UW-Madison earned a ‘B' on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's annual College Sustainability Report Card released Wednesday.
The report, which surveyed 332 universities across the United States, is a comparative study that evaluates various aspects of campus sustainability, including administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, student involvement and transportation.
The report scored UW-Madison the highest in the areas of transportation, administration and food and recycling, highlighting the Associated Students of Madison's free bus pass service and the University Housing and Union food services.
""Currently, 68 percent of the campus community commutes via environmentally preferable transportation,"" the report said.
The report also mentioned the UW-Madison We Conserve program, a campuswide initiative to make the campus more energy efficient, citing the program's efforts to educate the UW-Madison community about environmental issues.
According to We Conserve project manager James Harrod, the main goal of the program is to create partnerships with student organizations and departments on campus to eventually reduce UW-Madison's energy consumption by 20 percent by 2010.
""I think we're definitely going down the right road, and we've had some great accomplishments so far,"" he said, mentioning that the program helps save UW-Madison almost $5 million per year in energy costs.
Harrod said the We Conserve recycling program overhauled several university buildings to sort out the trash and recycling facilities, which so far has helped reduce UW-Madison waste by about 9 percent.
He said the program is trying to encourage more students to think about these sustainability issues, adding that the program aims to cover a wide spectrum of issues from water conservation to smart transportation.
""This is such a great institution,"" he said. ""We want to get all these students who are the leaders of tomorrow thinking about this.""
To view the complete results of the report, visit greenreportcard.org.
