Campus Housing Offers Three New ‘Green’ Living Options

UC Berkeley is set to open one of three new green student housing options for viewing this week, giving campus community members some insight into the "green" lifestyle.

The new green room, apartment and suite, which are located in Unit 1, Channing Bowditch Apartments and Foothill respectively, are meant to show students how they can live a sustainable lifestyle by changing their habits and making environmentally friendly purchases, said Lisa Bauer, the UC Berkeley Manager of Campus Recycling and Refuse Services.

"Green to me is a synonym for sustainability," Bauer said. "Sustainability is living your life, doing your business in such a manner that it ensures generations will have access to the same (resources)."

The new green room will be open for monthly tours starting Wednesday and will mark the middle of Sustainability Week, which kicked off yesterday, said Desirae Early, coordinator for the Green Campus Program.

The apartment will be open for monthly tours in October and the suite will be available for tours by appointment only, she said.

The new housing options are meant to show visitors how to live in a sustainable fashion by displaying various environmentally friendly devices, Bauer said.

Products included in the green housing developments are organic cotton sheets, Lifeline soap, and Energy Star certified technologies, which are certified by the U.S. government to conserve more energy than their counterparts, she said.

"You buy for color, size and price, why not for sustainability?" Bauer said.

Funding for the items in the green housing developments came from various sources, including donations from Best Buy, the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability, Berkeley Hardware and the Alameda County Waste Management Authority, Early said.

"It's definitely part of the landscape now," she said. "Clearly, it is on students' radars, and on the faculty and staff's radars as well."

The three new housing developments are currently inhabited by several students who have agreed to participate in the project, which involves actively living in the environmentally friendly rooms and opening their living spaces for tours, Bauer said.

The green housing developments are part of a larger campuswide move toward a more sustainable environment, Bauer said.

Previous steps toward sustainability have been taken in the construction of Slottman and Christian halls in Unit 1, which are both certified by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a benchmark accepted by the federal government.

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