Yale’s annual Celebrate Sustainability Week brought together hundreds of community members for a week of events aimed at educating, empowering, and celebrating solutions—both big and small—to the challenges of climate change.
At more than 29 events, participants heard from experts on urban mobility, religion and ecology, and carbon removal; planted trees and flower bulbs; swapped old books for new ones; practiced meditation, enjoyed a native plant walk; gathered to envision Yale’s sustainable future; and celebrated the opening the Living Village, now the greenest building on campus.
Below are a few highlights from the week.
The week began with a grand opening for Yale Divinity School’s Living Village, a regenerative residence hall that will give back to the environment more than it takes and was designed to meet the world’s highest standard for sustainable construction.
Peer mentors from Yale College Environmental Studies promoted circularity with a mending workshop on Cross Campus. Participants made their own miniature mending kits to take home, equipping mint tins with needle, thread, and buttons.
Yale Peabody Museum’s Patrick Sweeney and Susan Butts led a fascinating native plant walk around the museum, identifying two dozen native plant species and offering tips for home gardeners on how to promote biodiversity.
With the help of Urban Resources Initiative, Yale staff members celebrating milestone work anniversaries helped plant two trees at Cross Campus to mark their years of service at the university.
Yale Library sponsored a weeklong book swap that encouraged readers to swap old books for new ones. Book carts stationed at nine library locations around campus promoted circularity, waste reduction, and offered free reading material to the Yale and New Haven communities.
Ryan Darr, an assistant professor of Religion, Ethics, and Environment, gave a lunchtime talk as part of the Yale Environmental Humanities “Food for Thought” series. Darr’s research touches on environmental ethics, multispecies justice, structural injustice, ethical theory, and the history of religious and philosophical ethics.
A dozen students at Yale School of Management gathered at lunchtime to hear about the school’s new Sustainability Action Plan and how they can get involved.
At an annual planting party and sustainability fair on Cross Campus, students and staff planted flower bulbs using zero-emission landscape equipment, learned about student sustainability groups, made climate-themed buttons, and scrawled inspiring messages about the ways they are living sustainably. The event was co-sponsored by the Office of Sustainability and Yale Landscape and Grounds.
The week concluded with the launch of a new strategic planning process that will guide Yale’s climate and sustainability goals over the next few decades. Known as Yale Planetary Solutions Strategic Vision 2050, the kickoff event convened leaders from the city of New Haven, the state of Connecticut, and beyond to begin mapping the university’s next steps in addressing the greatest challenges facing humankind.
