University of New Mexico releases first comprehensive Sustainability Plan

The University of New Mexico has released its first comprehensive Sustainability Plan, setting a clear course to reduce the University's environmental footprint while building a culture of sustainability across campus.

The five-year plan is a culmination of an extensive year-long process led by the Office of Sustainability that gathered feedback from the campus community through interviews, focus groups, a campus-wide survey and town halls. The work was guided by an Executive Steering Committee and also included extensive research, identification of best practices, establishing baseline metrics and input from experts.

Organized around two core areas-Transform Campus Operations and Build Sustainability Engagement & Culture-the UNM Sustainability Plan outlines specific goals and actions in these priority areas:

• Operations: buildings and greenhouse gas emissions, water and land use, waste management, transportation, and food and dining.
• Engagement & Culture: applied learning and research, trainings and events, communications and outreach, and institutional governance.

As part of plan governance, UNM will be convening a Sustainability Council to coordinate across the University and a Sustainability Corps to engage undergraduate students as peer educators and project leaders for sustainability efforts across campus.

"We at The University of New Mexico are proud of our institutional culture that has long valued sustainability and the need to cultivate and protect all of the resources-human, financial, and physical-that make our university succeed," said President Garnett S. Stokes. "We believe in it so strongly, in fact, that we've put it in writing, as Goal Four of our UNM 2040 long-term strategic framework. This five-year Sustainability Plan reflects our commitment to doing the work necessary to ensure the long-term success not only of our university, but our community and our planet."

"UNM has a long history of undertaking a commitment to environmental sustainability in its facilities, operations, academics, and research. This plan formalizes much of this work and sets goals to push the University even further in its commitment," said Teresa Costantinidis, executive vice president for Finance and Administration. "There are many benefits for the campus community associated with this plan, including financial and climate resilience, conservation of resources, student success and institutional excellence."

The Sustainability Plan directly supports UNM 2040: Opportunity Defined, the university's long-range strategic framework that established sustainability as one of five institutional goals. This strategic planning effort also builds off of extensive baseline data collection activities the Office of Sustainability undertook with campus partners over the last year, including the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) Silver designation and release of the first institutional Greenhouse Gas Inventory in a decade.

"As we move into implementation, success of the UNM Sustainability Plan will depend on collaboration across every part of the university," said Costantinidis. "The plan sets the direction, but it's the collective work of students, faculty, staff, and community partners that will bring these commitments to life across campus."

For more informatio and to see the plan, visit UNM Sustainability Plan.