Office of Sustainability Welcomes Several New Staff Members and Student Employees

Over the past nine months, the Office of Sustainability (OS) has hired several new staff members and student employees to work on a variety of sustainability initiatives and programming at UW-Madison. Learn more about these …

A Lake Runs Through It: How the Charter Street Heating & Cooling Plant Helps UW-Madison Stay Comfortable Year-Round

At UW-Madison, heating and cooling is all about water. Libraries, offices, dorms, dining halls, hospitals, and other campus locations must be kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Meanwhile, sensitive spaces like …

Top-Down versus Bottom-Up: Two Approaches to Sustainability

This guest article was written by Jason Gallup, former Student Programs Director at the Office of Sustainability. The window for avoiding the catastrophic effects of environmental degradation is small. As a society, we are now …

Several Hundred People, 11 Pounds of Trash: A Successful Zero Waste Pilot on Earth Day

“Zero waste”—it’s an idea that can feel slightly naïve in our consumerist culture. Nearly everything we do produces waste of some kind. And when large groups of people gather for an all-day event—say, hundreds of …

Great World Texts Program Revisits “Silent Spring” and the Legacy of Rachel Carson

On a Monday in early April, hundreds of high school students from across the state of Wisconsin woke up early and took buses to Union South for an entire day of discussion about Rachel Carson’s …