March 19, 2002  NR 05-02

The University of Alaska announced today that it has joined a consortium of major American colleges and universities that is helping to define the next generation of environmental excellence at the nation’s higher education institutions.

The College Consortium for Environmental Excellence, called c2e2, is a group of 21 colleges and universities interested in developing innovative ways of managing and regulating the environmental impacts of laboratories. It serves as a forum for professional networking on environmental safety issues at its consortium meetings and developing joint projects; currently, these efforts include the Lab XL project (a joint academic-EPA program), several EMS assessment tools, and a vision for the next generation of Internet environmental information tools.

UA joins other prestigious institutions such as Cornell, Harvard, University of North Carolina, Yale, MIT, San Diego State, Tufts, Boston College, Boston University and University of Vermont in this non-profit organization of leading colleges, universities and corporations dedicated to helping campus organizations achieve superior environmental performance.

The Consortium promotes the development of performance-based environmental regulations for laboratories, to share management practices that come from effective environmental management systems, and to support continued improvement of environmental performance in higher education.

UA is expected to derive immediate benefits from its association through c2e2’s EMS Pilot Project with Enviance, a major supplier of web-enabled compliance management databases. This project is expected to be a major focus for c2e2 members in 2002 and beyond. UA’s participation in this program will allow it to shape efficient and effective environmental compliance management for future higher education needs.

For further information about c2e2, the website is: www.c2e2.org
For more information about UA’s participation in c2e2, contact David A. Bunzow, Environmental, Health and Safety Manager at University of Alaska’s Statewide Office of Risk Management, at 1-907-474-5005 or email at sndab1@alaska.edu