What a great year for sustainability at NYU! 

2024 saw the launch of new initiatives, programs, and events advancing sustainability across the university. From building re-openings to a university-wide survey, let’s take a look at some of this year’s best moments!

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This year’s Earth Month was jam-packed with almost 50 events throughout the month in celebration of sustainability, climate action, and the environment. Events explored food, culture, careers, energy, the arts, and more, all through the lens of environmentalism and sustainability.

• As part of Earth Month, we launched NYU’s inaugural Green Jobs Fair. Students were invited to explore careers in sustainability, build their networks, and learn more about a range of industries. Nearly 700 students signed up for this fair! 
• The Office of Sustainability launched its Sustainability Leadership Program. This intensive cohort-based six-week program allowed students to explore climate advocacy, outreach, and peer-to-peer education. 
• The Environmental and Racial Justice Network held its Spring Summit with an in-person fireside chat to kick off the 2-day event! The summit explored the themes of food and climate justice and had special guest speakers Dr. Robert Bullard who is often credited as being the ‘Father of Environmental Justice,’ and Jasmine Davenport, the Executive Director of Our Climate. 

NYU announced it would be among the consortium of leading institutions to establish a world-leading climate solutions campus on Governors Island, as part of the New York Climate Exchange. It is expected to open its first facilities on the island by 2028!

This summer, 10 students were able to explore sustainability career fields with our 4th annual round of Sustainability Internship Grants. Accepted students worked at organizations like the Butterfly Network, UNICEF, Oakland Zoo, Terraform ONE, and more!

After a year of construction, Rubin Hall welcomed new students for fall 2024 and is on track to achieve Passive House certification and LEED Platinum. This nearly 100-year-old building has been outfitted with new windows, insulation, and air conditioning, while expected to have a 100% reduction in fossil fuel usage. Once certified, it will be the largest Passive House retrofit in the U.S.

NYU hosted over 100 sustainability-related events in the 2023-2024 academic school year. To make it easier, the Office of Sustainability launched a Sustainability Event Funding Program, which offers up to $1,500 to support these events. All events also follow our Green Events Standard, furthering sustainability initiatives at the administration level!

September was a busy time for sustainability at NYU! With Climate Week at NYU, the university held almost 30 events to celebrate taking climate action. One of those events was the 2024 Plant-Based Food Festival, which gave the NYU community the chance to explore delicious and sustainable treats from different brands and local restaurants.

At the festival, NYU announced that it would be joining the NYC Plant-Powered Carbon Challenge! This city initiative aims to decrease food-related greenhouse gas emissions and NYU pledged to reduce its emissions 25% by 2030. 

The Sustainability Leadership Program evolved into the Sustainability Leaders Fellowship, now a year-long program! This program builds on the pilot by allowing students to develop project proposals to tackle sustainability challenges at NYU. 

In October, the Office of Sustainability launched the 2024 Transportation Survey to help inform safe, healthy, convenient, accessible, and sustainable travel practices for the NYU community. The survey ran for 6 weeks and garnered over 19,000 responses! 

Two NYU spaces making up over 40,000 square footage achieved LEED certification in November! The fifth floor of Meyer Hall received LEED Gold certification and the Tisch Virtual Production Center at Industry City received LEED Platinum.

NYU held a soft launch for the Climate Change Initiative, which brought together faculty and staff from around the university to face climate crises head-on.

We’re ending the year on a great note, with NYU ranking #15 on the Princeton Review’s 2025 Top 50 Green Colleges and #9 in the QS Sustainability 2025 Edition in the USA!

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A big thank you to all NYU community members who continue to work tirelessly to make sustainability a priority all year round! NYU will continue to develop new programs and initiatives as it strives to be a leader in climate and sustainability well into 2025!

2023 was a big year for NYU as it surpassed expectations and reached new sustainability heights!

From a week-long celebration to combat climate anxiety to moving up in sustainability rankings, students, faculty, staff, and administrators from across the university came together to advance NYU’s sustainability initiatives and programs. Let’s take a look at some of our accomplishments this year!

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We started the year with the opening of the new John A. Paulson Center. This LEED Gold-certified building with 58 classrooms, academic and athletic facilities, theaters, common rooms, and faculty and student housing, was engineered with sustainability in mind.

 

In February, President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Georgine Dopico, and Executive Vice President Martin Dorph endorsed NYU’s Commitment to Sustainability. The commitment was developed by the NYU Sustainability Advisory Group and details how NYU strives to conserve natural resources, encourage sustainability practices, and more.

2040 Now was a week of creating climate awareness and taking action! We held several big events and competitions throughout the week to inspire students to take climate action and advocate for change.

• We launched the first-ever 2040 Now Climate Short Film Competition and received submissionsfrom all over the globe.
• The Environmental Racial and Justice Network (ERJN) held its first in-person Spring Summit, with multiple ERJN events throughout the week.
• The NYU community was zipping around campus during our Micromobility Festival where they got to try out electric scooters and e-bikes and enjoyed helmet giveaways and discounted bikes. 
• Outfits inspired by climate activism, upcycling, biodiversity, and more walked down the runway during our Re-Fashion Show, hosted by none other than Plant Kween. 
• The 2040 Now Center, the hub of all activity, allowed students to connect with their elected officials through postcard writing and advocacy. It also featured revolving speakers, activities, and tabling events.

As the spring semester wrapped up, we celebrated reaching 10,000 students through class presentations, where they learned about NYU’s sustainability initiatives, programs, and opportunities to get involved. It was a great opportunity to connect with students and faculty members! 

In June, NYU was ranked by the Times Higher Education for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the U.S. we ranked #3 for Climate Action, #4 for Responsible Consumption and Production, and #5 for Affordable and Clean Energy! We also added a ‘sustainability’ tag in Albert to make it easier for students to find sustainability-related courses.

During the summer, we helped 12 students explore sustainability fields with our 3rd annual round of Sustainability Internship Grants. With our largest application pool yet, the accepted students worked at organizations like the United Nations Environmental Program, The Staten Island Zoo, Circle of Blue, and more. 

In September, NYU Abu Dhabi launched its Climate Action Plan. The plan enables the University to measure its greenhouse gas emissions and set clear, measurable targets for reduction. NYUAD’s carbon neutrality goal by 2050 is roughly equivalent to planting almost 20,000 acres of mangroves, three times the acreage of Saadiyat island in Abu Dhabi.

We celebrated Biketober with bike riding lessons outside of Tandon, where NYU community members were able to learn the ins and outs of riding a bike and bike safety. We also highlighted  Campus Safety’s Bike Response Unit, which is back on campus and demonstrates how bikes can revolutionize and aid public safety.

More recently, NYU climbed Princeton Review’s Greenest Colleges List to the #3 spot! Since appearing on the rankings in 2021, we’ve installed solar panels on the roof of Bobst Library, LEED-certified 5 more buildings (bringing the total to 17), and are currently conducting a passive house retrofit of Rubin Hall.

We ended the year with some great news. NYU is ranked #8 in the USA for the 2024 QS Sustainability Rankings, up from #17 in 2023! The QS Sustainability Rankings measures an institution’s ability to tackle the world’s greatest ESG challenges and features nearly 1,400 universities worldwide.

 

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We thank the many members of our community who have helped advance sustainability efforts at NYU. All our 2023 accomplishments and favorite memories are possible only through collaborative efforts! We look forward to creating an even greener NYU in 2024 and a greener world as well. 

 

Year after year, NYU continues to strive for excellence in sustainability, 2022 was no exception.

From new initiatives to community partnerships, building renovations to welcome week events; students, faculty, staff, and administrators from across the university have been invaluable to making a greener NYU. We’re shining the spotlight on some of 2022’s great accomplishments! 

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New Addition to Bobst! 

In February, President Andrew Hamilton revealed that Bobst Library would be equipped with 304 solar panels and installation was completed by early this summer. The solar panels generate 110 kilowatts of energy, that’s the same as powering the Seventh Street student residence for a year! 

 

NYU Biking

In March, NYU was awarded Silver-level Bicycle Friendly University and Business status by the American League of Bicyclists for efforts to support affordable, sustainable, and healthy transportation. Biking is a central part of the NYU community, with our 2019 survey showing that there had been a 627% increase in bike ridership over the last decade. In addition to doubling bike parking across NYU’s campus over the last two years, NYU also coordinated group rides, bike education, gave out more than 300 helmets to the community and much more! Learn more about biking at NYU.

Earth Month

For the first time since 2019, we once again held the Earth Day Street Fair! The NYU and NYC community came out to celebrate the planet we live on and learned about actions they can take to protect it. 

During the 2022 State of Sustainability address, we reported on recent accomplishments, announced new initiatives, and recognized community leaders for their significant contributions to our sustainability efforts. We also unveiled 2040 Now, a university-wide, week-long initiative in April 2023 to envision a sustainable future in the year 2040, when NYU plans to be climate neutral! 

In May, we successfully removed over 9 tons of waste during our annual Green Apple Move Out, our annual initiative to collect and donate unwanted items from students moving out of residence halls. More than 500 items were diverted from the landfill, and were instead rehomed or recycled!

 

 

Student Engagement

During fall welcome week, we got to hear from students about how we can confront the climate crisis and achieve climate neutrality by 2040. Our interactive kiosks, focused on 2040 Now, invited students to think about and leave their comments on how they’d like to lower their environmental impacts in their spending, community, and otherwise. We were excited to hear from so many students on how NYU can achieve climate neutrality as a community!

 

 

 

Art Installation

*This Is Not a Drill*, funded through our Green Grants program, produced an exhibit with artworks that focus on the intersection of technology, equity, and the climate emergency and was displayed in Bobst’s Gallery. During the exhibition’s closing event, Cecil Scheib, the Chief Sustainability Officer at NYU, along with a panel of climate science experts discussed how we can create a public pedagogy to combine technology, the arts, critical thinking, and climate justice activism.

 

Pilot Program

In October, through community partnership with Union Square Partnership, the Clean Curbs Pilot program was brought to NYU, just outside the Carlyle Court residence hall. Normally, bags of trash are placed on sidewalks, where it can obstruct pedestrian traffic, leak, emit odors, and attract pests. With the new bins, trash bags can be placed within a solid structure eliminating those issues.

 

Waste Week

Our annual Waste Week in November featured an array of events, workshops and engagements centered around multiple key waste areas that included fashion, food, and material waste. One of our most popular events was our live food waste tracking at Downstein and Third North, where front-of-house food waste was recorded, measured, and analyzed. We were able to compost 44 pounds of food scraps from plate waste and students were incredibly excited to know their food was going towards composting efforts!

 

Intersectional Environmentalism 

The Environmental and Racial Justice Network (ERJN) sponsored the Critical Voices working group, which examines the relationship between environmentalism, biodiversity conservation and racial justice to discuss the critical role that histories of settler colonialism and ongoing capitalist paradigms have played in the ideologies and approaches to the teaching, practice and academic study of environmental justice. The ERJN held a virtual Spring Summit and Fall Summit, which invited conversation on durability of racism and its many material forms, working across diverse cultures, and dismantling environmental injustice at NYU and beyond.

Green Grants and Green Workplace Recap 

In 2022, we awarded $90,000 in Green Grants funding! Grantees’ projects range from creating biodegradable mesh bags, analyzing noise pollution at NYU, to creating an edible farm and garden lab at NYUSH. If you’re looking to start a project of your own, visit our Green Grants webpage for more information!

Our Green Workplace Certification was a hit in 2022. We added 32 new certified workplaces with 19 being awarded Platinum, 12 awarded Gold and 1 awarded silver. If your workplace hasn’t been certified don’t delay, download the checklist and let’s discuss. 

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Many thanks to all members of our community for making our favorite memories of this year possible, and for the dedication and commitment to making a greener NYU. With exciting new initiatives and programs planned, we look forward to seeing you in the new year and are excited to continue advancing sustainability at NYU!