Annual Report

In the spring of 2010, the Strategic Plan for Environmentally Sustainable Operations was released for review by the campus and community and firmly established Washington University in St. Louis' commitment to reducing our environmental impact and to sustainability overall. The culmination of many months of analytical review and planning by the administration, faculty, and students, the plan serves to summarize the aspirations, challenges, and specific goals for the university's operations moving forward. The driving force for the detailed aspirations and quantifiable goals that the plan laid out is the university's commitment to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to equal 1990 levels by 2020, and doing so without the purchase of carbon off sets.

This commitment represents a 27% reduction below 2009 levels, and over a year later, we are on track to realizing this goal, having made substantive progress in the areas of energy efficiency, green building, transportation, dining, and waste reduction. It's been a very productive year for our campus community and there are a number of operational and academic initiatives that this institution has driven, and more underway, that we would like to share with you.

With this in mind, we have prepared the Office of Sustainability's first Annual Report. This academic year-end review presents a brief summary of Washington University's sustainability–related initiatives, events and accomplishments over the past year and provides a brief overview of some of the challenges to be overcome as we continue to move forward. While the report addresses a number of large-scale operational initiatives and student activities, there are far too many to list comprehensively, and we recognize that there is much being done that has not been captured in this brief review. However, we hope you find this document useful in evaluating our progress along the path laid out by the Strategic Plan for Environmentally Sustainable Operations and welcome your feedback.

We appreciate your commitment to this university priority and look forward to another successful year.