University of Waterloo
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

In ENBUS 402: Capstone Project, students have been tasked with identifying new ways to communicate sustainability messaging with the campus community and have created a variety of digital assets to distribute.

Waterloo’s Environment and Business 402 capstone project matches students for an 8-month applied learning project with multiple businesses within Waterloo Region and beyond to help them solve sustainability challenges. This program has launched projects across the public, private, and civil society sectors for multiple years, all with a focus on consulting-type deliverables that will help the client partner organization advance one or more aspects of their corporate sustainability efforts.

In 2024, students from GEOG391: Field Research are exploring microclimates on campus by measuring wind speeds, temperature, light exposure and soil moisture. Findings from this work can help identify best practices for sustainable landscaping. 

Civil engineering students (CIVE 382) monitored the movement of water through building pipes and storm water management infrastructure on campus to identify areas of high risk of flooding during rain events. These findings can help to improve storm water management for future construction.

Students from MSCI 100: Management Engineering Concepts, explored the potential of solar generation across the University on campus grounds, rooftops, and parking lots, and made recommendations of ideal locations.

In INTEG 499: Independent Group Project, students identified the potential for additional food and pollinator gardens across campus, and created an educational webstie about gardening. Additionally, the student group hosted a workshop on gardening.

For ENVS 341: Professional Restoration and Conservation Practice, students learned stream restoration techniques to build sediment mats along Laurel Creek to assist in narrowing the stream channel to make it deeper and more suitable for fish habitat, reduce erosion, and improve water quality.

For their capstone project ENBUS 402 students identified ways to calculate Scope 3 emissions of supply chains and made recommendations on how to incorporate this into Waterloo's purchasing policies. 

Fourth year planning students have mapped out existing cycling infrastructure on campus and made recommendations on bike storage, wayfinding, signage, and engagement as part of their final capstone project.

Several courses have worked on identifying ways to improve waste diversion on campus via social media campaigns, booths, and competitions. These types of projects have helped Waterloo increase its waste diversion rates.

Students in ENVS200: Field Ecology regularly collect water samples for contaminant testing using the Laurel Creek, which winds its way through campus. This information is an indicator of overall health of Laurel Creek, a tributary of the Grand River.

Several courses from the School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development department utilize Waterloo’s sustainability reports as a case study in class projects to outline best practices and offer opportunity for critique and areas of improvement.

For their capstone project, ENBUS 402 students surveyed students, staff and faculty on their thoughts about greenspaces, and made a business case for the importance of greenspaces for health and wellbeing.