The Office of Sustainability at Colgate University has launched an online sustainability dashboard that displays a series of metrics, including Colgate’s greenhouse gas emissions, electricity and water usage, and composting efforts.
Fostering informed engagement is a goal of Colgate’s sustainability office. “The more informed we are, the more sophisticated our program is and the better off we are as a campus,” says Associate Provost for Sustainability John Pumilio.
To that end, the office recognized that it needed to find better ways to make its data visible and accessible. With 18 panels of information, the new dashboard helps to raise awareness by quantifying Colgate’s success in its sustainability efforts. It paints a picture of the overall decline in greenhouse gas emissions as Colgate electrifies its campus. It also points out yearly fluctuations, which can be related to weather or campus infrastructure upgrades like the on-campus heating plant.
From forestry management to transportation and green buildings, “we have moved forward on many different fronts all at once,” Pumilio says. “When you collectively look at the whole program, we have become a leader in higher education, not because we’ve done one major thing, but because we’ve done dozens of things well.”
The University achieved carbon neutrality in 2019, and it has continued to look for areas of improvement — a task that becomes more challenging each year. The Office of Sustainability is now in the process of updating its Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, a strategic roadmap for advancing Colgate’s sustainability efforts as the campus continues to decarbonize and build climate resilience.
Broader information sharing is one goal in the forthcoming plan, and the dashboard is the first step toward achieving the objective. “Hopefully, the dashboard will inspire additional questions and conversation,” Pumilio says.
The site is designed to be updated annually — as ever, the Office of Sustainability is intent on ensuring that progress made today in all of its initiatives can be built upon by future staff and administrators.
“It’s something that has to endure beyond a single professional career, a single presidency, a single plan,” Pumilio said. “The real challenge is building systems, cultures, and commitments that persist over many, many years. That continuity is what ultimately creates lasting impact and a really strong program over time.”