Vision Statement

Imagine a Lane Community College where:

• ongoing operations result in a minimal negative impact on our natural environment.
   
• we are actively engaged in creating ways to positively impact our environment.
   
• continuous learning takes place about our impact on the environment, as a college and as individuals.
   
• sustainability is a way of thinking about everything that we do.
   
• every staff member takes personal responsibility for creating and using sustainable practices and principles in our daily work.
   
• we integrate sustainability into our relationships and the social fabric of the college.

Key objectives for sustainable operations include "meeting essential needs for jobs, food, water, energy, and sanitation while conserving and enhancing the natural resource base."[i]  Sustainable development is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."[ii] 

The Lane Community College of today must adopt sustainable practices in order to ensure a viable and thriving college for generations of students to come.

There are several areas where Lane has begun to implement sustainable practice

Sustainability group.

Environmental Curriculum.

• Energy Management, 2-year degree.Renewable Energy Technology, 2-year degree.Science Division offers many courses that cover environmental issues, including Environmental Science courses.The Green Chemistry Club provides opportunities for students to green chemistry at Lane and to learn skills that will help them improve the environmental performance of future academic and employment endeavors.The Social Sciences also offer several courses that cover environmental issues, including Environmental Politics, Introduction to Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Nature, Religion, and Ecology.
   
• A Learning Community offering, "Ecotrails: Stewardship and the Sacred Landscape," links Global Ecology with Writing 122.
   
Continuing education classes from sustainable landscaping to voluntary simplicity offer opportunities for community members to learn how to reduce their impact on the environment.

Comprehensive recycling & waste reduction program

• Lane has a comprehensive recycling program that includes paper, cardboard, metal, plastic, glass, wood, and grounds debris.  Food waste from the kitchen and sawdust from the carpenter shop are composted in an in-vessel composter. Reuse opportunities include a clothing exchange for students and a reusable office supply exchange for staff and student groups.  Leftover food from the cafeteria is donated to a local food bank.  Lane's surplus property program makes every effort to ensure that excess property is reused or recycled.  Very little material is thrown away.
   
• The recycling rate for the college was 52% in 2003/2004.

Energy conservation.

• Over the last few years Lane has implemented energy efficient technology that has saved the college approximately $600,000 annually in electricity bills. Green building and maintenance practices Use of "green" products in housekeeping activities. Reduced use of chemicals in maintenance of grounds.  Pesticide use has been reduced from 650 lbs. in 1999 to 9 lbs. in 2003.  A native landscaping project around the Science and Math building helps to restore wildlife habitat while creating a natural space that requires very limited maintenance.
   
• Converting motor pool fleet and maintenance vehicles to energy efficient & alternative energy vehicles.

Commute reduction plan

• Credit students on the main campus pay a transportation fee and receive a term bus pass as part of a cooperative plan with Lane Transit District.

Further incremental changes are under study and include:

• Shift to use of alternative energy sources, such as photovoltaic
   
• Expand native landscaping, including management of storm water runoff
   
• Adopt "green" construction practices
   
• Adopt a long-range transportation plan that encourages use of mass transit, car pooling and alternative-fuel vehicles (i.e., significantly reduces the number and proportion of single-passenger trips in gasoline-powered vehicles)
   
• Increase composting of grounds materials and food waste
   
• Set goals for increased recycling
   
• Set goals for purchase and use of supplies, equipment and furnishings that use recycled materials (e.g., furniture from recycled plastic, paper products, etc.)

However, in order to move to a truly sustainable organization, Lane needs to take a more comprehensive and transforming approach. 

Only through systems thinking will we attain true sustainability.

• We need to use our governance processes to create dialogue around transforming our organizational systems using principles of sustainability; and
   
• We need to create an environment in which students and employees are motivated to take responsibility for incorporating sustainability principles and practices into their everyday work, relationships and learning activities; sustainability must become a way of thinking, learning and doing.

[i] Doppelt, Bob. 2003. Leading Change toward Sustainability: A Change-Management Guide for Business, Government and Civil Society: Greenleaf Publishing, p. 41.

[ii] Tierney, Nancy. 2003. From the SCUP Sustainability Task Force, Sustainability: Taking the Long View: Society for College and University Planning, p. 13