Colgate is committed to sustainability. As one of our nation’s finest liberal arts colleges, we recognize our civic duty and embrace our responsibility to be good community partners and stewards of the environment. Our sustainability initiatives strive to reduce our ecological footprint, care for nature’s resources, and contribute to a healthier, more vibrant central New York.
Our approach places emphasis on four areas (see diagram):
Creating a culture of sustainability
Creating an environment where all Colgate employees and students accept responsibility for advancing sustainability may be the single most important initiative to undertake.
Imagine if every employee and student considered Colgate’s purchasing decisions, energy use, food consumption, waste generation, commuter behaviors, and day-to-day activities through the lens of sustainability. Progress would occur in pervasive and substantial ways. For these reasons, it is important to educate, create new opportunities, make recommendations, and foster new on-campus and community partnerships that help facilitate a culture of sustainability.
Campus operations
Colgate strives to follow best sustainability practices and to innovate in our day-to-day operations, planning and maintenance of our built environment, policies, and most importantly, in our institutional values. Greening our campus includes focusing on energy conservation and efficiency, promoting renewable energy sources, reducing landfill waste, incorporating sustainable dining practices, utilizing alternative transportation, and advocating water conservation.
Curriculum and student opportunities
Students in college today will face unprecedented challenges in the 21st century. Complex and interrelated issues such as climate change, dwindling fresh water supplies, social inequity, extreme poverty, decarbonization of our global energy supply, food security and nutrition, natural resource depletion, and an ever-growing, over-consuming citizenry form the backdrop of society’s challenges. Overcoming these challenges requires a basic understanding of these issues as they relate to core values, systems thinking, problem solving, and the organization and governance of society as a whole. Sustainable thinking is paramount, and it is important that every Colgate student has the opportunity (both inside and outside the classroom) to explore and contemplate what sustainability means and how it can be applied.
Community partnerships: local and regional
As Colgate becomes a model for sustainability, we will have increased opportunities to collaborate and build new partnerships with our neighbors, state government, local municipalities, businesses, non-profit organizations and other institutions of higher education. Focusing on these relationships is a vital component of sustainability and goes hand-in-hand with our university’s sustainability objectives. In doing so, we fulfill two priorities of the university: 1) being a positive influence in our local and regional community and 2) creating new and meaningful opportunities for our students.