Our Services

To engage the University and our surrounding community in an effort to promote environmental sustainability practices and to align the Office of Student Life with the following OSU principles and practices as were put forth by the University initially in October, 2006:

Waste Management
Energy Management
Resource Conservation
Campus Planning & Design
Stakeholder Well Being
Sustainability Awareness
Sustainability Education & Research

Energy Management

The Office of Student Life is approaching reducing our need for energy in a number of ways, including:

Installing energy-efficient chillers for building air conditioners.
Installing more energy-efficient lighting.
Using Building Automation programming to control room temperatures, especially in unoccupied spaces.
Implementation of a campaign to change the personal energy habits of our students and staff (turning out lights, turning off computers, taking the stairs rather than the elevators, etc.)
Identifying "Eco Reps" in Student Life offices to implement energy and resource conservation initiatives in our work environments.
Appointing Sustainability Chairs in our residence halls to implement energy and resource conservation initiatives in campus living environments.

Key Facts

From July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009, OSU recycled 118.57 tons in our Columbus campus residence halls. This is a 43.5% increase over the previous school year.
The majority of our residence hall rooms have individual, desk-side recycling bins. These small in-room bins have helped greatly increase the amount of recycling collected in our residence halls by making it more convenient for our residents.
The annual "Dump and Run" initiative headed up by Students for Recycling had a record year in 2008-2009. They hope to top last year's numbers with this year's annual sale which will be held on Friday, September 26th at the Jesse Owen's Rec Center North.

Links to other sustainability websites

Any questions? Please contact Tom Reeves at reeves.5@osu.edu