Washington State University

College Sustainability Report Card 2007

Washington State University's Sustainability Initiative has a volunteer coordinator and an active work group that tackles campus sustainability issues and conducts an annual sustainability forum. The recently adopted Executive Policy #24 makes a formal commitment to improve its performance in sustainability in all areas of operation.

The University's facilities operations department and environmental health and safety office have worked diligently to reduce energy use on campus and to find more efficient ways to provide the same level of utilities services. While the University does have a program encouraging the growth of renewable energy in the state of Washington, no purchase of renewable energy credits or renewable energy installations have yet occurred.

The Dining Services has equipment to mulch all food waste as part of the campus composting program, which then sells the compost to local nurseries. The dining halls now use local, organic ingredients for all baking and bread products, and another line of organics was added in response to student comments, in addition to Organic Fridays, which will begin in the spring of 2007. The Waste Wise – Shared Responsibility recycling program recycles 57 percent of the waste stream from approximately 1,500 collection areas throughout campus, and when a campus-wide cookout hosted 5,400 students, only 13 pounds of waste were not recycled or composted.

While the University has not yet certified or registered any projects under the LEED program, any state-funded university's new major building or renovation projects must meet LEED Silver standards at a minimum, per the governor's order. All project managers within the WSU Capital Planning and Development (CPD) department are or will be LEED-certified. The CPD department has been a leader in the field of energy conservation and has incorporated green building design in several building projects.

The University makes neither its proxy voting record nor its list of endowment holdings public. This information is only available to trustees and senior administrators.

The University prioritizes investing to maximize profit and has not made any public statements about investigating or investing in renewable energy funds or community development loan funds.

The University asks that its investment managers handle the details of proxy voting.