Rodgers Rec goes green

By: Chris Scanlon
Posted In: News

NEWPORT, R.I.- Many wouldn’t tell from the looks of the Rodgers Recreational Center, but it has been doing its part in reducing energy use for years.

Del Malloy is the athletic director of the schools sports programs, and he also helped design of the building in 1996. It was constructed in 1997 and the cost was estimated at about $10 million.

Malloy sounded like he was asked the same questions before because he was ready and forthright with every answer.

Malloy notes that Rodgers is home to a lot of energy use, but anyway it can, the school tried to reduce that usage. Rodgers has a dozens offices with about 40 computers total.

Thousands of lights for the gym, aerobics room and class rooms, and two giant washers and driers have all become energy savers. All the lights in the building are on sensors to reduce waste, and all the light bulbs use in the rec center are energy-saving ones.

The washers and dryers used for all the sports laundry are energy efficient as well.

Rodgers also has some problems more difficult to solve such as its air conditioning. Most buildings have their units on the top of their building, but because of Newport’s strict rules about historic preservation, Rodgers’ air conditioning units are in the basement.

“All the air has to travel through pipes all around the building and that uses a lot of energy,” Malloy said.

Malloy also said that global warming was not as big of an alarm 10 years ago as it is today. Part of the reason why making the building so energy efficient was to cut down on cost.

All that being said, Malloy and the rest of the designers did have the environment very much in mind when they designed the building.

Bill Hall, the school’s chief financial officer, was in big favor of making the buildings at Salve eco-friendly. Hall was also one of the designers of Rodgers and during the first stages of construction, found a natural aquifer under the building. The school now uses that water alone for all its landscaping.

One of Rodgers’ most recent changes was putting sensors on the vending machines. The drink machine is still chilling the drinks, but the florescent bulbs that light the front of the machine do not turn on unless someone walks in front of it.

Before the machines were left on all night and over the weekend with a lot of energy going to waste. With the new sensors, Malloy estimated that 120 hours of wasted light is being reduced every week.

This will be Malloy’s last year being the athletic director here at Salve. He is moving to be on the board of the East Coast Conference.

Scott Good is an athletic trainer for the Salve sports teams like men’s soccer, hockey and lacrosse, and spends most of his day in the trainer’s room located near the weight and exercise room.

Good has been here for about six years and he deals with athletes daily but he is also very involved in “going green.”

Good was surprised to hear all the information about the building he works in and felt that a lot of the information is never seen and no one would know unless they asked.

Good is a big advocate of recycling and because he deals with providing water to athletes, tries to reduce water waste as much as possible.

Good explained that most of the people who work in the lower level of Rodgers (trainers, coaches, and gym facilitators) are very aware of the growing problem of global warming

Good did express some resentment towards students and athletes because he sees the most waste being produced by them.

One example of Good’s reasoning was when he saw a student leave the gym and throw away her plastic bottle in a regular trash container when a recyclable container was directly beside it.

“It makes me mad,” Good said with a sorrowful grin.

Good is not the only one on campus who feels this way. Vicky Wagner, who used to be a lacrosse player for Salve, still works out in the gym many times a week.

Wagner uses the gym as much as her time here at school lets here. She says she has always been an athletic person and likes to run on the treadmill to keep in shape and to relieve stress.

Wagner, a sophomore and business major at Salve, was much more surprised at the energy efficient facts of Rodgers Recreation Center than Good.

Wagner said that she uses her own Nalgene water bottle most of the time and fills it up at the water fountain. She also thought that students should know how well Rodgers is doing so that it will give them a sense of pride about their school and they will want to get involved.

Wagner suggested keeping the treadmills unplugged unless they were being run on because it bothers her to see them using up electricity and not even being used.