Julie Price’s job title is one you may never have heard before. She is sustainability coordinator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a position that involves working with entities across the campus on ideas to conserve resources or lessen UAB’s impact on the environment.
“I’m inventing this job as I go,” says Price, 32, who has been in her position about a year. “If I could have invented a job, this would have been one of the more effective positions.”
A Lexington, Ky., native, Price earned a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from the University of the South and then a master’s degree in horticulture from Auburn University. She earned her doctorate in biology from UAB, doing doctoral research on vegetative roofs – the use of plants on building roofs for environmental purposes.
At that point in time, former UAB President Carol Garrison saw the need for sustainability and formed the first campus-wide sustainability committee. “I was just in the right place at the right time,” Price says. When the university decided to hire a sustainability coordinator, she got the job.
Her position is unique in another way. She has a dual appointment, with the Facilities Department funding 80 percent of her salary and the Biology Department paying the remaining 20 percent. She teaches classes on environmental science and, starting this fall, will teach a seminar on sustainability for incoming freshmen in UAB’s new Honors College.
The seminar will be one of several that students will be able to choose, but Price hopes many will pick her offering. “I like to think that some of these students are more tuned in,” she says. “We are still trying to grab them.”
She loves the variety in her job. “I still get to do research. I get to apply for grants. I get to teach,” she says. “It’s anything we want it to be.”
Price, who lives in Homewood with her veterinarian husband and sons ages 3 and 15 months, says departments across UAB have had sustainability efforts for years, but other departments often were not aware of what was being done.
One of the major things that were already occurring when Price was hired involves using groundwater that previously was being sent to storm sewers. “There’s basically like a river flowing under UAB and we have to pump out basements,” she says. That water – which is clean – is now being pumped into the chilled water lines that run through buildings to provide cooling. The condensation from air conditioning units also is being collected and used, she says.
“We are trying to use rain when it falls on campus,” she said, instead of allowing it to flow into the storm sewers. Rainwater collection is being built into a new dorm for freshmen that is under construction.
“The new dorm’s rainwater collection system…design still may slightly change [but] we are projected to collect water from 18,000 square-feet of roof into two 10,000-gallon cisterns,” she says. “The water will be used to irrigate the interior courtyard and the landscaping along the front of the building.”
She says the dorm’s roof will not have vegetation, but will still be “green” by having a color and materials that will make it more energy efficient than traditional roofs.
The new Hill University Center, being built where the original building once stood, will also utilize non-traditional storm water collection, but the tightness of the site made it harder to be innovative, she says. “We are so dense that it’s hard to do things, but everybody is in favor of trying it out,” she says.
Price says reducing runoff is important environmentally, noting the recent problems that Toledo, Ohio, encountered with its drinking water being unusable for several days. Reports indicated that runoff into Lake Erie was a factor in the algae bloom that made the water toxic.
Price is involved in ongoing discussions about what can be done to reduce runoff from UAB’s campus. “We just do some brainstorming,” she says. “We have the luxury of 60 inches of rain a year.” That luxury sometimes can cause flooding, and an innovative solution being used behind the new Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts could provide one solution. A narrow trough called a “bioswale” has been developed between the rear of the building and its parking lot.
The bioswale uses several layers of absorbent materials to prevent flooding in the area. It is designed to increase the absorbency rate that is typical for urban areas – about 15 percent, compared with nearly 50 percent in rural areas.
Another successful effort, which began in 2013, is the UAB community garden located near Epic Elementary School and Bessie Estell Park. The university provides water and tools to the 65 people who have individual plots that are 10×10 feet or 12×12 feet in size. Gardeners provide their own plants or seeds and do all the weeding, tending and harvesting of produce.
“It’s full and there’s a long waiting list,” Price says. The gardeners range from doctors, faculty members, staff and graduate students to even a few undergraduates.
The nature of Price’s job is that she always has several ideas or projects in the works at one time. “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit,” she says. As she develops relationships across the campus, finds out what is happening and learns what ideas people have, possible projects develop.
“The potential is great,” she says.
For example, UAB is launching a new cardboard recycling program to augment its other recycling efforts. Price explains that research facilities receive a lot of materials that arrive in cardboard boxes that can be recycled. Nine special recycling receptacles that require boxes to be broken down in order to be placed inside have been ordered to start the program. Those receptacles will be strategically placed, mostly near research facilities.
The existing recycling staff will collect the cardboard, she says, and work-study students will be on hand at special events this fall to help with the efforts.
“We’re just trying to increase revenue generation in the recycling program,” Price says. And cardboard that now is going to the landfill – which is an expense to UAB – will be recycled instead.
Price and others also are looking at establishing a university-wide composting program for food waste and other bio-degradable items. “Again, we spend money to have it picked up and hauled to the landfill,” she says.
One issue is that there are no compost vendors in Alabama, she says. So starting a composting program probably would require finding a site where the composting could be done.
UAB students are now getting in on the act. UAB Student Life has created the Sustainability Investment Fund, which will provide funding for the most clever ideas submitted by students. Students can apply for funding, describing their ideas and how they could be carried out. A committee of students, faculty and staff will determine which projects will be funded and how much money each will receive.
Price expects a wide variety of ideas coming from students. “The potential is great,” she says.
A year into her job, Price has expectations for the future. In five years, she says, “When they think of UAB, I want sustainability to be one of our flagship endeavors. It’s just part of what we do. … Everything we do, we look at through a lens of sustainability.”