Business View Magazine - June 2016 91
ruary 2015, the school achieved its first silver rating.
“We’re excited about that because we’re really trying
to increase all of the various sustainability aspects of
our campus,” Verhoff says. SLU also ranked 100th in
the Sierra Club’s Top 100 Greenest American Universi-
ties in 2015 - up from 149th place the year before.
“Due to the dedication by our Grounds staff, we’re
also Tree Campus USA certified,” he adds. Tree Cam-
pus USA is a program created by the Arbor Day Foun-
dation to recognize and honor college and university
campuses that effectively manage trees and engage
students. “We’re passionate about our trees on cam-
pus because they’re important for a number of rea-
sons: they provide oxygen, they filter drinking water,
they cool surface temperature, they reduce climate
change, they save energy, they reduce crime, and they
increase the local economy,” Verhoff says.
“We’re also trying to focus on making our grounds
more sustainable,” he continues. “One of the exciting
things that Grounds, the Center for Sustainability, and
my office are going to start working on is bringing more
pollinator plants to campus. There is a problem in the
world, right now, with the eradication of bees. So, we
want to try to create an environment on campus where
bees can have more pollinators and be more active.
There’s a research program in the Center for Sustain-
ability that focuses on urban bee pollinator plants. We
are partnering with them in order to support this im-
portant issue on our campus. They’re also searching
other urban locations, but because we are an urban
location, we can create a living laboratory right here.”
Doing it right and doing it here are just two of the many
characteristics that make SLU, Facilities Services, and
the Office of Sustainability and Benchmarking a stand-
outs in the realm of campus sustainability.
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