Sustainability is an important aspect to the mission of the university and in the Residence Centers. We strive to live by example and develop a culture in the Residence Centers for conserving, recycling, and maintaining the resources available to us.
Some of the ways we do this in Residence Life are listed below:
- All trash rooms and trash receptacles in the hallways and lounges have bins to separate trash, recyclables, and paper. Trash and recyclables are removed and separated on a daily basis.
- Our cleaning staff works with biodegradable trash bags and greener cleaning products to reduce our carbon footprint.
- Residence Life uses digital record keeping and e-mail correspondence when possible to reduce paper consumption and delivery of paper letters to resident students for notifications.
- Resident students are encouraged to be self-aware of energy consumption. This includes use of light, water, and power wasted when devices are plugged in but not in use (ghost devices).
- Resident Assistants are trained every summer on sustainability efforts, ways to engage their residents in the campus wide efforts, and how small changes make a big difference.
- Two of our three Residence Centers have one or more hydration stations. These water systems dispense filtered water for reusable water bottles to reduce the amount of water bottle waste on campus. They even have a “how many bottles have we saved” counter to help see the positive impact we are making.