Overall Rating Platinum
Overall Score 85.88
Liaison Sam Lubow
Submission Date March 3, 2022

STARS v2.2

Stanford University
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00 Melissa Maigler
Sustainability Coordinator
Sustainability & Energy Management
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Has the institution held a sustainability-related outreach campaign during the previous three years that was directed at students and yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Yes

Has the institution held a sustainability-related outreach campaign during the previous three years that was directed at employees and yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Yes

Name of the campaign:
Campus Race to Zero Waste

A brief description of the campaign:

Campus Race to Zero Waste is a national 8-week intercollegiate competition and benchmarking tool for higher education recycling programs targeting students, staff, and faculty. Each year during Campus Race to Zero Waste, Stanford reports recycling and trash tonnage and attempts to improve its waste management in categories such as total tons recycled, waste diversion rate, waste minimization, and per capita recycling. All members of the campus community are encouraged to participate and evaluate their own waste and recycling habits during this annual competition through activities and trainings offered by Stanford's Office of Sustainability and waste hauler.

During the competition, the Office of Sustainability also partners with the Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation to host sustainability game day challenges, where it engages students, staff and fans to reduce waste, recycle and compost.


A brief description of the measured positive impact(s) of the campaign:

Stanford has maintained a diversion rate around 65-67% for the past ten years. Even with the pandemic in 2020, we reached a 67% recycling rate. Stanford won 1st place for the Campus Race to Zero Waste's Food Organics in 2020 and 1st place for Per Capita Category for Large Campus in 2021.

Below are Stanford's final 2021 results in each of the RecycleMania categories:

Food Organics Analysis: 11 out of 103
Per Capita Classic: 3 out of 128
Diversion: 38 out of 103


Name of the campaign (2nd campaign):
Cardinal Green Buildings

A brief description of the campaign (2nd campaign):

The annual Cardinal Green Buildings campaign is one of the longest-standing Cardinal Green resource conservation campaigns. Stanford operates and maintains hundreds of campus buildings. While advanced systems ensure these buildings operate efficiently, a critical tool in helping further reduce Stanford’s energy use is the collective action of campus building occupants. For years, Stanford’s building managers have helped the university realize significant energy savings through the success of programs like the annual Winter Closure and the Cardinal Green Office Program. In partnership with Stanford's District Managers and Facilities Energy Management teams, these efforts were joined under the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign in order to call attention to the great work building leads are doing and to further engage the campus community in sustainability. Thus, the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign now helps promote Winter Closure both by working with building managers to curtail heating and cooling in buildings over the two-week holiday period and by promoting individual participation from students, staff and faculty to ensure that all appliances and electronics are unplugged during the building curtailment. In 2015 and 2016, additional programs were introduced under the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign umbrella, such as Thanksgiving Closure--a four-day shutdown over the Thanksgiving holiday. See more details here: https://sustainable.stanford.edu/cardinal-green/campaign/winter-closure-building-managers

Also note, the Winter Closure campaign has a strong student peer-to-peer component, which is described in more detail in the "EN-1: Student Educators Program" credit.


A brief description of the measured positive impact(s) of the campaign (2nd campaign):

Winter Closure has resulted in a cumulative net energy cost savings of over $5.6 million since its inception. In 2020, a total of 155 buildings participated in the program for 3 weeks to save:

874,586 kilowatt-hours of electricity
4,954 million BTU of thermal energy (combination of hot water and process steam savings)
202,603 ton-hours of chilled water savings
$410,890 in operating savings
765 metric tons of CO2 emissions avoided


A brief description of other sustainability-related outreach campaigns:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.