A Zero Waste Hockey Game

Agganis Arena and BU Athletics continue to incorporate sustainability principles into Terrier Athletics. On Friday, November 8th, Agganis Arena hosted a Zero Waste game at a men’s and women’s hockey doubleheader. Food waste bins were added to waste sorting stations throughout the concourse, and BU Sustainability team members helped attendees properly sort their waste. To engage with fans, BU Sustainability hosted an on-ice waste sorting game during intermissions and shared educational content on the videoboard. Additionally, members of the women’s hockey team sported green hockey tape to increase awareness of sustainability. Following the game, BU Sustainability interns and staff helped sort waste in order to eliminate contamination in each of the waste streams.

Over the course of the double-header, BU hockey fans diverted 80.7% of the waste generated in the arena. Forty percent of the waste was composted, 27% was recycled, and 14% was eliminated altogether by offering reusable alternatives, such as reusing pallets, providing reusable cutlery and plates to patrons in suite areas, and avoiding giveaways.

As part of a home-and-home series with UMass Lowell, our colleagues at the Rist Institute at UMass Lowell hosted a sustainability education night on Saturday, November 9th, at the Tsongas Center. This collaboration with UMass Lowell made this weekend of events the first jointly run sustainability event in college hockey.

Sustainability Festival

BU Sustainability’s largest event of the year is the Sustainability Festival, where we welcome student organizations, programs, and community groups to participate in climate action at BU. Two events are hosted, one at the BU Medical Campus and another on the Charles River Campus. In 2024, over 40 groups and organizations participated, including local food vendors, BU Dining Services, environmental non-profits such as Speak for the Trees, Transit Matters, and Friends of Belle Isle Marsh, along with campus partners and student groups. BU Sustainability also hosted a challenge on the BU Sustainability app, encouraging community members to continue sustainable behaviors beyond the festival and a stamp card prize challenge, encouraging people to visit several organizations throughout the festival.

Earth Day 365

For the second year in a row, BU Sustainability hosted “Earth Day 365,” a month-long series of events that bring the entire University community together around the celebration of our planet. Twenty-nine different groups and organizations hosted 30 events across the University. Events included a cleanup on the esplanade hosted by several campus partners and student organizations, a cooking demonstration on how to utilize leftovers from one of BU Dining Services’ head chefs, and an “Earth Care” worship service hosted at Marsh Chapel.

Sustainability Liaisons

Across campus, over 110 Sustainability Liaisons champion waste and energy reduction across the University. Sustainability Liaisons are faculty and staff members who collaborate with their colleagues to promote environmentally friendly behaviors within their workspaces. Liaisons also refer staff and faculty to our Green Department and Green Office Certification programs. The certifications allow individuals and groups to evaluate their impact and set goals for sustainable action in the workplace.

Environmental Leadership Network

At BU there are over 30 sustainability-related student organizations. These organizations are part of the “Environmental Leadership Network,” where organizations collaborate on events, and work closely with the BU Sustainability team, to amplify climate action at BU. At the Medical Campus, we partnered with multiple student groups to co-host a campus-wide clothing swap for the second year in a row. All remaining clothing items were donated to the Immigrant and Refugee Health Center at Boston Medical Center. On the Charles River Campus, our team collaborated with Student Food Rescue on their Campus Wide Food Drive initiative. Through this initiative, 35 bags/boxes of non-perishable food items were collected and donated to the Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) Roxbury/North Dorchester Neighborhood Opportunity Center.

Seed Grant Funding

The annual Sustainability Innovation Seed Grant program, jointly run by Innovate@BU and BU Sustainability helps kick-start innovative projects that tackle sustainability challenges. Students propose projects, initiatives, or startups that align with BU’s Climate Action Plan and relates to one or more of the topics of climate change resilience, emissions and energy, education and engagement, environmental justice, or zero waste. For the 2024-2025 academic year, there were 12 projects funded, including, MiniBots, which utilizes small remote-controlled boats to gather data for monitoring cyanobacteria blooms in the Charles River, and The Chemistry Closet, which aims to tackle the challenge of waste created by laboratory PPE equipment, which often end up discarded or unused, by collecting and redistributing gently used lab materials each semester.

Resident Sustainability Leaders

The Resident Sustainability Leaders program helps engage Warren Towers and West Campus residents around sustainability. These six student leaders help cultivate community around sustainability in their residential communities, provide residents with tools to make environmentally friendly choices in their lives, and find ways for students to engage in climate action work. Part of this work involves administering the Green Room Certification program, which gives on-campus residents ideas and tools to make their dorm life more sustainable. This year marked a record-setting one for the number of residents whose rooms were certified by the RSLs, with over 800 residents getting certified in Warren Towers and West Campus combined.

Operations Climate Action Committee

In May 2022, the Operations Climate Action Committee was formed to create a strategic, actionable roadmap to achieve the goals set forth in the Climate Action Plan of net zero direct carbon emissions by 2040. The committee was designed to enhance collaboration across functional areas and is tasked with providing stewardship, accountability, and leadership to the growing complexity of the Climate Action Plan. This committee, consisting of staff from Operations, Facilities Management, Campus Planning, and Sustainability, meets bi-weekly to ensure progress is made toward the goals set out in the Climate Action Plan and the emissions reduction targets set forth in the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance are met.

Delving Deep into your Queer Ecology: A Three-Conversation Series

In February and March, we co-hosted a three-conversation workshop series in collaboration with the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty and Staff to explore queer ecology. The series used the non-fiction bestseller, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler to guide the workshop. Together with 20 participating faculty and staff members, we collectively explored insights, (un)shared experiences, identities, ecologies, and interspecies interconnections in relation to the sea creatures highlighted in the book.

College to Climate Symposium

BU hosted the College to Climate Symposium on campus in April during Earth Day 365 and in October. It is a networking and learning event empowering students to lead the charge by exploring climate careers. With support from the Feld Career Center at the Questrom School of Business, these events had speakers presenting on how they began work in the climate field, networking sessions, and workshops to kickstart students’ careers in sustainability and climate change related fields.