Tagged: Sustainability

The holidays are a great time to celebrate responsibly through small, but meaningful steps to reduce waste.

The Ohio State University has earned a Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) Gold rating. With more than 900 participants across 40 countries, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) STARS program publicly reports comprehensive information related to a college or university’s sustainability performance.  

Don’t let your pumpkins haunt the landfill. Green your Halloween and return nutrients to the soil by composting them! 

As highlighted by The Office of Academic Affairs, Ohio State Energy Partners (OSEP) has announced the recipients of its 2023-24 philanthropic awards. The awards provide funding for proposals that align with Ohio States sustainability goals and support the continuation of successful initiatives or the development/implementation of new programs or research projects that continue the trajectory of meeting the goals. Facilities Operations Development (FOD) Zero Waste Manager, Mary Leciejewski, earned an OSEP award for Administration and Planning's Food Scrap Compost Expansion. 

The Ohio State University Columbus campus joined more than 3.4 million college students and staff across the country in the 2023 Campus Race to Zero Waste competition. During the competition, Buckeyes saved more than 1.9 million pounds of materials from being buried in a landfill. These materials will now get a second chance by being transformed into new products through recycling and composting.

The Lantern recently highlighted a collaboration between Facilities Operations and Development (FOD), the Sustainability Institute (SI) and Susan Melsop, professor of design, to prompt conversations about sustainability and campus composting. FOD and SI shared guidance and informational resources about composting and well as logistics coordination for the interactive wagon roll-out.

Read full article

From handmade seed paper to a student-designed fold-out magazine, Facilities Operations and Development (FOD) is partnering with a Design Activism course to get the word out about composting around campus. When Associate Professor of Design, Susan Melsop, approached FOD and the Sustainability Institute about working together on the Design Activism for Sustainability project, FOD Zero Waste Manager, Mary Leciejewski, was eager to lend a hand.

Updated: April 7, 2023
Please Note: Registration is now closed.

The results are in from Facilities Operations and Development’s (FOD) two-phase waste characterization study on waste and recycling generated on Ohio State’s main campus.

Baseline data was collected in fall 2021 as part of phase one and multiple waste program enhancements were made to improve how materials were being managed on campus, including:

Ready, set, recycle! The Lantern featured Facilities Operations and Development (FOD) in an article on the university competing in The Campus Race to Zero Waste. The competition aims to encourage students, faculty and staff to recycle more, recycle right and compost. 

"If the faculty, staff and students were to put recyclables in the correct bin, Ohio State could increase its landfill diversion rate by 27 percent this year," Molly Kathleen, zero waste coordinator for Facilities Operations and Development, told The Lantern.