Waste Reduction

Greening Pacific

In early 2007, Pacific launched a University-wide initiative to make campus offices more “green.” Led by a community member, 151 Pacific employees joined in a grassroots effort to modify habits and adopt more eco-friendly practices. The campaign continues to educate students, staff and faculty about eco-friendly office practices, including paper and supply re-use, environmentally-preferable purchasing options and responsible recycling.

Give & Go

The Center for Civic Engagement, the departments of Housing and Residence Life, and the Office of Facilities Management team up to reduce the amount of reusable items that end up in the waste stream when students move off campus in the spring. Each May, bins are made available on campus to collect food, clothes and household supplies that are, in turn, donated to local nonprofit organizations for reuse. For more information, contact the Center for Civic Engagement by emailing cce@pacificu.edu.

Finders Keepers

The Finders Keepers program collects clothing and then gives away free clothing. Students can pick up casual and athletic clothing, as well as clothes for interviews, presentations and other formal events.

AASHE Sustainability Competition

In 2016, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Eduction (AASHE) offered a competition for campuses across the United States to participate in by presenting the association with their sustainable advancements on campus. The competition focused on projects related to energy consumption reduction, waste reduction, food waste reduction, water usage reduction and climate change. Each applicant was to give an overview of the campus project being worked on and what it would solve. The Center for a Sustainable Society entered Pacific University into this competition, along with 225 other applicants. Pacific was chosen as one of the 20 semi finalists to continue on to the next round. At this step, each semi finalist was to submit a video covering their plans for the project. Pacific's project has been focused on reducing food waste throughout campus by focusing on composting. Although Pacific University did not make it to the next round, making it to the semi finals shows the potential this project has for campus.