ERI Home IRR Home Last updated 8/11/04
Until recently, perhaps the most significant impact on the environment due to the education sector has been its ability to supply successive generations of individuals with the requisite skills, attitudes, and time to advance the environmental improvement enterprise. This includes faculty to develop data and puzzle out causal webs, and, periodically, students to man the barricades.
As a result of a recent enforcement initiative, universities in the northeastern part of the country have been forced to confront the possibility that they could potentially be having a more direct environmental impact, one more traditionally associated with manufacturing sectors. Inspections at several institutions have disclosed a number of areas in which compliance has been less than exemplary.
True, we're not exactly talking fifty five gallon drums buried under the soccer field. But it's amazing how motivating the discovery of some paperwork irregularities and poorly managed hazardous waste storage areas can be in some circles.
The schools have negotiated settlements under which they have cleaned up their act, and have undertaken to expiate their guilt through various compensatory programs. One example involves providing instruction and inspiration in environmental improvement to local schools. Readers are invited to write an essay demonstrating how an enforcement initiative of this type, thoughtfully planned and tastefully implemented, can be distinguished from an exercise in well-motivated extortion. Questions on this topic may appear on the final exam.
Environmental impacts and risks
Effects of existing and future regulations on impacts
A large university, which can house and provide workplaces for tens of thousands of individuals, has by that fact alone an environmental impact comparable to that of a mid-sized municipality. Add to that a wide variety of specialized activities, ranging from research laboratories and medical centers to art schools, and a complex set of environmental challenges can emerge. Some campuses even sport nuclear reactors, high security biological laboratories, and other exotic facilities not typically found in close proximity to residential and office units. A reasonable case can be made that complacency can be particularly dangerous in such situations, and that special vigilance may therefore be warranted.
Secondary schools also have educational laboratories, complete with shelves of reagents (in some cases dating back to earlier times when chemical hazards were facts of life along with fallout and second-hand smoke). Readers who do not have at least one interesting story from their high school chemistry lab of a hair-raising situation nearly (or not quite) averted, probably don't remember the Challenger mishap or Chernobyl either. Attitudes have changed dramatically in the past couple of decades, and stockrooms have not always kept pace.
*** [Environmental impact from operation of school bus fleets]
Although environmental impacts from this sector tend to be either small quantity or restricted to special cases, the sheer number of institutions and their widespread distribution and close proximity to the public indicate that raising the level of environmental awareness among those responsible for its operation may be a worthwhile effort. The role-model factor should also not be overlooked.
The NAICS and SIC categories for the educational services sector line up as follows (this table is taken from the U. S. Census website).
| 1997 NAICS |
1997 NAICS U.S. Description | 1987 SIC |
1987 U.S. SIC Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 611 | Educational Services | ||
| 6111 | Elementary and Secondary Schools | ||
| 61111 | Elementary and Secondary Schools | 8211 | Elementary and Secondary Schools |
| 6112 | Junior Colleges | ||
| 61121 | Junior Colleges | 8222 | Junior Colleges and Technical Institutes |
| 6113 | Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools | ||
| 61131 | Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools | 8221 | Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools |
| 6114 | Business Schools and Computer and Management Training | ||
| 61141 | Business and Secretarial Schools | 8244 | Business and Secretarial Schools |
| 61142 | Computer Training | *8243 | Data Processing Schools (except computer repair training) |
| 61143 | Professional and Management Development Training | *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (professional and management development training) |
| 6115 | Technical and Trade Schools | ||
| 61151 | Technical and Trade Schools | ||
| 611511 | Cosmetology and Barber Schools | *7231 | Beauty Shops (beauty and cosmetology schools) |
| *7241 | Barber Shops (barber colleges) | ||
| 611512 | Flight Training | *8249 | Vocational Schools, NEC (aviation schools, excluding flying instruction) |
| *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (flying instruction) | ||
| 611513 | Apprenticeship Training | *8249 | Vocational Schools, NEC (vocational apprenticeship training) |
| 611519 | Other Technical and Trade Schools | *8249 | Vocational Schools, NEC (except aviation and flight training and apprenticeship training) |
| *8243 | Data Processing Schools (computer repair training) | ||
| *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (modeling and cooking schools) | ||
| 6116 | Other Schools and Instruction | ||
| 61161 | Fine Arts Schools | *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (art, drama, and music schools) |
| *7911 | Dance Studios, Schools, and Halls (dance instructors, and professional and other dance schools) | ||
| 61162 | Sports and Recreation Instruction | *7999 | Amusement and Recreation Services, NEC (baseball, basketball, bowling, gymnastic, judo, karate, parachute, scuba and skin |
| 61163 | Language Schools | *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (language schools) |
| 61169 | All Other Schools and Instruction | ||
| 611691 | Exam Preparation and Tutoring | *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (exam preparation and tutoring) |
| 611692 | Automobile Driving Schools | *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (automobile driving instruction) |
| 611699 | All Other Miscellaneous Schools and Instruction | *7999 | Amusement and Recreation Services, NEC (nonathletic recreational instruction) |
| *8299 | Schools and Educational Services, NEC (except professional and management training, aviation and flight training, fine art | ||
| 6117 | Educational Support Services | ||
| 61171 | Educational Support Services | *8299 | Schools and Educational Services NEC (except instruction) |
| *8748 | Business Consulting Services, NEC (educational test development and evaluation services, educational testing services, and |
The table gives a good overview of the broad range of institutional types in this sector.
The 1997 Economic Census lists the number of establishments broken down to the six digit NAICS level, and has been a very useful reference for the documents in this series. Unfortunately, for the case of the Educational Services sector, the categories of greatest interest in environmental impact, 6113 (colleges, universities and professional schools), 6112 (junior colleges), and 6111 (elementary and secondary schools) are not covered by the Economic Census. The Census lists 40,936 establishments that it does cover (33,783 taxable and 7,153 exempt), indicating that the number of establishments in the entire sector is in the hundreds of thousands.
The National Center for Education Studies provides data specifically related to education. From their statistics tables, one finds that there were 92,012 public and 27,223 private elementary and secondary schools, 4,182 degree granting post-secondary institutions, and 5,437 vocational and other non-degree granting post-secondary institutions in the United States in 1999-2000.
An extensive (albeit static, dated 3/01) contact list of trade organizations serving higher education specialties is posted on the EPA Region I web site.
Air emissions data for certain key criteria pollutants (ozone precursors) are available from the National Emission Trends (NET) database (1999), and hazardous air pollutant emissions data are available from the National Toxics Inventory (NTI) database (1996 is the most recent year for which final data are available). For the SIC codes 82xx (Educational services), the total emissions for volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) are as follows (in tons per year):
| SIC | Subsector | VOC | NOx | HAP |
| 8211 | Elementary And Secondary Schools | 116 | 1,438 | 21 |
| 8221 | Colleges And Universities, NEC | 961 | 27,332 | 404 |
| 8222 | Junior Colleges | 21 | 111 | 1 |
| 8231 | Libraries And Information Centers | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 8244 | Business and Secretarial Schools | 3 | ||
| 8249 | Vocational School, NEC | 9 | 25 | 18 |
| 8299 | Schools & Educational Services | 62 | 128 | 1 |
| (Other 82xx) | 0 | 11 | ||
| Total, all educational services subsectors | 1,169 | 29,046 | 448 |
Given the numbers of institutions involved, the quantities per institution seem fairly small, except for the NOx emissions. These are presumably from power plants and boilers.
*** [It would be interesting to determine how far along the power plants and boilers in this sector are in adopting best available control technology.]
Apart from the special cases referred to above (nuclear reactors, biological containment facilities, and the like), facilities in the educational services sector tend to present environmental risks that are not much different in kind from those of the municipalities in which they are embedded.
The fundamental educational process (inputting relatively unformed minds and outputting minds with various desirable knowledge, skills or attitudes somehow built into the synapses) does not seem to involve any direct environmental impact requiring regulation. Sector-based environmental regulation would be applied to this sector not primarily because of the inherent nature of its operations (rules crafted for this sector would, for the most part, be equally applicable to any number of other sectors), but because educational facilities are social institutions that occupy a special place in the institutional landscape. An enforcement action against a school sends an effective message, and provides good opportunities for leverage.
A capsule history of the enforcement action appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, and is available on a web page from the author (at the University of North Carolina) . Apparently, the original trigger for the enforcement action were some RCRA violations that turned up at Yale and the University of New Hampshire.
In the enforcement initiative, Region I is offering incentives to encourage targeted institutions to take advantage of state audit policies to mitigate fines. This might prove to be an effective test bed for developing audit policy practices, and learning how to implement them effectively.
A website provided by EPA Region 1 contains an extensive series of references describing the enforcement action and its outcomes, and includes compliance assistance tools.
Extensive statistics on educational facilities in the United States are available from the National Center for Education Studies at http://nces.ed.gov/ .