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Office of Sustainability

UH Sustainability News

  • Earth Week 2024 Announcement

    Earth Week 2024 Announcement

    Join the University of Houston in celebrating Earth Week from April 22nd to 26th! Enjoy a variety of events including a Sustainability Lunch offering free food, a plate-waste audit, a volunteer campus clean-up, a sustainability-themed farmers market, and much more. Discover how you can participate and contribute to these exciting initiatives!

  • UH Unveils Centennial Project

    UH Unveils Centennial Project

    In preparation for its centennial celebration in 2027, the University of Houston has decided to transform several prominent areas of campus. The goal is to enhance the student and pedestrian experience, ultimately creating a stronger first impression of the University as well as enduring memories.

  • New Campus Buildings Receive LEED Gold and LEED Silver Certification

    New Campus Buildings Receive LEED Gold and LEED Silver Certification

    The University of Houston’s John M. O’Quinn Law Building and the College of Medicine Building received national recognition this spring by being awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification at the Silver and Gold levels.  

  • Earth Week 2023 Recap

    Earth Week 2023 Recap

    The University of Houston celebrated Earth Month with UH Earth Week from April 17-21, with the Office of Sustainability leading the charge. Some featured events included an e-waste drive, a food waste audit, tree planting, a sustainability-themed farmer’s market, a clothing repair workshop and presentations about conservation efforts. 

  • LEED “Green” Buildings are the New Normal for UH Buildings

    LEED “Green” Buildings are the New Normal for UH Buildings

    Back in 2013, Cougar Woods Dining Hall was the first campus building to be certified as LEED Silver by the U.S. Green Building Council. Today, however, this level of certification is standard for all new buildings at the University of Houston.

  • UH’s Campus Sustainability Committee Aims to Regain STARS Gold Rating

    UH’s Campus Sustainability Committee Aims to Regain STARS Gold Rating

    The UH Campus Sustainability Committee will be using STARS, or the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating Systemrating system, as the framework for university sustainability initiatives moving forward.

  • Grow, Coogs?

    Grow, Coogs?

    First-time visitors to the University of Houston are often surprised to find it more lush and landscaped than they envisioned, with an abundance of arboreal assets that create an almost woodland park atmosphere on the campus. This is no happy accident. There are about 3,400 on the main campus alone.

What We Are Reading

  • Smog over factory at sunset.

    Businesses face more and more pressure from investors to act on climate change

    At annual meetings this spring, shareholders will be pushing publicly-traded companies for information about how they're contributing to climate change, and what they're doing about the problem.

  • Climate forward: Food waste solutions

    Climate forward: Food waste solutions

    This author recently hosted a backyard barbecue at her apartment in Brooklyn. She put out three containers for waste: A trash can, a recycling bin and a compost bin. As herfriends helped me clean up at the end of the night, they learned that they had very different ideas of what was compostable.

  • How Circular Utilization of Urban Tree Waste Can Help Mitigate Climate Change

    How Circular Utilization of Urban Tree Waste Can Help Mitigate Climate Change

    Cities are defined, by most, by their built environment: towering buildings, miles of roads and sidewalks, modes of transportation, and public utilities. But with the threats of climate change looming, researchers are looking for ways to turn vast swaths of natural areas in urban environments into tools to help offset the significant greenhouse gas emissions that cities produce.

  • Recycling Plastic is Practically Impossible--And the Problem is Getting Worse

    Recycling Plastic is Practically Impossible--And the Problem is Getting Worse

    The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S. The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. 

  • American Universities Target Climate Neutrality

    American Universities Target Climate Neutrality

    American universities are in the forefront of research and scholarship—so it makes sense that these institutions would lead in making their facilities environmentally sustainable. In the last 15 years, hundreds of the country’s higher-education institutions have committed to making their campuses carbon neutral. Yet only a tiny few—a dozen or so (or none, depending how the term is defined)—have so far achieved this goal.