College of the Atlantic
OP-3: Building Operations and Maintenance

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The green cleaning guidelines have been in place since the founding of College of the Atlantic. The following applies to all buildings at COA: “College of the Atlantic has been committed to green products for cleaning and maintenance since its founding. In support of COA’s mandate to reduce unnecessary chemicals on campus, reduce our environmental impact, and increase human health and safety on campus, College of the Atlantic continues to actively pursue environmentally friendly cleaning products, recycled and post-consumer paper products, and non-toxic wax and painting products. 1. Whenever possible, COA will procure green seal certified cleaning products. 2. COA has a long-standing relationship with our supplier, and will continue to foster such relationships, ensuring that, as new green cleaning products become available, or as others are taken off the market, we have an industry connection to help facilitate continuity of procurement. 3. In accordance with the Wood and Paper Products Procurement Policy, COA will purchase post-consumer, recycled, or tree-free paper products.”

COA’s Energy Management plan is derived from our Energy Framework, which sets goals for energy use on campus based on historic and real-time tracked data. The plan to achieve these goals was created through analyzing the data and is referenced to a baseline year of performance. The Director of Energy Education and Management is tasked with making sure COA is on track to fulfill its energy goals. She reports to the campus community each year on the progress of the Energy Framework. The Energy Team, consisting of the Director of Energy Education and Management, the Buildings and Grounds Director and staff, a graduate student, and the Chief Financial Officer of the college, exists to oversee building management and improvement. Professional energy audits of every building on campus have been completed. Energy monitoring equipment has been installed in a number of buildings with installation in the remaining buildings being completed this year. Through gathering, tracking and analyzing data, a plan for achieving goals is underway. In addition to achieving goals for energy use and efficiency, it is recognized that outreach and education is paramount to the success of the plan.

College of the Atlantic uses the EPA's Energy Star Portfolio Manager to benchmark water consumption for all campus buildings connected to municipal water supply. We have uploaded quarterly water consumption data for all such buildings since July 2016. This data must be entered manually, and therefore all four quarters of each year will be uploaded on an annual basis moving forward. While we do not have the same data granularity for water that we have for energy, water benchmarking has been very valuable for monitoring the impacts of water conservation efforts, and for raising awareness of water conservation throughout the COA community. Portfolio Manager is a resource management tool that COA uses to track and assess energy, water, and waste across our campus. It also serves as platform to quickly access physical characteristics, such as building age and square footage, and is how we derived the 85% figure listed above. Our farms and remote small islands have on-site well water which is not monitored, and therefore these sites are not included in the campus-wide water benchmarking analysis. Furthermore, all new COA buildings and building renovations are subject to our Sustainable Building Policy, which identifies specific actions regarding water consumption: 1. New building spaces must incorporate design for greywater and non-toxic rainwater collection systems whenever possible. 2. Water meters must be installed for all new building spaces to monitor hot and cold water use. 3. All water fixtures installed in a new building space must conform to the most current EPA WaterSense specifications.