Green Office Spotlight - University Libraries

The Library Environmental Committee (LEC) is a group of staff that work within the Libraries to promote best practices for individual and institutional energy efficiency, savings, and sustainability through education and communication. This goal has taken us in many directions over the past decade, from advocating for zero-waste staff events to hands-on recycling quizzes. Our ongoing work generally focuses on education and gathering data on behaviors, especially with regard to how library staff deal with office waste. Our data-gathering mindset led us to what is potentially the most impactful sustainability change to the Libraries since the implementation of Green Office nearly a decade ago.

Last year, Sue Oldenburg (a founding member and former chair of LEC) noticed that some automatic faucets in the building ran for significantly longer than necessary. After bringing up this observation at an LEC meeting, we decided to speak with our Facilities department and determine if changes were possible. To back up our request for action, we did some research. Committee members gathered timings for automatic faucets across the whole the building and discovered run times ranging from 2 seconds to over 30 seconds. At the standard faucet flow rate of 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm), the longest running faucets would automatically dispense nearly 2 gallons of water each time someone washed their hands.  After a bit more hands on research, we settled on a new run time of approximately 5 seconds. For the longest running faucets, this simple change will save over a gallon of water per hand wash.

Expensive upgrades often present a complicated hurdle when pushing for sustainable changes to buildings. So, we were quite excited this approach required only time to implement changes, rather than costly upgrades to the infrastructure. After seeing LEC’s data, our Facilities Manager spoke with the Building Engineer and was able to come to an agreement to update timings on all automatic faucets in the building. These changes are still being implemented. Given the number of patrons that visit the University Library every month, we estimate these changes have the potential to cut down on faucet water usage by thousands of gallons per month once normal operations resume.

Interested in making your office more sustainable? Learn more about the Green Office program here.