Sustainable Storage at McGill's Collections Centre

Abstract

Sustainability was uppermost on our minds when we considered options for an off-site Collections Centre. LEED Certification: McGill University is committed to LEED certifying all our new buildings, so this facility was designed to meet this goal. This means features including low maintenance exterior grounds, electric car charging stations, choosing the right building materials and more. High density: The AutoStore robotic system is high density storage that reduces the footprint our warehouse building by up to 75%. No aisles are needed for humans to walk through as robots run on the top of a grid to retrieve bins. Energy efficient robots: The electric robots used are run on regenerative batteries that means the amount of electricity needed to run the 6 robots for a 24-hour shift is less than what is needed to run a small appliance for 30 minutes. Choosing a moving company: When planning for our move of 2.5M materials in our collections from our downtown campus, we have included sustainability goals for the movers. Efficient delivery: We will offer options to digitize and send electronic versions of requested articles, chapters, and books to our users, so that we don't have to physically transport everything to our libraries.