Sustainable Campus

In collaboration with the Office of Sustainability, our Facilities groups contribute significantly to Princeton's sustainability efforts. We are the Campus infrastructure and can affect change on a large scale. We continually balance creating and maintaining a beautiful, comfortable campus with respecting and protecting the environment.

Why a Sustainable Campus?

Princeton University's Sustainability Plan, first adopted in 2008, both challenged and focused Facilities in our sustainability efforts. In managing the campus infrastructure, we recognized a large opportunity as well as our responsibility to affect positive change. In many cases, our efforts, large and small, have saved Princeton money as well as saving environmental resources.  We've made progress on goals in our energy consumption, sustainable landscape practices, stormwater management, waste reduction, and reduced water use. We have a more sustainable campus today than in 2008, and we continue to focus on meeting our aggressive goals.

How do we achieve a Sustainable Campus?

We create a sustainable campus step by step, year by year. Before we design a building we discuss the Sustainability Charrette to determine specific sustainability goals for the location. To improve our historic buildings, we invest in renovations such as installing lighting sensors to turn off lights in unoccupied areas. To improve our energy consumption, we generate our own solar energy and use geo-exchange technology to decrease our use of fossil fuels. To teach our next generation we provide campus as a living lab opportunities for our campus community. 

Explore all the ways in which we build sustainable buildings, control campus energy, and employ sustainable practices. 

  • Design - Electricity, Heating & Cooling, Landscape, Water
  • Energy - Sources, Greenhouse Gas Reduction, Resiliency
  • Practices - Cleaning, Landscape, Waste Reduction