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We are pleased to announce that Celebrate SustainabilityRead More

Standing on central campus armed with prizes and friendly smiles, members of the Compost Crew, the waste management branch of the Sustainability Service Corps, stopped passing Yale students to find out what they knew about recycling. The event, held on November 15^th, America Recycle Day, was an opportunity for the Compost Crew to gain a sense of students’ recycling savvy and also educate students in a fun, informal context.

Successfully meeting the challenge set by its Sustainability Action Plan, the Yale School of Management (SOM) decreased its paper use by 19 percent—more than any other Yale graduate or professional school—between the 09-10 and 11-12 academic years. SOM accomplished its goal even as its population increased by six percent. Students, faculty, and staff collaborated on this effort, led by the SOM Student Sustainability Group, the SOM Student Government, and Acting Chief Administrative Officer Richard Bascom, co-recipient of the 2012 Yale Sustainability Achievement Award.

What would you do to promote recycling? Make a poster? Wear a green t-shirt? Maddy Yozwiak ’14 dressed up as Captain Planet during her senior year of high school. “I had lost all sense of shame,” Yozwiak said at a recent TedxYale conference, remembering how futile her efforts to promote sustainability seemed at the time. “No matter how we talked about climate change, no matter what we did, [my school’s Environmental Awareness Club] never had more than five people at our meetings… No one cared. I didn’t know what else to do besides don some gold tights, make a cape out of one of my mom’s towels, and try to get the word out one last time.