Sustainability

MISSION: 
It is the goal of Mount Union College’s Sustainability Task Force to meet the growing concern for sustainability on our campus.  Through education and communication, we will encourage and facilitate awareness and action on our campus and throughout the Alliance community.  We will assist the College in its decision making process in these aspects, and will search out opportunities that are socially, financially and environmentally sound in order to create a sustainable,  efficient, and healthy atmosphere for our students, faculty, and staff.

American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment

President Richard Giese was among the first 500 college and university presidents to sign this commitment.


Mount Union has accomplished the following steps of the commitment: (view full report)

• Created a sustainability task force
• Taken two action steps toward sustainability
  • Initiated a sustainable purchasing plan
  • Taken specific steps to reduce waste

• Conducted a greenhouse gas inventory – our campus carbon footprint is 31245 metric tonnes per year or about 12.5 tonnes per person (students and employees)
• Our next step is to develop a climate action plan that will take the campus to a level of climate neutrality

Mount Union is Assessing its current level of sustainability and is a pilot campus for the AASHE STARS program.

STARS is a voluntary, self-reporting framework for gauging relative progress toward sustainability for colleges and universities. STARS is designed to:

• Provide a guide for advancing sustainability in all sectors of higher education, from governance and operations to academics and community engagement.
• Enable meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions by establishing a common standard of measurement for sustainability in higher education.
• Create incentives for continual improvement toward sustainability.
• Facilitate information sharing about higher education sustainability practices and performance.
• Build a stronger, more diverse campus sustainability community and promote a comprehensive understanding of sustainability that includes its social, economic and environmental dimensions