A movement away from plastics for water delivery has taken hold over the past five years with the support of Booth deans and facilities leadership
By Maureen McMahon
If you walk around the Chicago Booth campuses in Hyde Park and downtown Chicago, you may notice people streaming in equipped with a black and white water canteen emblazoned with the logo of the leading business school.
Throughout the day, in this hub famous for conversations on nudges, ESG, and social impact, people avail themselves of filtered water filling stations and reusable beverage dispensers at events.
What began as a tool to leverage sustainability is now a normative facet of life at Booth.
At Chicago Booth, half the water fountains and hand washing stations have been modified to have water filling stations. Booth also issues water canteens to promote sustainability. (Credits: Maureen McMahon, Kari McDonough)
The impact of multipliers
“Sustainability has been a directive of the deans and is a popular topic amongst students,” said Rich Cortez, a leader in the financial administration. “Students, faculty, and staff practicing what we are preaching meant we needed to move forward with reducing how much plastic we generate onsite.”
Cortez was keenly aware of the issue because he oversaw water delivery for freestanding dispensers. “It’s not just plastic that we are considering; delivery services mean having diesel-type trucks drop it off. We encountered logistical issues with timely delivery, plus piles of plastic jugs in hallways are unsightly and look unprofessional,” he said.
“It can be a challenge to move away from water delivery, but we need to lead by example, which means prioritizing infrastructure updates and shifting our purchasing behaviors,” he said.
The movement found a champion in Deputy Dean of Faculty Pietro Veronesi, who worked with the other deans to get a calculation of Booth’s plastic generation.
The metrics astonished him. “It was crazy,” he said. “When I saw that, I felt as a leading institution we should just get rid of that. We should install filters and filling stations.”
He presented the calculation along with a photo of plastic pollution to a faculty meeting and persuaded them that making the change to install filters and filling stations was not only financially and socially responsible, but would lead by example, influencing the business leaders they train.
“Education institutions have a multiplier effect,” he said. “We are teaching students to become the next leaders. We need to show we are actually doing it, because students will bring it to their companies and learn by example and carry it on to other places.”
In economics, a multiplier refers to a factor that, when changed, causes changes in many other related variables.
The Booth leadership knew that to shift their culture multipliers related to infrastructure and purchasing would have an impact. What they did aligns with behavioral change research: make things easy for people to do if you want them to do it, with steps that are straightforward, socially supported, and timely.
They coordinated the sale of water cartons at their Kovler Café, causing ripple changes throughout the waste stream. A procurement strategy was adopted to ban purchase orders for plastic bottled water, affecting plastic supply entering the building. And now, half the water fountains and hand washing stations have been modified to be filtered water filling stations.
Renovating buildings may seem like the biggest hurdle, but Bill Daly, who oversaw the filling station modifications at the Gleacher Center, said, “Transforming a water fountain into a filling station requires plumbing to move pipes and ensure ADA requirements are met, and adding a unit on top, but it is a small cost for the benefit.”
“Since COVID, people don’t want to share a water fountain. They feel better filling a bottle,” he said. He and the Booth Sustainability Staff Committee led by Kari McDonough and Jason Coleman are tracking usage of single user fountains to see if more filling stations should be added.
The committee is working in tandem with Booth Facilities on many strategies to shrink Booth’s footprint, including better rainwater capture at Harper Center, upgrading building automation systems to detect occupants and adjust lighting and HVAC, and adding more EV chargers to their parking structure.
Their efforts set them apart as a leader among business schools –– and as a leading partner bolstering UChicago’s goal to reduce absolute greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.