Conservation and Recycling
Pooling resources, becoming responsible consumers and adopting smart design all add up to big savings and less of an impact on the environment.
Transportation
- Since its pilot year in 2009, the Lakeshore Shuttle has grown ridership by 69 percent to an average of 35 riders per week.
- Bike and Walk to Work Week is celebrated annually in partnership with Sheboygan County and Bonde's Quik Mart. Lakeshore has bike racks at all three campuses which were created by the welding students.
Recycling
- In 2011 Lakeshore implemented single-stream recycling. Lakeshore is also part of the College and University Recycling Coalition encouraging other colleges to start and improve their recycling operations.
- To encourage students and staff to bring reusable water bottles to campus, filtered water hydration stations were installed in the Lakeshore building in 2011.
- The Student Sustainability Club began a compost collection program with the Food Service Department and in the first nine months diverted 1,552 pounds of food from the kitchen's prep area from a landfill and have been composting it to use in their student garden.
- Lakeshore's Food Service encourages tray-less dining to save on detergents, water, and electricity use in dishwashing and uses environmentally friendly plates, cups, and utensils that break down more quickly in landfills.
Buildings and Grounds
- The college has installed energy efficient lighting from Orion Energy Systems in the Trade & Industry building while Orion's Apollo Light Pipes help illuminate Lakeshore's Flexible Training Arena, demonstrating the use of daylight in a factory setting.
- The cafeteria and atrium in Lakeshore's Lakeshore building use natural light from solar tubes to light the areas.
- In December 2010, Lakeshore transitioned to Google for its e-mail services. This move decommissioned four servers, saving approximately 17,500 kWh—or $1,200—each year and eliminated the need to cool the area which housed the servers.
- A server virtualization project resulted in a savings of just over $250,000 from server hardware purchases, $12,000 annually in electricity costs and 7,800 pounds of CO2 emissions.
- By switching 31 traditional high pressure sodium (HPS) lighting fixtures to energy efficient models using LED, induction, and fluorescent technologies, Lakeshore saved $1,747 and 11,899 kWh in a single year. This is enough energy to power the average U.S. household for one whole year (11,040 kWh).
- Lakeshore's IT department uses software to centrally shut down all Lakeshore computers at night and when campus is closed. Projected savings from this “PowerDown” initiative includes a reduction of 3,900 metric tons of CO2 and $48,927 in annual electricity.
By the numbers
- Lakeshore building: 14 solar tubes
- Motorcycle storage facility: 2 Apollo Light Pipes
- Flexible Training Arena: 17 Apollo Light Pipes
- Motion sensors are in all classrooms and conference rooms and are included in all bathroom renovations and new construction
- Sensors (such as those found in the atrium of the Lakeshore building and the cafeteria windows) detect the amount of daylight and dims fluorescent fixtures accordingly (dual lighting)
- Lakeshore purchases Energy Star and Water Sense equipment whenever possible and, as part of a Wisconsin Technical College System initiative, also constructs and renovates its facilities to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standards.