Simply Sustainable

Seventy-five years ago, it seemed impossible that we could wreak such destruction on our coasts. Impossible, too, that we could also have the power, through technology, to clean up the extent of our mess. Back then, terms like “sustainability” and “going green” were far from blips on the radar, much less bandied about as casually as they are today. But some of the oldest institutions, like British Columbia’s Vancouver Island University, which was founded in 1936, are the ones leading the way into our modern understanding of good stewardship.

Taken aback by the rapid rate of coastal development and the lack of consideration for water ecosystems, Vancouver Island University recently decided to take the lead with a brand-new facility that provides a laboratory for marine biologists and, perhaps most importantly, an example for the rest of the country.

Vancouver Island University’s Marine Field Station in Deep Bay, British Columbia, was born out of an idea for something far more modest. In fact, the initial concept was little more than a steel barn from which professors and students could study mollusks and crustaceans.

“The problem that’s happening around North America is that the rates of development on the coast are twice as high as anywhere else,” says Brian Kingzett, manager of the Deep Bay Marine Field Station. “And so we’re kind of loving our oceans to death.”

University officials quickly realized that if they planned to stem the tide of destructive urban development, they needed to lead by example. So the plain steel barn became an impressive, completely sustainable, shellfish-shaped structure.

The station, which Kingzett is confident will earn LEED Platinum status, incorporates renewable rain and ocean energy, as well as passive-solar techniques. Throughout the building process, there was a strict commitment to using local materials and contractors—which translated to a learning experience for area journeymen and apprentices. The lumber came from British Columbia, and the fixtures were no more elaborate than private consumers would use in their own homes.

“We wanted to ask, ‘Is this something someone would normally buy and put in their house?’” Kingzett says. “If the answer was ‘no,’ we said, ‘Find an alternative.’”

Yet the Field Station’s techniques for managing energy and waste are impressive. The facility, which is capable of providing five cubic metres of seawater each minute for research activities, incorporates a number of sustainable strategies, such as ocean-source geoexchange energy, natural lighting with high-efficiency glazing, daylighting controls and occupancy sensors, rainwater harvesting, gravity-flow for toilets, on-site tertiary wastewater treatment, riparian zone protection, and rehabilitation. When possible, station technicians flip off the lights and make use of natural daylight. They harvest rainwater, and they rely on natural ventilation, radiant-floor heating, and native foliage.

On the bottom floor, the main research area sits in all its glory. The public is able to peek through the glass walls of the sealed laboratory to see exactly what the scientists are up to. Visitors can also take advantage of a “touch tank” to get up close to all sorts of shellfish, starfish, and other marine creatures.

“There’s no point in putting technology in our building that isn’t accessible to the local community,” Kingzett says. “We didn’t want to be in an ivory tower.”

Not only does the building have tangible research applications, but it’s a story in itself that inspires a deeper consideration of marine life and what must be done to protect it. “We rent the facility out now for conferences and meetings,” Kingzett says. “And people say it can be a distracting room to have meetings in because everybody’s staring out the window at the coastal environment. But that’s actually our objective: to make everyone who’s using the building to think about why they’re here.”

So far, the experiment is working beautifully. Change seems to be on the horizon—a fact that is encouraging to Kingzett and his team, because Vancouver Island University sees its role as one of education, not governance.

“We didn’t build a green building just because we thought, ‘We’re the university, and we should have a green building,’” Kingzett says. “We built it because we’re not going to save the earth without a shift in foundational beliefs. And that starts with education.”