February 4, 2009

Small steps can have a big impact
when the goal is greener labs

From discarded denim to “daylight harvesting,” Yale School of Medicine is working to reduce its carbon footprint and become more environmentally responsible.

Virginia Chapman oversees construction and renovation projects at the School of Medicine with an eye toward recycling usable materials and conserving energy.

With the looming threats of climate change and escalating energy costs, the concept of “sustainability” has taken on new urgency nationwide.

The School of Medicine is doing its part. During the recent renovation of Sterling Hall of Medicine, a focused sustainability initiative found creative ways to squeeze more light from the sun, divert trash from landfills and conserve water and heat.

Denim discarded in the jean manufacturing process was used to insulate the C wing. The lab casework, ceiling tiles and wall insulation came from other recycled materials, such as wheat straw board and soy-based spray foam.

Yale’s sustainability strategy began with the student-initiated Yale Green Plan in 1998. In 2002, the university’s Advisory Committee on Environmental Management proposed a set of environmental principles, and in 2005 President Richard C. Levin committed the university to reducing greenhouse gases to 43 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020.

The effectiveness of sustainability initiatives is measured by standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). But the organization doesn’t have standards for lab renovations, which made it difficult for Yale to know how its laboratory renovations compared with industry standards.

“LEED was designed for new buildings or full-building renovations, but not laboratories or smaller scaled renovations of the kind we do here at the medical school,” says Virginia Chapman, director of construction and renovation for the School of Medicine’s facilities office.

So it came as good news when work done on the third floor of SHM’s C wing in 2006 became what is believed to be the first laboratory renovation project in the nation to gain LEED gold certification. The YSM project also became an industry yardstick for other institutions to measure the effectiveness of their own sustainability initiatives.

Among the features that contributed to YSM’s LEED designation are:

• Sensors that switch lights on only when a person is in the room
• “Daylight harvesting”—adding exterior and interior windows—to maximize available light
• Recycling 85 percent of construction and demolition debris
• Lab faucets with reduced output
• Dual-flush toilets and urinals

Although these features increased the cost of the $8.2 million Sterling renovation by between 1 and 2 percent, Chapman says Yale can’t afford not to go this route. “We’re saving the university money as a byproduct of reducing carbon emissions,” she says.

Applying the lessons learned from the C wing, Sterling’s I wing first-floor renovation also received LEED gold certification. Still to come are renovations to the rest of Sterling’s I wing, the Brady Memorial Laboratory, the Hunter Building, the sixth and seventh floors of the Laboratory for Epidemiology and Public Health and the Laboratory for Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology.

—John Dillon

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