Procurement
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Pesticide, Herbicide, and Fungicide, Buying Practices
There are a few sound environmental practices within Tulane's use of herbicides and pesticides, but for the most part, they rank poorly. Tulane's physical plant, under the direction of Tom Armitage, uses various insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Some are very toxic, while others have few environmental problems. All of the information here was provided by Tom Armitage and the Material Safety Data Sheet required by OSHA and citizen 'right to know' laws.
The insecticide used most frequently is Orthene, a general purpose spray which targets pests. This chemical is one that they depend almost exclusively. According to the Material Safety Data Sheet (OSHA), this pesticide is toxic to birds and is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues on crops. Because of its toxicity to bees, Tulane does not use it during the pollinating season. The manufacturers advise that when this product is used by humans, they should have eye, skin, and respiratory protection.
Malathion is also a common insecticide used on Tulane's campus and is usually added to Volck horticulture oil spray. Malathion produces hazardous decomposition products. The horticulture oil is relatively safe for humans and land mammals; however, it is not supposed to be dumped near any body of water or near sewerage and drainage systems because it is extremely toxic to aquatic organisms.
Other insecticides used include Diazinon and Cygon. Diazinon is used for controlling ants. If a half gallon of Diazinon is spilled it must be reported to the National Response Center. The manufacturer also recommends that when the container in which it is stored is empty, the consumer should bury the container in an area away from water supplies and crops. Cygon is only used in certain areas of the campus and is used very rarely.
There are three insecticides used that could be labeled environmentally safe. They include Dipel, a biological, bacterial insecticide for caterpillars; Safers, an insecticidal soap that is non-toxic; Tempo II, a synthetic pyrethroid for caterpillars which has been recommended for use by the EPA.According to Mr. Armitage all of these insecticides are used infrequently.
Unfortunately, Tulane does use a variety of fungicides, which are very harmful to the environment and very toxic to humans. Fungicides contain toxic chemicals that are subject to the reporting requirements of the Superfund Act and most all chemicals which compose the fungicides are carcinogenic to the human body. Mr. Armitage, once again, says these are used infrequently by Tulane, and are used on only one area of campus: Audubon #2. The brands used by Tulane include: Green Light Fung-a-way for Brown Patch turf, Ferti-Lome Rose Fungicide, and Banrot Broad Spectrum used occasionally for root rot on bedding.
The two most widely used chemicals involved with horticulture on campus are Round-up and MSMA. Both of these are herbicides which basically kill everything in site. The MSMA is only used when students are not on campus in the break between graduation and summer classes, because it kills everything on which it is applied. Roundup is used year-round to control weeds.
Other herbicides used, none being really "safe," include Ortho Weed B-Gon, Embark, Poast, and Image (all of these are used on grass and around hedge areas).
Tulane also uses a variety of fertilizers (Miracle Gro, Ferromec, Granular of Different Analysis, Palm Spikes, and Root Stimulant), none of which are environmentally safe.
There is one system that is being proposed to control formosa termites and this system is completely environmentally safe. It is a biological bait which kills only the workers of the termite colony. It kills the worker by preventing the new exoskeleton from forming on its body. So, in other words, it does not die from chemical poisoning, but from a biological problem. Mr. Armitage has already given the company the plans of the entire campus and is waiting on a proposal for costs and maintenance.
I was informed by Mr. Armitage that all chemicals used by Physical Plant must first be approved by Dr. Abdalghani, a professor of Environmental Health at Tulane Medical School. Dr. Abdalghani was apprehensive about speaking with us about his opinions regarding the pesticides used on campus. His basic thought was that the university could do much better.
Custodial Services Buying Practices
The responsibility of cleaning almost all buildings on campus falls to Jani King, a contracted janitorial service. Physical Plant is only responsible for three of the buildings.
There are various chemicals used in the cleaning of these buildings. Unfortunately, neither Jani King nor Physical Plant were concerned with the environmental safety of the cleaning products they purchased.
From what I understood from both Ms. Garcia, assisstant to Sylvester Johnson who is responsible for purchasing the products for the Physical Plant, and the representative from Jani King, any environmentally safe cleaning products were mere coincidence. They bought products that the cleaning staff was satisfied with and those that were the most economically efficient.
Although Jani King buys its cleaning products separately from Physical Plant, we found they both used many of the same products. Surprisingly, many of the MSDS sheets listed no environmental information for many of the products. For the information sheets which gave environmental data, we found a few products which could not be dumped into sewerage systems. These included Floor Finishes, Chemical Strip, Virex 256-disinfectant, and various Bliss brand products including enzyme removers, all purpose spotter, and traffic lane and bonnet cleaner.
The final conclusion, is that Tulane pays little to no attention to the environmental impact of particular cleaning products they purchase. Their main concern are that of price, satisfaction of cleaning ability, and efficiency.
Green Dining
While dining at Tulane can still make improvements, some steps have been made to make dining a more 'green' experience. For example, the University Center allows the use of the Green Club reusable mugs and at a reduced price. Recycling in the UC has improved with the addition of glass recycling bins next to the trash cans for student use. Also, the kitchen used to only recycle cardboard, but recently added tin, glass, and newspaper to their list of recyclables. Although the UC does not purchase organic foods, they do buy a good deal of local food-especially vegetables. The two main companies that supply local foods are Cysco (for Subway) and Conco. Taco Bell and Pizza Hut purchase their food from PFF.
Unfortunately, the UC still uses a great deal of Styrofoam for dine-in situations. However, they are required by health regulations to use Styrofoam rather than plastic to- go containers. Also, the UC does no always make silverware available to the dine-in customer and sometimes only plastic ware is available. Marriott says this cuts costs because too many people throw away silverware. Washable cups are never available.
We do have some suggestions for Marriott. They should look into using "Java jacket," instead of the present coffee cups, so that people do not have to use two cups to keep from burning themselves. Their employees are often wasteful by using Styrofoam bowls to measure food quantities and then throwing them out and by refusing to give customers real plates and bowls. Marriott would probably benefit economically from mandatory environmental awareness seminars for all employees. Finally, every customer who dines in should always have the option to use real plates and bowls.
Bruff dining hall offers all reusable dinnerware. They avoid the problem of having it thrown away by having students put trays on conveyor belts which lead to the kitchen. We do suggest, however, that they offer non-dairy milk, no-egg pasta, and vegan vegetable soup for the vegans of Tulane.
Bruff Stuff recycles their cardboard boxes. However, they do not have a place for student to recycle their plastic bags from previous trips. A manager did say that they are willing to put a recycle bin of a reasonable size in the store for that purpose if the physical plant will collect it.
Paper
According to the assistant Director of purchasing, Steve Regan, over half of the paper on Tulane campus is recycled.
1. The Tulane standard for buying recycled paper is: "at least half" of the paper that is bought by the purchasing department must be 50% virgin, 50% recycled.
2. Purchasing buys the paper for all of the individual departments on campus. (e.g. mathematics, housing and residence life, sociology, etc.)
3. Purchasing does not purchase the paper for the copy centers. These are purchased by the manager of university printing, Price G. Dodson. He says, " I will use recycled as long as it doesn't jam. It is not worth it to me if I have to unjam machines all day long in order to use recycled paper." Dodson recently found a recycled paper that works in his machines. It is Georgia Pacific Geocycle, which is a 50% recycled, 30% pre-consumer, and 20% post-consumer.
4. Also through the copy center, we found the memo paper that is used on the entire Tulane campus to send interdepartmental and student memos. This is a Fraser Papers synergy writing, which is also a 50% recycled, 30% pre-consumer, and 20% post-consumer.
5. A majority of the colored paper that is used for flyers, etc.. is recycled as well. Springhill Relay plus, Wausau Papers Astrobrights Cover, and Hopper Papers (Georgia Pacific) Hots are all 50% recycled, 30% pre-consumer, and 20% post-consumer. This entails most all of the paper that flyers, etc.. are printed on in the university.
6. The carbonless form paper that is used by the university is NCR Paper CB, which is not recycled.
Cost of Paper: According to Steve Regan, the cost of recycled paper was 1 and a half times that of virgin paper several years ago. However, with more push for the recycled paper the margin has narrowed a bit, but the recycled paper is still more expensive.
Toilet Paper: According to Steve Regan, The Cormatic toilet paper, paper towels, and dispensers are all 100% recycled. However, he was not sure about the Scott paper.
Copy Machines
Price Dodson is in charge of all of the university copy centers that are open for student use, besides those in the library. He claims that there are no immediate plans to phase out the one sided copiers for those that are two sided. However, Steve Regan claims that the whole market is moving to two sided copying so eventually, there will be no other option than two sided copying.
The cartridges that run in the copy machines run off of a toner and heat method. They are recycled back through the company. The company offers a rebate for the returned cartridges, when purchasing new ones. With this excess money, the copy center is able to afford to buy recycled paper products.
Fax Machines
The fax machines on campus formerly used non-recyclable thermal paper, but now they are sheet-fed and use recyclable paper. There still are several of the thermal- fed machines on campus, but all of the high volume areas on campus are now predominated by sheet-fed machines.
Summary
From the procurement stand point, Tulane is doing well in some areas and not so well in others. The green dining and paper buying practices seem to show a concerted effort. However, they could be doing much better as our recommendations show. The biggest problems lie with the buying of various cleaning products and insecticides, pesticides, and fungicides. It seems that Tulane has not made an effort to be environmentally safe. Jani King nor Physical Plant have even considered making an effort to buy environmentally safer products. In fact, one of the companies that Jani King buys from, Economical, told us that they offer a great assortment of environmentally safe cleaning products and hand delivered a packet of information to one of our members the next day! Although Mr. Armitage would like to believe that his agricultural practices on campus are as environmentally safe as they can be, we would differ considerably on the issue. We came to the conclusion that finding safer products simply takes a little more effort. An effort Tulane is considerably lacking within these two areas.