Carnegie Mellon University
ER-3: Sustainability in New Student Orientation

Prior to move-in day, Housing & Dining includes information, sent to incoming students, about minimizing their waste during move-in and recommend environmental or energy saving items to bring to campus. Our fall 2011 orientation programming included a Zero Waste Dinner for all incoming first year students. Sustainability staff use the Zero Waste dinner as an educational opportunity to share with new students (in a fun and inviting fashion) Carnegie Mellon’s commitment to campus sustainability. In addition to the Zero Waste Dinner, orientation week also features the annual Eco-Fabulous Cook Out held at the Solar Decathlon House featuring a “zero waste” style spread for students, faculty and staff. During this event, new students are able to mix and engage with representatives of environmentally focused student and staff organizations and receive additional information on campus greening efforts and how they can become involved in campus sustainability. Some of the student and staff groups represented at this event are Eco-Reps, Sustainable Earth, Engineers Without Borders, Green Practices and the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research. Campus sustainability efforts are also shared with graduate students during the annual Graduate Resource Fair, a fixture of graduate orientation week. Green Practices and the Steinbrenner Institute collaborate on this effort to bring information on campus greening, educational and research opportunities in campus sustainability to hundreds of graduate students during this event.

Additional information for new students relating to campus sustainability can be found at the Environment at CMU website: http://www.cmu.edu/environment/