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Much like the U.S. Green Building Council brought its LEED
rating system to entire neighborhoods, the Association for the
Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) recently
launched a framework to measure sustainability efforts across
college campuses. The effort, Sustainability Tracking, Assessment
& Rating System (STARS), is in a pilot phase through the
December 2008. Version 1 is slated for Spring 2009 after AASHE
processes feedback from pilot participants.
STARS has three sections of credits, two of which are up and
running now—“Operations” and “Administration
& Finance.” Credits to address “Education and
Research” will join the mix this coming fall. These credits
seek to provide institutions with a comprehensive view of their
environmental, social, and economic performance.
Operations covers seven categories with 28 credits:
• Buildings
• Dining Services
• Energy & Climate
• Grounds
• Purchasing
• Transportation
• Materials, Recycling and Waste Minimization
Administration & Finance looks at these three via 11
credits:
• Investment
• Planning
• Sustainability Infrastructure
An online support tool is due out this spring, which will allow
higher education institutions to track information for the previous
academic year. AASHE also plans to connect greenhouse gas emissions
data from STARS with its American College & University
Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) program.
The operations section of STARS relies heavily on LEED, for both
new construction and existing structures. Certification is not
required, however, to reflect institutions that use LEED as a guide
and do not complete the full review process. Some LEED content is
replicated in other STARS categories—most notably energy,
purchasing and materials—but AASHE hopes the framework will
allow institutions to capture all sustainability efforts, even if
missed on a particular building.
Jared Silliker is an associate at The Cadmus Group, an
environmental consulting firm, and a sustainable business MBA
candidate at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle. He works
with the architecture community to encourage high performance
building designs through rigorous energy metrics, and writes for
Inhabitat.com, a sustainable design blog.
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