In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

Greener Pastures For Wildlife In The Big Apple

In Business, March-April, 2005, Vol. 27, No. 2, p. 12

The Wildlife Conservation Society is integrating green thinking and practices into all its operations - from purchasing and building to habitat restoration.

Diane Greer

RENOWNED for its worldwide focus to save wildlife and conserve ecosystems, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is less well-known for its commitment to lead in sustainable management at the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, located in New York City. From renewable energy to green purchasing, pollution prevention to waste treatment, green building to habitat restoration, WCS is integrating green thinking and environmental practices into all aspects of its operations.
With an operating budget of $145 million, WCS manages five wildlife parks in New York City including the Bronx Zoo, the New York Aquarium and the Central Park, Queens and Prospect Park Zoos. The facilities occupy substantial campuses with the largest, the Bronx Zoo, encompassing a 265-acre urban park. The operation employs 875 full time and 700 to 1000 seasonal workers engaged in research, conservation, education and the care of the organizations' 19,000 animals. Last year, over 3.9 million people visited the five parks.
The management and operation of large facilities, millions of visitors, a sizeable staff and the care of feeding of a huge menagerie of animals consume considerable resources and generate substantial amounts of waste. To mitigate the impact on the environment, the organization is making a concerted effort to reduce its ecological footprint. Dr. Christine Sheppard, Curator of Birds, started the “Green Team” at WCS several years ago to address the problem. Participants on the team come from a broad range of departments, offering diverse operational perspectives. The team has been spearheading improvement of the organization's environmental practices via recycling, composting and green procurement programs. “I started the green team because this is something I have always felt strongly about,” says Sheppard. “The team makes everyone that participates feel better about themselves. There is something that you can do.”
Recently, 30 members of the WCS staff took part in a sustainable design charrette, a two-day conference facilitated by the Rocky Mountain Institute and including representatives from New York City Department of Design and Construction, the New York Power Authority and industry experts on green design, alternative energy and ecology. “The purpose of the Green Charrette was to incorporate green thinking into our master plan,” says Sue Chin, Director of Planning and Design for WCS. “We wanted the plan to take us into the future, to be a set of guidelines for how we responsibly develop this land and manage our operations.”
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN PRACTICES
Chin is part of a group working on integrating sustainable design practices into exhibits, building renovations and new construction. The group hopes to achieve a LEED silver rating for the renovation of the Lion House, located in the Bronx Zoo's historic Astor Court. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to assess the “greenness” of building projects based upon an extensive set of high performance and sustainable building criteria.
The beaux-arts Lion House features an intricately carved facade with animal friezes and lion sculptures. Recognizing its historic and aesthetic character, the New York Landmarks Commission conferred landmark status on the building and other structures in Astor Court in 2000. The building, opened in 1903, has been empty since the early 70s when the facility's resident big cats were moved to larger, more natural areas. When completed in the spring of 2006, the renovated structure will house a new exhibit on Madagascar along with space for use by community groups, educational programs and special events.
“This is a challenging project,” explains Chin. “There are so many facets to renovating a turn of the century landmark structure. Designing for animals is different than designing for people. The energy modeling for zoos is different. You need to consider ambient temperature when you are working with animals in a tropical climate.”
The red ruffed lemurs, radiated tortoises and hissing cockroaches who will occupy the new building will enjoy a number of sustainable design features such as skylights that adjust to climatic conditions and a recycled gray water system. The skylight lights will provide natural light to the plants housed in three biomes comprising the Madagascar exhibit: a rain forest zone, a spiny forest zone, and a deciduous forest zone. “The building will be powered by a fuel cell and utilize geothermal standing column wells for heating and cooling,” adds Chin.
WCS will also seek a LEED rating for the International group's new headquarters built as part of the science campus in the northwest corner of the park. The other construction project sporting green features is the recently completed Tiger Mountain exhibit. “We took over a three acre site and put up a building but did not change the trees or vegetation on the site,” says Chin. “All the public pavilions were constructed from reclaimed railroad trestles. The building on the site utilizes natural ventilation.”

RENEWABLE ENERGY INSTALLATIONS
The distributed generation and renewable energy installations in the Lion House are not new concepts to WCS. “We did not know about the blackout,” recalls Sheppard, referring to the power failure that darkened substantial portions of the East Coast in August of 2003. A cogeneration system producing electricity and heat kept the zoo's lights on. The combined heat and power system (CHP) utilizes waste heat from the electrical generator to heat hot water for 14 buildings on the campus. “The cogeneration plant provides energy reliability,” explains Chin. “The life support systems for live collections are critical.”
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is helping to fund the installation of a 200kW gas-powered CHP fuel cell in the Lion House with a grant of $538,030. The fuel cell will provide electrical power, hot water and drive absorption chillers utilized in the facility. This is the second fuel cell employed by WCS. The first fuel cell, located in the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, generates 200 kW of electricity along with 700,000 BTU's of heat to warm boilers supplying water to the facility and its tanks. With over 8,000 fish and aquatic animals, a dependable energy source is vital to the facility.
In addition to reducing emissions by utilizing cogeneration and renewable energy, the organization is also testing electric vehicles in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Eleven Global Electric Motorcars were donated to WCS by a Daimler-Chrysler subsidiary in conjunction with the New York Power Authority. Various administrative and operational departments employ the vehicles.
While alternative energy and green building projects may be grabbing the headlines, the WCS green team is making considerable progress implementing environmentally preferable purchasing, usage reduction and recycling programs. Jim Morley, the Purchasing Director at WCS, is a member of the Green Team working on green procurement. He has been tasked with identifying a wide range of green products from janitorial supplies to food service items that fit the organization's budget and meet the specialized criteria of usage in areas with animals.
Identifying which green products to use is not easy. Morley cites green cleaners to illustrate the issue. “We use them where applicable,” says Morley. “But we need to be extraordinarily careful with chemicals. We have three ounce hummingbirds.”

PURCHASING GREEN PRODUCTS
Product selection invariably involves tradeoffs. “The issues of purchasing green products are complicated,” says Sheppard. “We want to have more green products in our food service. The question is what are the greenest options. We looked at recyclable plates, but it is not reasonable to expect zoo visitors to rinse their plates so that they can be recycled. So we looked at items with the highest post-consumer recycled content, but needed to make sure they did not use bleach.” Chlorine bleach used to “whiten” some recycled products results in the release of dioxins and other toxic compounds.
Economic constraints complicate the green procurement program. WCS has gone through a period of staff layoffs and is operating under very tight budgets. Consequently, green buying cannot impose too great a premium over traditional products. “Environmentally sound cleaners must be both viable and economic, “ said Morley. “They do not necessarily have to be the same price, but they need to be reasonable.”
Morley is also seeking opportunities to reduce materials usage, which inevitably requires process change. “One of the things we have done is try to eliminate paper,” says Morley. “We now have systems where WCS employees can send purchase requisitions electronically. Where possible, the purchase requests are forwarded to the supplier electronically.” Utilizing the new system, WCS saves six piece of paper for every electronic order. He believes there are additional opportunities to eliminate paper. “People need to ask themselves do I need to generate that paper?” says Morley. “Is there an easier way to do this?”
One area where Sheppard and her team are making good progress is encouraging the organization to recycle. In addition to standard items such as paper, bottles and plastics, WCS has instituted programs to recycle electronics such as cell phones and computers, batteries, toner cartridges and used oil from the kitchens. The recycling program is instrumental in getting people more involved in the green team's efforts. “It makes people feel like something is happening,” said Sheppard.
WCS is seeking to extend environmental practices and information beyond the organization's boundaries to benefit the surrounding communities. A partnership has been formed with community groups in the Bronx to restore the Bronx River. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has awarded the partnership $916,000 to fund habitat restoration of the river from the New York Botanical Gardens to the river's mouth at the Long Island Sound. The grant will also be used for environmental education along the lower Bronx River. WCS will oversee the multiyear grant.

INITIATIVES RANGE FROM BIOFUELS TO PSYCHOLOGY
The green team is considering several new initiatives in the coming year. Investigations have begun on the economics and technologies available to produce biofuels from waste grease collected from WCS kitchens and concessions. “We are very interested in biofuels since we have vehicles in all our parks,” says Sheppard. “It is an interesting technology that we would like to implement at WCS.” Utilizing anaerobic digestion of animal manure and food wastes to generate energy is another attractive opportunity. The organization also plans to develop an energy master plan.
One of the lessons emerging from the implementation of environmental practices at WCS is the importance of communication and understanding the people side of the equation. “Our biggest challenge is communication,” says Sheppard. “We are really big with lots of different departments. People are suffering from information overload. You need to make the information available, but in a manner that people can manage.” To help disseminate information, the green team produces newsletters and maintains a website.
Sheppard has been exploring conservation psychology to understand how best to motivate people. “For any of these programs, it is important to get all the stakeholders involved, to make sure they really buy into it and want to do it,” says Sheppard. Testing of green cleaners provides a good example. “There was a strong interest in looking at green cleaners for in-house use,” she says. “Everybody from purchasing down through maintenance was involved. Just to test these things is a positive step.”
In addition to educating employees, WCS is working to transfer their environmental ethic to visitors. “We are trying to do more to tell the public what we are doing,” says Chin. A first step is to incorporate information on the organization's environmental vision into exhibits and other visitor information.
Chin cites the Akron Zoo as one of the zoos excelling in communicating its green practices to visitors. Akron's new environmental education center will include exhibits explaining the buildings sustainable features as well as other green programs underway around the zoo. “We have developed graphics for the new education center pointing out energy saving appliances throughout the buildings,” said Linda Trotman of the Akron Zoo. “We have an area where we talk about the building, how we are LEED certified and what you can do at home to conserve resources and save energy. Our ultimate goal as educators is for someone to see what we are doing and take it home and do something.”
The Aquarium and Zoo Association (AZA), a trade group representing over 200 members, has formed the Green Practices Scientific Advisory Group to spearhead sustainable practice and environmentalism to other zoos and aquariums. Sheppard chairs the group. “Zoos are interested in doing conservation at home as well as in the field,” says Sheppard. Chin heads a subgroup that is formulating green design guidelines for organizations with living collections. She is also teaching a course at the AZA School on creating successful exhibits and green design.
A small group of AZA members are “pushing the green agenda at zoos, but it is not a hard agenda to push,” say Chin. “A lot of zoos are developing green teams. Getting zoos more involved is something I really want to happen. WCS has a history of being on the cutting edge. The organization also has significant resources when compared to other zoos and aquariums. We have the opportunity. We can share our information and help people along.”
The experience at WCS illustrates how implementing sustainable practices requires the dedication of a core group within an organization, integration of “green thinking” into the planning process, good communications and teamwork. The work is paying off. WCS is reducing its environmental footprint, sharing its knowledge and inspiring visitors, the local community and other zoos to implement sustainable practices.