Sustainability

The University Network demonstrates their commitment to sustainability

Associate Member TUN implements new green measures

By Denise Stephenson, TUN Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

After attending a Climate Project seminar this year at ACUI, I’ve been working on my training to become a certified Climate Project Trainer on Global Warming. Education, as you well know, is the key to working together to find ways to save energy and protect our resources. That being said, the following are a few things that TUN is doing this year to save energy and resources in support of this effort:

1. Saving energy with screens
   Our stellar I.T. team has written a software module that will allow us to pre-set the hours on the screens in participating institutions’ buildings to save energy. Unless participants choose otherwise based on their hours of operation, starting in fall 2007, we would like to program screens to wake up at 7 a.m. and go to sleep at 7 p.m. Again, if institutions prefer a broader range of hours, we will set screen hours according to their specifications.
2. Going paperless as much as possible
   In times past, many of our communications to participating directors have come in hard copy format. With the exception of revenue sharing checks, which obviously must be submitted in hard copy format, we will switch primarily to electronic communication with directors and all of our strategic partners, vendors, etc. to reduce paper usage. Our brochures, sales materials, etc., have also been switched to electronic in this effort. Additionally, since revenue sharing checks are typically much smaller in the summer than fall, winter and spring, we plan to combine summer checks with fall checks to reduce paper.

We are taking many other in-house measures as well. We hope you will support us in these efforts as we do our part for the environment.