(Photo: Chou Hall became the first academic building in the world to receive TRUE Zero Waste certification at the platinum level. Credit: Blake Marvin)Chou Hall at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business recently earned TRUE (Total Resource Use and Efficiency) Zero Waste certification at the platinum level — a first for any academic building in the world. The building had already been certified as LEED Platinum.
Facilities achieve certification through GBCI’s TRUE Zero Waste program by meeting seven minimum requirements and attaining a minimum of credit points. Those points determine the level: certified, silver, gold, or platinum. Chou Hall earned 69 out of the 70 credits that they applied for, according to the university.
Danner Doud-Martin volunteers as Haas staff lead for the Chou Hall Zero Waste Initiative in addition to her official job as the associate director of the International Business Development Program at Haas.
“For the past two years, I have acted as the liaison between all the different stakeholders who were involved in the initiative — our Chou Hall Zero Waste team, campus, Haas students, staff and faculty, vendors, sponsors,” Doud-Martin explained. She added that many people worked on the project, including a multi-disciplinary student team. Environmental Leader recently caught up with her to learn more.
What is Chou Hall?
In 2017, Haas unveiled its newest building, Connie & Kevin Chou Hall, an 80,000 square foot, six-story, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to student learning. Named after alum Kevin Chou and his wife, Connie, our largest donors, the building embodies Haas’s defining principles.
The building serves as a model for environmental sustainability at UC Berkeley and represents a critical step toward the University of California’s Zero Waste by 2020 and Carbon Neutrality by 2025 goals. Chou Hall is devoted to student learning and interaction — there are no administrative offices. Cafe Think is located on the second floor.
What prompted TRUE Zero Waste certification and LEED Platinum certification for the building?
The Haas Defining Leadership Principles and UC’s commitment to leading the academic community toward a more sustainable world are the driving force behind the quest to achieve platinum-level certification. We received LEED Platinum certification for the architectural design, construction, and functioning of the building, earning 85 points — well above the 80 points required for the platinum rating.
What was the biggest challenge during the TRUE Zero Waste certification process?
Education has and will continue to be one of the biggest challenges for us. Every semester we have new students, both from Haas and the wider UC campus, in Chou for classes. And every year we need to educate them about zero waste and Chou Hall.
In addition, we’ve focused on regular touchpoints with all our stakeholders. We can be found at a table in front of Chou Hall at the start of each semester. We talk to each student program during orientations. We email faculty to ask them to talk to their students each semester. We present new staff orientations. We are always thinking of new ways to engage people.
How did you encourage a zero waste culture?
We focus a lot on “reduce and reuse” by enabling and reinforcing these practices throughout the building. We set up reusable shipping containers for both the building’s cafe and for outside caterers. The cafe offers snacks in bulk bins and we do not sell bags of chips, bars, cookies, candy bars, gum, or anything in a package that would need to be landfilled.
We also provided reusable water bottles and reusable mugs to students to reinforce reuse and zero waste goals. Cafe Think gives a 25-cent discount on drinks ordered with a reusable container. The building has water filtration stations to refill reusable water bottles on each floor. Plastic single-use water bottles are prohibited from the thousands of events held in the building. Cafe Think provides silverware and dishware for patrons who dine in the cafe, and our staff was provided with reusable bamboo cutlery.
What does having the certifications mean for the business school?
There is a great deal of pride that this certification has brought to Haas and our campus. This motivates and drives the efforts of students, staff, faculty, vendors, and guests. We hope to serve as a role model for not only UC Berkeley but the entire UC system and beyond.
What’s next for zero waste at the building and on campus?
Chou Hall is one of four buildings that make up the Haas campus and we would like to work toward zero waste in our other three buildings. We hope that the momentum of the certification will inspire more initiatives that drive Haas closer to sustainable practices. We are working on a best practices document to share with other UC departments to adopt these programmatic successes to their facilities.
We are currently accepting submissions for the 2019 Environmental Leader Awards. Learn more and submit a project or product here.
