support and funding to install more motion sensors across campus. The campaign grew to include a student pledge to turn off unneeded lights and to adopt a room besides their own to monitor.

Allegheny recently closed the central campus to vehicle traffic, adding to a network of roads reserved exclusively for pedestrian and bike use. A partnership between the student government and local transit authority led to the addition of a student-tailored free bus route with stops throughout campus and downtown.

The college makes a list of all holdings available at the investment office to all members of the school community. A list of votes cast on proxy resolutions on a company-specific level is available at the investment office to the public.

The college aims to optimize investment return and is exploring, but not currently invested in, renewable energy funds or similar investment vehicles.

The college provides its investment managers with general guidelines that determine its proxy votes.