The Office of Sustainability has launched a new program to help Lehigh’s offices become more sustainable. The Sustainable Office Program is a voluntary, self-guided program designed for staff to take the lead on promoting environmental practices in the workplace.
Lehigh University is committed to integrating sustainability throughout the university, including among staff. The Sustainable Office program was launched in spring 2015 to aid the university in achieving sustainability goals outlined in the 2009 Climate Commitment and the 2012 Sustainability Plan. The program is designed to engage staff on important topics, save money and resources, build a strong university community, and ensure a sustainable future for our campus.
The Sustainable Office Program consists of a checklist of practices that offices can adopt to become more sustainable. Participating offices complete as many of these actions as they see fit, with plenty of support and guidance available from the Sustainable Office team. The actions range from day-to-day (ex. “We turn off lights in unoccupied common areas”) to as-needed (ex. “We consult the Zero Waste guide when planning events”). Based on the number of actions they complete, they will receive either Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum certification. They will receive a certificate, a logo to place on their website and communications, and recognition through Lehigh’s Office of Sustainability. An office can repeat the process in order to achieve a higher level of certification.
The creation of the Sustainable Office Program was spear-headed by the Office of Sustainability and Laura Dobroski, the student assistant for the program. It was developed as a way to engage staff in sustainable practices. Variations of this program exist at over 30 other colleges and universities, and so creating the Sustainable Office Program was a matter of comparing other programs, evaluating what worked best, and tailoring the program to Lehigh. “This program has been a work in progress for the past two years” Dobroski said. “There are a lot of different structures to other schools’ programs, and we tried a number of them until we found what seemed the most simple and straightforward. Ours is being launched as a pilot program first though, so we may find that what we thought was straightforward requires many more changes to meet our offices’ needs.”
The program was launched as a pilot in January 2015, and shortly after, three offices – Athletics Business Services, the LTS Help Desk, and Lending Services – had already enthusiastically signed up to be the first offices to participate. "It's exciting to be at this stage and to see how offices are responding after all the work we've put in to developing the program" says Dobroski.
If your office is interested in pursuing certification, please visit http://sustainability.lehigh.edu/sustainableoffice for more information and to register, or email Katie Klaniecki at kak612@lehigh.edu.