Empowerment
A more open, connected, and innovative Yale
Yale welcomes all voices in fostering a diverse and inclusive sustainability movement.
Yale’s Efforts
- Yale alumni become champions for sustainability in all sectors. Yale Blue Green is a shared interest group for alumni who are engaged in sustainability issues and eager to connect with each other.
- Professional schools and departments across the University host Green Teams to pilot new initiatives and develop Sustainability Action Plans.
What You Can Do
- Join a Yale Affinity Group or Cultural Center and promote the connection between sustainability and social justice. Review the guide to learn more about these connections.
Our Objectives and Goals
Engage and Empower
Engage and empower members of the Yale community around themes of sustainability
In the spring of 2022, a Yale College-wide food donation drive was held by a team of undergraduate students to coincide with Yale’s annual Spring Salvage event. With support from the Office of Sustainability, the students offered a food collection bin at each of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges and, in a single week, amassed 654 pounds of nonperishable food items and hygiene products that were donated to New Haven’s Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen.
Sustainability Action Plans
ACHIEVED
By 2020, create and implement sustainability action plans for key academic, cultural, and administrative Yale departments to support the ambitions of the Yale Sustainability Plan 2025.
This goal was achieved in 2020. To date, over thirty action plans (including one for each of the fourteen residential colleges) have been developed. This program has resulted in active engagement in all eleven professional schools, Athletics, the Libraries, Yale’s cultural properties, Operations (Human Resources and Administration, Public Safety and Security, ITS, Hospitality, Internal Communications), Global Strategy, Development, and Alumni Affairs.
Sustainability Literacy
ACHIEVED
By 2020, develop and launch a sustainability literacy initiative for Yale students, faculty, and staff that assesses and improves sustainability awareness and empowers action.
This goal was achieved in 2020, with the development and launch of a university-wide sustainability survey in 2018 and subsequent communication of survey outcomes. The survey was administered again in 2021 to measure progress.
Support Diversity and Inclusion
Support diversity and inclusion in local efforts through education and collaboration
Sustainability Inclusion and Justice Initiative
ACHIEVED
By 2018, launch an initiative to promote dialogue about sustainability, inclusion, and justice on campus and in New Haven.
This goal was achieved in 2020, when a subcommittee of faculty, staff, and students investigated tools to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into sustainability programming and recommended a process for future decision-making. Learnings from this process are actively being integrated across a range of sustainability-related activities.
Applying an Intersectional Lens to Sustainability Programming
ON TRACK
Since 2020, the Office completes an annual Co-benefit Assessment to track the impacts of our goals pertaining to community well-being and social, environmental, and economic resilience. The Office will report annually on the results of this assessment and progress made from year to year.
The 2022 Co-benefits Assessment appears at the conclusion of this Progress Report. Of our current active goals, two goals had at least one major co-benefit in 2022, twelve goals had at least one moderate co-benefit, and the remaining goals had neutral co-benefits. We are working on a process to build intentionality about co-benefits into our sustainability goals.