Club’s energy-saving projects to begin in summer

Two projects initiated by members of the Environmental Business Club that will begin by the end of the summer could save the University thousands of dollars.\nClub member John H. King, a junior, said the project originated after he noticed an extreme amount of water coming out of a faucet at the Kelley School of Business while he washed his hands.\nSo he and junior Stony Robinson, another club member, came up with an idea to install devices on sink faucets to limit the flow of water. The devices, called aerators, will limit the flow of water that comes out of faucets to 0.5 gallons per minute, versus the current 2.2 gallons per minute, the club members said.\nOnce the aerators are installed, they will save more than 640,000 gallons of water and about $6,000 over a 10-year period, based on how much water and money IU currently uses, they said.\nUniversity engineer Jeffrey Kaden said there are good motivations to install the aerators.\n“It saves money and saves resources – two good reasons,” he said. “The aerators are consistent with the other kind of utility energy-saving projects we’ve been working on. We’re excited about participating (with the EBC), and we’ll be looking for equipment to install to get this going fairly quickly.”\nSenior Jonathan W. Greenberg, president of the EBC, said this is a great example of what the club stands for.\n“Reducing cost, and more importantly 640,000 gallons of water, will reduce energy consumption. We completely overlooked this idea, and I give a lot of credit to Stony and John for thinking of it,” Greenberg said. “It’s clever, easy to implement and really effective. I’m really happy with it.”\nKing is excited about the success of the project.\n“It’s exciting to see one of your ideas you helped develop be implemented and developed in a useful way,” he said. “We’re just going to try and find other projects that can help the business school and the University as a whole. We want to improve environmental awareness. It is a growing problem, and we want to try to find solutions to those problems.”\nNew compact fluorescent light bulbs will be installed in the Business/SPEA Library that will save 250,000 pounds of carbon dioxide and about $15,000 over 10 years. Kaden said this will probably happen before the end of the school year.\nMaking businesses more “green” is something that will be more prevalent in the future. The EBC is working toward getting a class taught through the business school about environmental business.\nJulie Kriegshaber, a sophomore business major, said business has a lot to do with the environment. \n“The class we’re talking about, what we want, would be (taught) from an economic standpoint,” Kriegshaber said. “(The class would be) really profit-based. It wouldn’t just be about collecting trash. How can your business ... change its processes and increase its profit are a lot of the practices that are green practices.”\nJohn W. Maxwell, a professor of business economics and public policy, said he might be willing to teach a class about environmental business if and when it is approved.\n“I expect the course might have basic environmental economics and otherwise focus on strategic issues businesses face today,” Maxwell said. “These types of courses are increasingly being adopted in quite a few other business schools. ... These types of issues are impacting business at an increasing rate. People should know how to deal with them.”\nGreenberg said he believes the subject of environmental business will become a pillar of an undergraduate business education.\n“Every business is faced with some crisis in this area or will be in the future,” Greenberg said. “I think any good manager would want to be prepared to deal with the environmental situation and gear their strategy going towards being sensitive to the environment. We think it will really become one of the pillars of an undergraduate business education.”