Get to Know the Green Line Extension

The new Green Line Extension (GLX) opening on December 12, 2022 supports sustainability, equity, and access.

Photo courtesy of mbta

The GLX connects areas to more accessible and reliable public transit spanning from Lechmere to College Avenue in Medford. Each new station is ADA accessibility compliant, and the extension is expected to increase ridership to more than 50,000 trips per day.

As Tufts works towards achieving carbon neutrality no later than 2050, this expanded access to public transportation will reduce Tufts carbon emissions from employees and students who commute and travel in the Boston area. Reducing the number of cars on the road also cuts down on air pollution, making Tufts campuses and local communities healthier places to live and learn.

With over 2,500 Tufts employees living in Green Line communities and thousands of students living near T stops – here are some tips for Tufts riders:

Photo courtesy of mbta

  • The Tufts Eco Map shows mbta stops near our four campuses. Locate your closest stop at go.tufts.edu/ecomap.
  • Check out our Instagram post to see restaurants, shopping, and places to visit along the new green line stops.
  • Employees and students can get mbta discounts for work and personal travel at go.tufts.edu/mbtadiscount. For employees, funds are added directly to their ebpa card.
  • New to the T? A CharlieCard is a reusable card that you can load with money and use for the subway and bus. The Office of Sustainability has free CharlieCards at their office for students to take, fill, and travel. Email us at sustainabilityoffice@tufts.edu to get a card!

We hope that you’ll join fellow Jumbos in taking the GLX and discovering more that the Boston area has to offer. And remember, every time you take a ride on the Green Line instead of driving or taking an Uber, you’re doing good for people and the planet!

Plastic is More Special Than You Think

Written by David Rivas, Specialty Recycling Intern

From switching to reusable bags at the supermarket to taking modes of transportation that produce less pollution, sustainability has become a part of our daily lives. The same is true at Tufts. As a community member on one of our four campuses, everyone has the opportunity to compost food waste at dining and residence halls, move-in and move-out sustainably, and (what I’ve been focusing on this summer) recycle unique items through our specialty recycling program.

Have you ever stared at a plastic bag or one of those Amazon shipping envelopes, wondering if you could put it in the recycling bin?

On first glance, it would seem that you should put them in a recycling bin since it often has a recycling symbol and is made of plastic. But, a closer look into Massachusetts recycling rules tells us that soft plastic should NOT be put into the regular mixed recycling stream. Traditional recycling facilities cannot handle soft items like plastic bags because they get caught and jam the machinery. But, that doesn’t mean that bag or envelope has to end up straight in the trash.

Refuse, Reduce, Reuse

Our first suggestion is to think of ways to limit the amount of items that you buy new to limit the amount of materials that you dispose of. If you already have items that you’re going to throw out – take a second to think if you can reuse said items in a new way. Maybe you use the plastic bag to line your dorm trash can instead of buying new trash bags. Or perhaps you could save the Amazon sleeve to store fragile items during move out.

Recycle, specially!

If you have accumulated more than you can reuse, you can next check if the item can avoid going to the trash and instead be composted, recycled, or specialty recycled. Specialty recycling is separate from traditional mixed recycling and allows you to recycle unique items instead of having to throw them away. Watch this video to see specialty recycling in action.

Specialty recycling bins can be easily found on your phone or computer using the Tufts Eco-Map, a user-friendly tool to find sustainability features on campus.

Tufts most common specialty recycling streams include:

  • Plastic film: Allows for soft plastics such as grocery bags, bubble wrap, plastic padded envelopes, ziploc bags, and any other type of soft plastic classified as #2 or #4 recyclable. These are made into composite lumber for benches and shipping pallets.
  • Batteries: Prevents toxic chemicals found inside batteries from being introduced to the environment and landfills. Battery terminals must be taped with clear tape (as shown) before being placed in the bins. Most buildings on our four campuses have battery recycling bins.
  • Electronics: Broken cell phones, tablets, keyboards, charging cords, earphones, and other small electronics can be placed in electronic recycling bins. For large appliances such as monitors, microwaves, and printers, you can submit a Facilities service request to have it picked up. The metals and raw materials are separated out from these items and made into new electronics.
  • Ink and toner: Empty ink and toner cartridges can be placed in a specialty recycling station or can be mailed to the manufacturer (we’ve partnered with W.B. Mason). These materials are taken apart and reused in new ink and toner cartridges.
  • Textiles and clothing: Clothing, most types of footwear, textile-based accessories, linens, and stuffed animals are accepted in textile recycling locations. On the Medford/Somerville Campus, textile recycling is made possible with the help of Bay State Textiles, which have several large outdoor donation containers.
  • Lightbulbs: Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) must be disposed of by a Facilities service request. These bulbs contain traces of mercury that are toxic, so it is best to keep them out of landfill areas. CFLs can be exchanged for LEDs at the Office of Sustainability free of charge! Incandescent and LED light bulbs can be placed in the trash.

There are also more campus-specific specialty recycling streams. At the Grafton campus, you can recycle contact lenses, razor blades, Brita filters, and Purina food bags. At the Boston campus, you can recycle fitness trackers and oral care products like toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, and floss containers.

A bar graph showing the amount of each type of waste produced yearly between 2005 and 2021.
There has been a slight decrease of annual waste production as we work towards a reduction in overall waste. There is still work to be done to divert more of our waste away from landfills and towards more sustainable waste streams. *Note that data collection for FY20 & FY21 was impacted by COVID.

Thanks to the efforts of many students and employees to dispose of waste sustainably, Tufts has achieved an extremely low 7% contamination rate in recycling streams, compared to average rate of 15-25% on other college and university campuses. To join this effort to divert waste from landfills and reduce pollution in our communities, we encourage you to get familiar with the specialty recycling locations on your campus and think twice before tossing items into the trash – you may be able to give them a second life instead.

“Green” Your Move-Out

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 23rd, 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 

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.

Tufts’ Science and Engineering Complex Celebrated for Outstanding Sustainability

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.

Dissecting Divestment and Tufts’ Investment Plans with Craig Smith

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.

Pie chart showing the expense categories that Tufts endowment funds

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

In February 2021, Tufts announced the Responsible Investment Advisory Group’s (RIAG) guidelines to make the university’s investments more sustainable. They include: 

  1. 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.) 
  2. Invest $10 million to $25 million in positive impact funds related to climate change over the next five years. (More on this below) 
  3. Proactively communicate with all current and future investment managers to encourage them to integrate climate values into their investment strategy 
  4. Enhance transparency by creating a dashboard that would report on the university’s progress (The Investment Office just released the dashboard in November.) 
  5. 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.” 

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