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Jenn and Anne's Excellent Adventure

Chicago, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Washington D.C.,
and Chestertown, M.D.
Clean Air-Cool Planet’s Jennifer Andrews and Anne Stephenson took the Campus Program on the road the past few weeks speaking at several conferences and meeting with key partners.  Highlights included Jennifer briefing large audiences on the new projections and solutions capabilities of the Campus Carbon Calculator™ at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s annual conference.  The conference was the Association’s best attended yet with over 1,700 registrants from over 400 colleges and universities in 48 states and 15 countries making it the largest gathering focused on campus sustainability to date in North America.

Other highlights from the trip included Anne speaking at the National Wildlife Federation’s student summit, Jennifer addressing the students from Independent Schools participating in the Green Cup Challenge, and Jenn and Anne training Honeywell engineers on the Campus Carbon Calculator.  Clean Air-Cool Planet and Honeywell have jointly designed a carbon calculation workshop for colleges and universities.  Now that the Campus Carbon Calculator is the tool of record for college and university greenhouse gas accounting the challenge is not how to get the word out, but how to stay at home! Photo: Jennifer is pictured here with Honeywell engineers and Butler University staff after a carbon calculation workshop.

The carbon intensity of our travels is not lost on us – it is difficult to talk about carbon reductions and then hop in your rental car, or on a plane,  a few hours later!  But it can also be very challenging to work on carbon reductions in isolation – we both find the conferences and speaking engagements energizing.  To hear college students speak about their commitment to solving global warming provides hope and energy on the days when this problem seems insurmountable.

A phrase that is circulating through the higher education sustainability community is that higher education might only be 3% of our country’s greenhouse gas footprint, but it is 100% of its educational footprint.  The extent to which low-carbon and sustainability literacy is being systematically integrated through the curricula at countless colleges and universities, with many more schools working toward operational greenhouse gas reductions, means that thousands of thoughtful people are graduating every year with the skills to solve global warming.  The problems are big, but the academic community engaged on solving the problems has grown tremendously over the past few years.  We are priviledged to work with these students, educators, and administrators.

The Campus Team’s new series of webinars is one way we’re cutting down on our travel carbon footprint.  But still we are flying, and driving, and eating out, and buying bottled water (gasp!)!  And unfortunately, we know just what each action means in terms of the numbers.  Is the carbon footprint of the campus team offset by the work we do, and the offsets we buy?  We think so, but we still try to make that offset as small as possible.

Our tips:
1.        We both need a lot of coffee.   When we can we make coffee in our room so we can have multiple cups before hitting the road and we at least save one extra paper cup from Starbucks (traveling with travel mugs only works when you check a bag – TSA doesn’t like reusable water bottles or travel mugs). 
2.        We go to the supermarket to eat the salad bar or buy yogurt and fruit (not the same as our local CSA but less carbon intensive than eating at a restaurant). 
3.       We ask for hybrids at the rental agency (Enterprise has them the most often).
4.        We carry recycling out of the hotel room until we find a place that will recycle (sometimes that means home.  The carbon intensity of flying with recycling may mean that throwing out is the right choice, but it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it?)
We are learning from each other about… 

• Traveling light.  Extra baggage on the airplane adds to the carbon intensity of the flight.  Jenn is good at traveling light; Anne travels with five pairs of shoes and typically cannot close her suitcase by the end of the trip.
• Planning  ahead.  Googling “vegetarian local food Indianapolis” can be the difference between a good dinner choice and a bad one.  Anne’s a little better at the research than Jenn but typically googles unrealistically and packs lists like “yoga class Indianapolis” and “best 10K runs Indianapolis.” 
• Making everything fun.  Driving around strange cities, multiple speaking engagements, and thinking too much about global warming… well… one could get a little crabby.  But we pencil in the movies or “The Daily Show”.  And one carbon indulgence a trip is okay and it turns out both of ours can be regifted and are available at the airport gift shop!  Jenn buys chick-lit novels  and exchanges them next time she’s back at the airport, Anne  buys magazines and donates them the magazine bin at the back of the plane.