Yale University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

Specific examples of the use of the campus for learning and engagement include: a project educating students on sustainable laundry practices by establishing drying racks in laundry rooms and launching a pilot initiative that provides free and environmentally friendly laundry supplies, benefitting low-income students, reducing waste, and incentivizing students to purchase environmentally friendly products; a Green Team Certification program conducted by Bulldog Sustainability, Yale’s student-athlete team working at the intersection of sustainability and athletics; a virtual thrift store for Yale students; and several student-led energy projects, including a daylight harvesting project and the implementation of light controls.

Examples include: • The Yale Office of Sustainability has been working with the City of New Haven to provide a business plan for a collaborative bike sharing program (BikeShare). • The Yale Urban Resources Initiative (URI) planted its 10,000th tree in the City of New Haven in 2022, fulfilling the impetus of the Tree Haven 10k program instated in 2010. URI has partnered closely with the New Haven Parks Department for several decades to implement the Greenspace program, a part of which is the URI GreenSkills program, through which Yale students plant trees on Saturdays with New Haven high school students. • At COP26, the United Nations’ 26th Climate Change Conference, dozens of Yale students, faculty and staff participated in discussions centered around mitigating the effects of climate change. The U.N.’s annual climate summit, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland in 2021, gathered world leaders and representatives from more than 200 countries to push forward the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. More than 20 Yale students attended, supporting a variety of organizations and government delegations. • The Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY) connects leading companies, NGOs and policymakers with extensive networks of sustainability professionals, students and faculty at Yale.

The Yale Carbon Charge Project continues to test feasibility of carbon pricing on Yale’s campus. This applied research has implications for energy policy, climate change mitigation, and environmental economics. It was conceptualized by a task force of faculty, students, and staff, and is currently being run in 300+ buildings.

First year students in the School of Architecture are required to participate in an annual building project that includes the design and building of an affordable, efficient home. Partnerships with Habitat for Humanity, Neighborhood Housing Services, Common Ground, and currently Neighborworks New Horizons, have led to a focus on affordable housing. The houses allow students the experience of working with a client and the opportunity to respond to the challenges of affordable housing and urban infill. Students have shown great enthusiasm for these projects focusing on community development and neighborhood improvement. Many of them arrive at school with a desire to include such socially responsible work in their future professional lives. Having the opportunity to participate in the design and construction of such building projects often reinforces their dedication to do so. The 2020 Jim Vlock First Year Building Project is sited on the interior of a residential block in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood. First-year M.Arch I students were able to design the two-unit, single-story structure before pandemic-related shutdowns. This house marks the fourth collaboration with Columbus House, a New Haven-based provider of services to populations dealing with homelessness. Construction onsite took place in the late summer and autumn of 2020, with tenants moving in in early 2021. The design of the house explores circular economies of waste reduction, relying on sustainable timber construction.

In 2021, a junior at Yale founded the Yale Refrigerants Initiative with a $25,000-grant from the Office of Facilities’ Student Green Innovation Fund, which provides awards to student projects that can measurably reduce Yale’s greenhouse gas emissions. Initially, the project focused on refrigerant emissions from mini fridges in student dorm rooms until it was discovered that the real culprit was larger equipment used by Yale Hospitality and the thousands of refrigerators and freezers used by Yale’s research community. With support from the Yale Office of Facilities and the Office of Sustainability, several undergraduate students set out to catalog every major piece of equipment that uses refrigerants on campus and have compiled their findings into a database that the university can use to gain a fuller picture of its greenhouse gas inventory, and that will help to achieve Yale’s goal of reaching zero actual carbon emissions by 2050.

The Yale Sustainable Food Program (YSFP) is the steward of two multi-functional farms, one on central campus and the other situated within the Yale Landscape Lab on West Campus. On the farm, in the classroom, and around the world, the YSFP serves as a hub for diverse activities related to food, agriculture, health, and the environment. The YSFP offers a range of paid and unpaid internships, fellowships, awards, and both curricular and co-curricular experiences for Yale students at all levels of study, both during the regular academic year and over the summer. We also convene and support a range of workshops, conferences, colloquia, and guest speakers for the benefit of students and the wider Yale and New Haven community.

Students in a 2021 Nature Based Solutions Capstone Course looked at land management practices across Yale’s urban campus grounds and proposed recommendations to increase carbon storage and sequestration. They generated a report intended to serve as a baseline for planning future projects to enhance the carbon sink value of different land uses on campus. This included a rasterized GIS map of the natural lands on the Yale campus, their current estimated carbon storage and sequestration and an algorithm to estimate the change in carbon storage and sequestration for different potential land conversion projects. The report attempts to align recommendations and information for planning with current Yale practices and land use designations and provides an updated planting list that identifies plant species that have high carbon value.

In 2021, a student updated Yale’s Sustainable Procurement Standards Guide. To update the guidelines, the student researched the EPA’s Recommendations for Specifications, Standards, and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing to create a list of standards/programs that should be adhered to when purchasing office supplies, cleaning products, electronics, furniture, paint, university vehicles, light bulbs, water services, and appliances to help Yale identify and procure environmentally preferable products and services within those categories.

In 2021, a student research assistant reviewed lessons learned from prior Yale bikeshare programs, concluding that a city-based bikeshare system would serve the university community more equitably, ensuring access to more users (broadening participation from undergraduate students to graduate and professional school students, staff, and faculty members). Building on these learnings, she developed a business plan for a new program that would serve not only Yale but the broader New Haven community. This effort included partnership-building with local non-profit organizations and quasi-public entities, development of a public engagement survey, fundraising letter, and marketing resources.

In 2019, undergraduate and graduate students assessed the efficacy of an existing set of rain gardens to make recommendations for future installations. They were able to vet their recommendations with the landscape architect for a forthcoming project. Their ideas have been embraced, and as the installation proceeds, that site will be the subject of ongoing research.

Student representatives from Yale College (undergraduate), professional schools and graduate schools are members of the Sustainability Advisory Council, a group of institutional leaders, student representatives, and alumni tasked with offering guidance and inspiration on Yale’s Sustainability Plan.

Students in a 2021 Capstone Course served as clients for Yale’s Carbon Offsets Working Group and developed an Environmental Justice Screening Tool to incorporate procedural, distributive, and restorative justice principles into the due diligence selection process for University Offset Purchases.

The Carbon Offsets Task Force is a group of students, faculty, and staff formed to recommend an actionable policy to guide the use of carbon offsets, including criteria for meaningful offsets, pace of acquisition and retirement of offsets, and a governance structure to support an ongoing carbon offsets program. Participating on the task force were student representatives of Yale College, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. In addition, student research on carbon offset projects and verification programs contributed to the background materials for the task force.