04/22/2025
Happy Earth Day, Loggers!
To help you celebrate, we've provided ways to get involved in sustainability and updates on recent sustainability efforts on campus.
There are a number of events planned for Saturday, April 26, including a Sustainability x Puget Sound Outdoors trash pickup with Oscar’s Enemies. Saturday will also be the , featuring activities and vendors all committed to sustainability.
Pro-tip: Pierce Transit buses and , both with stops less than a quarter mile from campus, will take you directly to the Expo. Students can check out an Orca card for free from ASUPS. You can find additional local events on the calendar at .
Below, we've highlighted two recent sustainability campaigns—the results of our recent Commute Survey, and our new composting efforts in the SUB.
How Does Puget Sound Get Around?
Earlier this year, we conducted a commute survey across campus to understand how students, faculty, and staff travel to campus. The survey results, summarized below, showed that many different commute modes are utilized on-campus. Thank you to all who participated!
Find more resources for sustainable commuting at .
Composting Goes Live in the Dining Hall
We are excited to announce that we have brought back post-consumer composting to the SUB! Now, when students drop off their trays, food scraps and compostable ware are sorted and sent for composting through . The dining hall has also switched to compostable to-go ware. We are exploring ways to expand this program across campus. Stay tuned!
This effort complements our other food waste reduction strategies, such as using InSinkErators in the kitchen to divert vegetable scraps and other unusable pre-consumer food waste from the landfill, and our Food Salvage program, which last year recovered more than 800 pounds of excess prepared food and donated it to area nonprofit organizations.
While we have highlighted our sustainable commuting and composting efforts, the University also continues to invest in sustainability across our campus, such as our herbicide- and pesticide-free commitment for grounds on our main campus. Sustainability Student workers continue to ensure our recycling program runs smoothly, and have also created engaging campus events such as a Visible Mending workshop with Tacoma's Remakery. We will also be updating the University's Sustainability section on the website this summer to better inform our campus of all the good work.
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact my office with questions, comments, or ideas for sustainable changes we can make on campus.
Cheers,
Lexi Brewer | Director of Sustainability