Museums Get Green

Friday, October 12, 2012 6:26 PM by Taylor Studios in Professional and Industry Tips


Everyone can play a role in increasing our sustainable practices and environmental awareness. Museums, while often seen as unchanging institutions, are actually rather forward thinking. While it may seem obvious that nature centers would focus on sustainability, many other institutions have also put a lot of effort into figuring out how they can leave a smaller ecological footprint and save money.

The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has an extensive sustainability program that covers energy use, water conservation, recycling, composting, gardening, and animal diets. Due to the huge number of visitors they have every year, their food services offered several ways to both cut costs and cut waste. Reusable flatware and plates, cloth napkins, and compostable containers all help the Shedd reduce its footprint.

The Field Museum in Chicago uses incentives to encourage staff to use public transport, ride sharing, and bicycling. Its extensive recycling program kept 54,000 pounds of recyclable materials from landfills in 2011, and it replaced hand towels with air driers in its restrooms. Instead of using regular commercial air-conditioning units during the hot months, it uses an innovative system that makes ice overnight when electricity usage is low. During the day, air is circulated around the ice to chill it before it’s sent through the building. Pictured below is part of the Field’s 99.4 Kilowatt solar array on its roof, which reduces its electricity bill.

Smaller museums might not have the budget to install a massive solar array, but they can often be very creative with green initiatives. The Madison Children’s Museum in Madison, Wisconsin, uses a lot of reclaimed materials in both its interior common spaces and its exhibits, from old school bleacher boards to an entire log cabin moved to its city lot. By moving from its former location into an older building, the MCM emphasized its focus on reuse while helping keep the downtown area vibrant and active. Old exhibit components were updated and reused, while unique scrap materials (like an airplane fuselage!) became tables and parts of a huge climbing frame. This webpage offers a link to a fascinating downloadable PDF (their Green Guide) that describes the whole program in detail and makes me eager to visit.

To help other institutions learn from their experiences, MCM created the organization Green Exhibits. Green Exhibits “was launched to provide museum exhibit designers and fabricators a resource for designing and building exhibits and environments that best support healthy spaces and a healthier future for kids and the environment.”

Next time you visit a museum, see if you can spot what they may be doing to encourage sustainability. What are some of the coolest green aspects of the museums you know and love?

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