The first weeks of May are always a hectic time around Tufts campus. As the weather gets warmer and classes end, students are busy with finals, commencement, and summer plans. At the Office of Sustainability, this means that it’s time to start helping with move-out! Every year, our goal is to promote easy, sustainable move out practices by providing donation stations across campus. Read on to learn about why and how we make sustainable move-out possible at Tufts!
Why does sustainable move-out matter?
OOS Back to School Sale 2017
By taking the time to recycle, reuse, and donate unwanted items during move-out, you can help reduce your impact on the environment by diverting items from the landfill and helping them find a new home. In 2021, we collected 9 tons of donations from students, meaning we kept 9 tons of move-out waste from going straight to the landfills!
Even better, our non-landfill disposal options help others at Tufts and beyond because almost all of the donations we receive from move out will go to students at the FIRST center, future Jumbos at our Back to School Sale this fall, or to other students and people in need of quality supplies through our other donation partnerships.
How do I donate my items?
We have three donation stations set up across campus: Haskell, Houston, and Hill Hall. Until May 25th, you can drop off gently used unneeded items at your closest donation site, where they will be sorted by our staff and prepped for donation!
Where will your donations go?
Dorm room items: sheets, blankets, fans, mirrors, etc.
This year we are excited to be partnering with Grad Bag, an organization that accepts donations from college students, cleans them, and redistributes them back to students in need.
A portion of these donations will go to incoming students supported by the FIRST Center. In this way, your donation of lightly used sheets and dorm essentials can directly make an impact on your peers.
Many of your donations will go towards our Back to School Sale, which we will be hosting this fall for the first time since the pandemic began! These items are given away for free or sold for very low prices- all proceeds go to the Office of Sustainability to help continue sustainable programming.
Unwanted clothing and textiles
We work with Bay State Textiles to reuse and repurpose unwanted fabrics and clothing items instead of letting them end up in the landfill.
Electronics
We are offering specialty recycling at each of our donation stations. Bring your batteries, ink & toner, and electronics when you donate your items. Find out more about this service here, available at select locations on campus year-round.
Crutches, Braces, and Splints
Lightly used crutches, braces, and splints will be donated to the new department of Occupational Health Services.
As the school year comes to a close and we begin the move out process, consider making your spring cleaning “green” by donating your unwanted items at one of our stations!
For a complete list of donatable and recyclable items, visit our Move Out Page.
We are proud to share that Tufts’ Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) has received the Honor Award for the Boston Society for Architecture’s 2021 Sustainable Design Awards, recognizing the SEC as an “outstanding achievement” that “demonstrates the systematic integration of sustainability.”
One of most energy efficient research buildings in the world
We sat down with the designers of the SEC, Payette (a Boston-based architecture firm), to find
out why the SEC stands out in the field of sustainable infrastructure. They told
us that from the very beginning, Tufts Operations Division, led by Barb Stein,
vice president for operations, set an explicit goal to make the SEC as energy efficient
as possible. The project team researched the best performing sustainable
buildings at the time and set a target to surpass those achievements. “Sustainability
was considered in every decision,” the team says.
Image credit: Chuck Choi
These efforts resulted in a building that uses 70% less energy than a typical lab building, which are usually energy hogs compared to other types of buildings, and is certified LEED gold. Instead of demolishing existing buildings and starting new, the project built upon Robinson Hall and Bromfield-Pearson to join them together. This reduced carbon emissions during the building process and reused a large amount of building material. The Boston Society for Architecture cited this in their comments saying, “By saving an existing historic building and renovating another building (that was originally not included in the initial client brief), the existing building likely gained another 50 years of usefulness.”
Image credit: Chuck Choi
The SEC also features:
triple glazing on windows for temperature control
a solar panel array
ample natural light
a rainwater capture system
an ethical food sourcing café
efficient heating and cooling, including a heat
recovery system that re-captures up to 72% of the building’s heat that would otherwise
be lost
Breaking Ground
Payette staff accepting the Honor Award from the Boston Society for Architecture. Clockwise form the top: Robert Pasersky, Kevin Sullivan, Diana Tsang, and Andrea Love. Image credit: Paige McWhorter.
According to Robert Pasersky, Andrea Love, and Diana Tsang of the Payette design team, this recognition from the Boston Society for Architecture provides validation for the team’s efforts and Tufts’ drive to integrate sustainability into everything they do. “This building project was not just about checking boxes to label the SEC as a sustainable building, Tufts set ambitious targets early on and the project team never lost sight of those goals,” says the Payette team.
With much more work ahead of us to reach our university sustainability
goals, Tufts is building constant momentum to make energy efficient upgrades big
and small across all campuses. With the recent opening of the ultra-efficient Joyce
Cummings Center, Tufts is accelerating its progress to achieve
carbon neutrality by 2050.
Have you heard talk recently about Tufts’ divestment plan? Are you left wondering what this all means? Discussions on divestment at Tufts have been occurring for years. From Tufts Climate Action’s first divestment campaign in 2012 and other campus groups showing support for divestment over the last decade, these efforts led to the Tufts Board of Trustees approving a sustainable investment plan for the university in February 2021.
The Office of Sustainability recently sat down with Craig Smith, Chief Investment Officer at Tufts, to learn more about this this plan, its effects on Tufts’ endowment, and get answers to common divestment questions.
Endowment? I think I heard about this on an episode of Succession….
First, let’s get some background on why Tufts invests in the first place. When donors give to Tufts, they can choose to have their money used today on immediate expenses for the university or they can donate to Tufts’ endowment.
An endowment is a collection of charitable donations that provides long-term stability to support generations of students, faculty, and researchers equitably. This is done by investing Tufts’ endowment (roughly $2.7 billion as of June 2021) in the stock market and other securities, allowing it to grow, and withdrawing a small chunk of it each year (~5%) to help pay for university expenses (as shown in the pie chart).
Ultimately, a well funded and managed endowment supports student scholarships, innovative research, new areas of growth for the university, and more. Take three minutes to better understand the value of Tufts’ endowment with this video.
So, where’s the money going?
The Tufts Investment Office is tasked with managing the university’s endowment, with direction from the Board of Trustees and an Investment Committee, to make sure that it is invested in a way that provides long-term, equitable support for all generations of Jumbos.
Right now, the endowment is invested in three categories. The smallest chunk (1%) is invested in direct holdings, which are individual stock investments that the university chooses directly.
Another 10% of is in separately managed accounts (SMAs). Tufts hires investment managers outside of the university, gives them investment goals and values, and those managers choose custom investments based on those criteria.
The largest portion of the endowment (89%) is in commingled funds. Investment managers outside of the university create funds to invest in many companies on behalf of many investors. This is, by far, the most common option available and typically the least expensive, although this is also the least customizable of the three options.
(Let’s pause to talk more about funds. Fund managers at investment firms – think Fidelity and Vanguard – gather stock in hundreds of companies to create a fund that is more stable than investing in an individual stock. Buying a fund is like buying a bag of M&M’s. You can’t walk up to the counter and ask that they remove all the brown M&M’s before you buy it…..Mars, Inc. just has too many customers to make you a special bag. Funds are similar. Many people buy into the fund so managers cannot accommodate every customer. Instead, they manage the fund independently and Tufts get a cheap and reliable investment.)
The scoop on divestment and other sustainable strategies at Tufts
Divest from direct holdings and prohibit future direct investments in 120 coal and tar sands companies with the largest reserves. (Remember, direct holdings make up 1% of the money Tufts invests and is the easiest one to customize.)
Invest $10 million to $25 million in positive impact funds related to climate change over the next five years. (More on this below)
Proactively communicate with all current and future investment managers to encourage them to integrate climate values into their investment strategy
Enhance transparency by creating a dashboard that would report on the university’s progress (The Investment Office just released the dashboard in November.)
Evaluate progress on these guidelines.
The Investment Office is tasked with carrying out these actions and the university will revisit them in 2-5 years to analyze progress and make updates to the investment plan. The RIAG guidelines also call on the university to further integrate and advance their efforts on environmental sustainability across all disciplines.
Okay, here’s the TL;DR so far. Tufts has a $2.7 billion endowment that is held in investments and is a steady financial source to support Tufts forever. It’s invested in three ways: 89% in commingled funds (the least customizable), 10% in separately managed accounts, and 1% in direct holdings (the most customizable). Tufts released in Feb. 2021 guidelines for it’s investments including divestment from coal and tar sands in direct holdings and $10-25 million in positive impact investments.
Now that you’re an endowment expert, you might be left with other questions. How important are these investments for Tufts? Why are we only divesting our direct holdings? Why are we talking about M&M’s?
Craig Smith, Chief Investment Officer
The Office of Sustainability hosted a webinar (viewable to the Tufts community) in December 2021 with Craig Smith, Chief Investment Officer at Tufts, to get into the nitty gritty of divestment, portfolio management, sustainable investing, and all those other financial buzzwords!
Q&A With Craig Smith
What impact does selling a company’s stock have on the company?
“Generally, not very much. When buying and selling stocks in the stock market the money from those transactions doesn’t go to the company. Most of the money a company raises from investors happens before being on the market and as it “goes public” (becomes listed on a stock exchange). Afterwards, when you sell a stock, you are selling it to somebody else, another investor, and so from the company’s perspective their balance sheet hasn’t changed a whole lot.
“When there is tremendous selling pressure that can push prices down temporarily, but you’re still selling the stock to someone who is buying it at that price, so it doesn’t really change things. As long as companies are making profit from what they’re doing, and certainly fossil fuel energy companies are making a profit from what they’re doing, that will allow the company to continue operating. Things that could change profit are regulations and alternative energy options. Having energy alternatives will impact how much revenue fossil fuel companies make.”
With sufficient time and a high level of commitment from Tufts, how would you achieve further divestment?
(Divestment is a pretty simple concept: selling existing investments in a particular area, in this case fossil fuel companies. In practice, it becomes more complicated.)
“It’s happening on three different levels at different paces. One is at the industry level. Companies are changing, so there will be less fossil fuel and greenhouse gas production as energy companies are making changes on their own front [to alternative energy].
“The second is around the managers that we invest in, as the [fossil fuel] decline happens in the energy space, managers will have less and less [fossil fuel investments] over time.
“And the third is managing the Tufts portfolio to reduce the exposure we have to certain investments where we have the most fossil fuel exposure. This is something we’re looking at today…in the commingled funds and looking at which of our managers make up the most of that exposure. The other thing that will bring this down over time is not making future private investments in the general fossil fuel energy space. We have not made a new private investment in this space for a few years and we will not make any moving forward.”
While Tufts has no direct holdings in the coal and tar sands companies identified in the RIAG guidelines, 0.7% of the money invested in commingled funds are still invested in these companies. You mentioned that to divest from this 0.7%, you’d have to liquidate ~20% of the holdings in the commingled funds, what is the implication of that?
(Remember the M&M analogy? With commingled funds, you can’t choose to exclude certain companies, you get whatever the fund manager decides to invest in. To exclude the 0.7% of the endowment invested in coal and tar sands companies held within some funds, Tufts would have to sell all their holdings in those funds, ~20% of the total endowment.)
“It’s hundreds of millions of dollars that we would sell from our portfolio and those are from managers that we view as best in class. So, we would expect to lose value in the portfolio.” (aka less money in the endowment for the expenses in the first pie chart above). “The bigger challenge is the secondary and tertiary effects. If we did that once and reinvested the money in other funds, there may be managers we use that may not be invested in these companies today, but may be tomorrow. It makes it really difficult to be long-term invested when you don’t know if you may have to liquidate a fund tomorrow.”
What about the fossil fuel companies that are not involved with tar sands and coal, how come we didn’t divest from them?
“That was an area of a lot of debate. There were many discussions on where to draw the line. It becomes complicated when you try to define what a fossil fuel company is – some companies do many things including fossil fuel, so you need a clear definition when making a plan. The driver around not including natural gas and oil [in the RIAG guidelines] had to do with the energy sector transition. Coal is actively coming down in usage because we have natural gas as an alternative for generating energy and heat. So that fossil fuel still has a place in the energy transition because it’s beneficial in how it’s replacing coal, which for the next few years is still a positive as there is not sufficient capacity yet in alternative energies. There was a lot of discussion around this and ultimately it was decided that natural gas was a necessary bridge to get to where we need to go.”
Does Tufts hope to increase positive impact investments over time beyond the $10-25 million in the RIAG guidelines?
(Positive impact investing is a strategy to invest in a way that furthers a social or environmental goal. The most impactful type of these are private investments – not traded publicly on the stock market – as the money goes directly to the company to help build their business. For example, Tufts could invest in a growing solar company. An investment like this helps build solar energy infrastructure, is a financial benefit, and can help lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, like natural gas.)
“I think that will definitely be what we talk about at the RIAG review in a few years. There is certainly a good case to be made for this type of investment over the long-term because it’s a growth area and as the alternative energy sector matures, there is less risk with investing in it. There are also more and more investment managers who are experienced in positive impact investing and the quality of these managers is increasing rapidly as well.”
Could money from commingled funds that contain the 0.7% of coal and tar sands companies be instead invested in positive impact investments?
“It’s not a 1 to 1 trade off. The timing of these two types of investing are different. A lot of what we’re doing in the positive impact investments are private investments because that’s where you have more impact as opposed to public investments. When you invest in the private space the money is actually going to the company and truly helps these companies develop.”
How does Tufts compare to other schools’ divestment plans? Are we running into the same problems?
“Yes, everyone is running into the same issue. The California school system has gone further, but they are also much larger with over $100 billion and so they do a lot more in that customizable SMA category, which gives them greater flexibility. But with endowments of comparable size to Tufts, everyone runs into the same issue with commingled funds. What you see in divestment announcements from other universities is around direct holdings, putting positive impact dollars to work, talking to managers they work with and trying to limit exposure that way – those are the vast majority of actions taken by universities of our size, including Tufts.”
How do we find the most up to date information about the components of Tufts’ investment portfolio?
“Our investment office dashboard is live as of November. There is additional information in an annual report (FY 2021 report coming soon!) that covers performance and allocation that is also posted on our website.”
On Monday December 13th, forty members of the Tufts community gathered in Alumnae Lounge and over Zoom to watch the Green Fund finalists pitch their project ideas (swipe through event photos and videos here.) After the final presentation event, the Green Fund selection committee deliberated and voted to award all six finalists funding for their projects!
Over the next year, the winners will implement their projects across multiple Tufts campuses in the areas of specialty recycling, waste reduction, transportation, lab procedures, and pollinator ecosystems. We’ll keep you updated on their progress on our social media and monthly newsletters.
2021-2022 Winning Projects
Medford/Somerville Campus:
Tufts Pollinator Initiative 2.0 – submitted by Nick Dorian and Jessie Thuma
Tufts Pollinator Initiative 2.0 (TPI 2.0) is a project that will build on a previous Green Fund proposal from the Tufts Pollinator Initiative. The Green Fund selection committee awarded TPI 2.0 $11,000 to enhance urban pollinator conservation by planting new pollinator gardens, training Tufts undergraduate students to become environmental educators, and to strengthen Tufts Pollinator Initiative’s research mentorship program.
Previous Green Fund support has enabled TPI to plant 2500+ square feet of pollinator habitat on campus that helped support 115+ insect species, teach hundreds of Tufts undergraduate students about urban pollinators, conduct community outreach, and earn a Bee Campus USA certification from the Xerces Society. We are excited to see what they accomplish this time around!
The Pearson Bike Rack project will install two additional bike racks next to existing racks outside of the Pearson Chemistry Building. The Green Fund committee awarded this project $6,770 for the construction and installation of the two new bike racks, opening up 14 new spots for students and faculty to park their bikes outside of Pearson.
Βy providing secure and accessible bike parking, Tufts can promote bike riding to campus, which is more sustainable, safer, and takes up less space on campus than driving. As the surrounding community improves its bike infrastructure, this project allows Tufts to keep up with the increased biking popularity. Not only is this good for the environment, but you’ll get quite a workout biking up the hill!
Efficient SciTech Autoclave – submitted by Michael Saad
SciTech Autoclave is a proposal to purchase a smaller, more efficient autoclave for the SciTech Center at Tufts. Currently, the SciTech Center has a large autoclave for sterilizing lab equipment that is highly inefficient in water and electricity usage.
The Green Fund selection committee awarded the $6,330.77 to the SciTech Autoclave team for purchase of a smaller, more efficient autoclave. The CHBE and BME departments agreed to match up to $5,500 for the purchase of the autoclave.
It is estimated that a smaller autoclave will save Tufts around $3,200 annually in electricity and water costs, and it is the hope of the project team and the Green Fund committee that results from this project will prompt other labs at Tufts to purchase more efficient equipment that will provide long-term cost savings. It is estimated that a smaller capacity autoclave will divert 50% of the current usage from the inefficient large autoclave.
Save the Fishes and Do the Dishes – submitted by Maria Brouard
With students being busy during the semester, it is popular to order takeout within a mile radius of the Boston campus and run back to lab or the library to continue studying. Save the Fishes and Do the Dishes will provide Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) students with reusable silverware kits including a spoon, fork, knife, and chopsticks to use as an alternative to single use plastic utensils. The Green Fund selection committee awarded this project $1,090 for the purchase of these kits and outreach for student education.
This project allows students to carry reusable silverware in their backpacks and to decrease the need to use and buy single-use plastic utensils when getting takeout, therefore decreasing the overall waste created by takeout food. Moreover, it can allow students to use their own utensils for events with strict COVID procedures instead of using single use plastic.
Greening Boston Mask Recycling – submitted by Erin Mooz
Grafton Mask Recycling – submitted by Nicole Swanson
The Boston Mask Recycling project will institute a mask recycling program on the Boston campus. The Green Fund selection committee awarded this project $500 for two Terracycle disposable mask recycling boxes to be placed on the Boston campus.
The Grafton Mask Recycling project will expand the existing mask recycling program on the Grafton campus. The Green Fund selection committee awarded this project $1,095 for five Terracycle disposable mask recycling boxes to be placed near entrances/exits and other highly trafficked areas on the Grafton campus.
Masks are mandatory at Tufts for the foreseeable future. Disposable masks are used very frequently on these two campuses and this project will reduce the number of masks ending up in landfill waste. Keep an eye out for these boxes popping up on campus soon!
Hope,
frustration, and urgency have all come out of COP26 along with updated
commitments to accelerate climate solutions. But how does a massive
convening of world leaders, climate activists, and global key players affect
life at Tufts?
While the consequences of climate change span across the world, students, staff, and faculty here at Tufts are researching and implementing projects to reduce waste and emissions, fight for equal access to a clean planet, and work towards national and global climate goals. Below we explain the commitments agreed upon in the Glasgow Climate Pact signed at COP26 and how these are playing out on your campus.
Science and Urgency: Nations at COP26 agreed not only to “fully embed science in the decision-making process” when it comes to climate action, but to act in accordance with the urgency that is needed to achieve the goals laid out by climate science. This includes urgency to reduce global warming as we near the 1.5 degrees Celsius global temperature rise limit.
At Tufts, there is a Sustainability Council made up of faculty, staff, and students that are working to identify climate issues that are most impactful to the Tufts community and set goals to address these issues in alignment with climate science and global climate goals. You can also hear directly from the Tufts delegation of students and faculty that attended COP26 about their observations and attitudes towards climate urgency at the conference.
Tufts delegates at the U.N. climate conference met with U.S. Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts. Photo: TuftsNow
Climate
Adaptation: Nations agreed to “reduce vulnerability, strengthen resilience
and increase the capacity of people and the planet to adapt to the impacts of
climate change.” Specifically, this includes upholding the climate adaptation
goals of the Paris Climate Agreement (signed in 2015) and committing to
tracking, communicating, and enhancing global progress on climate adaptation.
The Medford/Somerville campus community resilience building workshop held on May 3, 2018. Photo: Adam Whelchel/TNC.
Climate
Mitigation: Nations agreed to accelerate actions that reduce their
emissions and limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. These
actions include, but are not limited to, decreasing coal power and other fossil
fuels, reevaluating emissions reduction goals, annual reporting on progress
towards long-term goals, and an invitation for nations to submit long-term
strategies to reach “net zero by mid-century”.
Comparison of greenhouse gas emissions from energy use and the university vehicle fleet over a 30-year period.
Finance,
technology transfer and capacity-building for mitigation and adaptation:
Overall, the participating nations at COP26 recognized the importance of
working collaboratively, raising funds, and sharing knowledge and resources on
how best to approach climate mitigation and adaptation. They agreed to continue
discussing plans on how to collectively finance mitigation and adaptation
strategies through 2027. While action on this issue lags, these funds are
critical for Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries who
tend to experience the most severe consequences of climate change and need
adaptation strategies in place to survive.
The Fletcher School’s Climate Policy Lab (CPL) researches climate policies to evaluate their “financial mobilization, economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, and equity” in order to identify effective ways for governments to fund mitigation and adaptation strategies. The Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning graduate school is also at the forefront of researching and recommending best practices for climate solutions within the “intersection of planning, policy and social justice”.
Loss and Damage: Loss and damage refers to the effects of climate change that are difficult to avoid and includes severe consequences such as “loss of lives, livelihoods and ecosystems”. Nations at COP26 endorsed the need for more money to be provided to help minimize loss and damage and created a plan for discussions on how such funds will be used and given out.
Ways to
address loss and damage have been hotly debated in recent years and Rachel
Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School, talks about the difficulties in reaching a
consensus about loss and damage solutions in her
analysis of the COP26 outcomes.
Implementation:
Nations further refined the rules of the Paris Climate Agreement (signed in
2015) and plans to assess the implementation of the goals laid out in the
agreement.
In 2017,
President Monaco signed on to the We
Are Still In joint statement saying that, despite the federal government’s
decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the nation remains committed to
climate action and meeting its climate goals. Tufts has also signed on to a number
of climate commitments aimed at energy, waste, emissions, and much more
that are being implemented by an array of departments and student groups across
all of our campuses.
Collaboration: Nations committed to including youth, people of all genders, and indigenous communities in climate action. They also recognized the importance of nature in climate solutions and agreed to focus on both land and ocean climate action.
Many Tufts community members are working on researching and integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into their environmental work (including this UEP graduate thesis on inclusive evacuation during climate emergencies). The Tufts Office of Sustainability recently drafted a plan to address equity and justice within sustainability across all campuses. Read through the plan and leave a comment to help steer the direction of environmental justice on your campus.
P.S. There are more environmental initiatives happening on all four campuses than are listed above. We encourage you to explore the Office of Sustainability’s website for more info and to talk to your peers about the climate actions they take.
