Some people recycle soda bottles and newspapers, but William Dupont recycles buildings.

“It's not actually necessary to demolish a whole building and throw it away,” said Dupont, the San Antonio Conservation-endowed architecture professor for the University of Texas San Antonio.
 
Dupont and eight UTSA students traveled to New Orleans during Spring Break to participate in Project Green, a two-week project with universities and programs nationwide that helped restore historic buildings in the Lower Ninth Ward and make the area more sustainable.

Recycling buildings is one of the examples of the green movement sprouting around San Antonio universities and colleges.

Mahesh Senagala takes a different approach with buildings and sustainability with his architecture course, “An Inconvenient Studio.” Senagala, a UTSA architecture professor, incorporates smart technology into architecture.

Using smart technology, such as window shades that adjust to temperature, can potentially help create more sustainable homes and offices. The green idea is especially pertinent now, Senagala said.

“How we organize ourselves to address the issue of sustainability is important,” Senagala said.
Trinity University joined the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, and the university created a sustainability task force headed by sociology and anthropology professor Richard Reed to reduce greenhouse gases and spread awareness of sustainability.

By signing the commitment, the university has pledged that it will eventually eliminate its campuses' greenhouse gas emissions.

“It's popular. But it's also necessary,” Reed said about going green.

Trinity's green efforts will include anything from constructing new buildings according to standards of sustainability and refurnishing the dormitories to be more efficient, Reed said.

Trinity already uses low electrical-use bulbs and low-flow toilets.

San Antonio College formed the Go Green Committee, which consists of faculty, staff and students, to look at recycling efforts, conserving energy and building with green materials. The college also will host Go Green SAC from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, in the campus mall area.

The campus green movement also comes in the form of student action. Aaron Stein, a UTSA public policy graduate student and intern for Public Citizen, looks at municipal facilities for ways to incorporate renewable energy and more energy-efficient practices. Stein, 26, also is working with fellow students to create a UTSA branch for the Sierra Club, the national nonprofit environmental organization.

“I've always been an environmentalist at heart,” Stein, 26, said. “That was just how I was raised.”

UTSA also is in the early planning stages for the Institute for Conventional Alternative and Renewable Energy, which will combine the efforts of various departments to find ways in which society can be more sustainable.

The university will hold the North American Energy Summit 2008 with leaders from around the nation and from Mexico and Canada May 1-2 to discuss energy issues.

The idea is for the institute to encompass the various campus voices and look at policy issues, said UTSA College of Engineering Dean C. Mauli Agrawal.

Of course, much of the responsibility to go green is on the students.

“Students have a great deal of power,” Reed said. “These are problems they are going to either inherit or solve someday.”

Emily Messer | 210SA contributor