• We began UW–Stout-campus-wide composting in January 2013, in all buildings on campus. We’ve been composting in our dining facilities since 2010. To date, we’ve composted 332 tons—664,000 lbs.—of food waste and other compostables. The compost is brought back to the campus for planting plants, trees, etc.
• We buy 16.14 percent local food (food grown and processed within 250 miles of UW–Stout). We also buy local produce from the Fifth Season Cooperative in Viroqua. And, as of this year, we offer fair trade and organic coffee campus-wide.
• We offer a reusable to-go container program in our dining halls, which allows students and staff to take food to-go without any waste. They just return the to-go containers after they›re done and grab another to-go meal.
• We’re implementing the new “UW-Sprout Campus Garden” this spring. It will employ two part-time students and receive help from our Sustainable Agriculture in Education Association student organization.
• We have an I LOVE TAP WATER campaign with bottle refilling stations in every building, urging students and staff to drink tap water rather than purchase bottled water. Since 2010, we’ve saved over 900,000 plastic water bottles as a campus.
• In Fall 2013, students passed a referendum to charge themselves a new “green fee” to fund sustainability projects on campus. This is approximately $70,000 per year.
• We offer a small but heavily used bike-share program called StoutBikes. We have about fifty bikes in the program and generally have a waiting list of students wanting to take part.
• Through a partnership with Dunn County Transit, we have a campus and city bus, as well as a new bus that goes to Eau Claire three times per day. UW–Stout contributes to the bus system, so that all students and staff ride in-town and campus buses for free. We also have a live bus tracker to show riders where the bus is in town.
• We offer carpool, bike, and pedestrian commuter incentives to employees who choose to travel to work this way. And we offer an online ride board to help match carpoolers.
• We offer 60 sustainability-focused courses and over 100 sustainability-related courses to our students. We also have an undergraduate minor in sustainable design and the environment, a bachelor’s degree in sustainable management, and a master’s degree in sustainable management.
If you’re looking for additional information, please feel free to visit our sustainability website at: www.uwstout.edu/sustainability.
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