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Health & Fitness

CSUSB sustainability efforts continue to conserve resources

San Bernardino, Calif. -- Water and energy conservation efforts are paying off for Cal State San Bernardino, helping the university to advance its position as one of the region’s leaders in sustainability.

rrigation, which accounts for about 80 percent of the university’s water use, has been reduced by 30 percent, and the campus’s dependence on potable water for irrigation has been reduced by 40 percent, said Tony Simpson, senior director of CSUSB Facilities Services.

These reductions are a result of the university’s installation of low-water use plants, weather-based irrigation controls and the conversion of the east side of campus irrigation to well water. The smart controls help avoid over-watering of landscaped areas, and local use of well water saves the energy and chemicals required to process and pump treated water intended for human consumption.

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The university has also reduced its water usage in offices and classrooms by 15 percent with the use of more efficient plumbing fixtures, such as pressure regulators, thermal sensors on low flow faucets, and low flow toilets and shower heads, Simpson said.

Water conservation is only one part of Cal State San Bernardino’s sustainability efforts as the university works to reduce utility costs, nonrenewable fuel consumption, greenhouse gases emissions, and to improve air quality, as mandated by the state of California and the California State University system.

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In the area of energy efficiency, CSUSB met and exceeded the CSU requirement that each campus reduce its energy use per gross square foot of built space by 30 percent, with a 37 percent reduction as of the fiscal year 2011-2012.

CSUSB has met and surpassed its conservation goals through creative engineering, more efficient equipment and fixtures, smarter scheduling and space use, and constructive behavioral shifts.

“It is especially significant that in the same period, CSUSB experienced a more than 60 percent net growth in built space between the San Bernardino and Palm Desert campuses,” said Michelle Dyck, CSUSB sustainability analyst.

The university’s investment in more energy efficient technologies may be found in the recent retrofit of the San Bernardino campus parking lot lights with new reduced wattage yet improved visibility LED (light-emitting diode) fixtures, which automatically reduce lighting in unoccupied areas and is controlled remotely with daylight schedules, saving unnecessary electricity usage, increasing the life of the units, and reducing operational and maintenance costs.

“These lights will be more directional and white rather than the yellow lighting which was produced by the high pressure sodium lights,” Simpson said. “As an added benefit, they will produce far less light pollution, which will be a great improvement for our night observing [from the Murillo Family Astronomy Observatory].”

The CSU also mandates a minimum goal of 20 percent electricity usage to be provided from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power. CSUSB has maintained this goal through its current utility providers, Shell Energy North America and Southern California Edison, and has worked to maximize on-site generation with rooftop and ground-mount photovoltaic or solar panels, providing an additional 7-8 percent of the campus’s electricity needs.

In CSUSB’s continued effort to support cleaner energy options, a 1.4 megawatt fuel cell is now operational on campus. The joint project with Southern California Edison will reduce the annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the campus by over 566 metric tons and offset nearly 25 percent of the university’s annual consumption of natural gas by allowing CSUSB to utilize waste heat from the fuel cell.

A strong solid waste management program since 1998 rounds out the university’s resource conservation strategies, exceeding the California requirement of 50 percent diversion from landfill. Cal State San Bernardino employees’ efforts to maximize materials recovery from construction and demolition, find new ways to go paperless, and a commitment to frugal and creative reuse and recycling have resulted in five straight years of better than 74 percent diversion.

These combined strategies are successfully conserving finite natural resources, reducing pollution to the atmosphere, land and waterways, decreasing the campus’s dependency on imported fossil fuels, and allowing it to reinvest annual utility cost savings into more sustainable facility infrastructure that will continue to pay off for many years to come.

For more information on Cal State San Bernardino’s sustainability efforts, please visit the Facilities Services Sustainability Web page.

For more information on Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Public Affairs at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu

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