Environment

With the cooler fall temperatures, Vanderbilt’s iconic white oaks have begun dropping their acorns. While the campus squirrels are busily storing their share, Vanderbilt has partnered with the Tennessee Department of Forestry to collect acorns to plant the forests of the future. Read More

A prehistoric community in the Mississippi Delta may have abandoned a large ceremonial site after the bayou it sits on began to dry up. Read More

In 2009 three friends and I co-founded Plastic Pollution Coalition at my dining room table, adding a fourth “R”—Refuse—to the traditional three: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Why “refuse”? Because disposable plastic is made from petroleum, is used for only brief periods and lasts forever, causing great harm to wildlife and humans. Read More

More people than surveyors expected think protection of the environment should be a priority in Latin America and the Caribbean. Read More

One Vanderbilt student is inventing new ways to clean the air and rescue the environment–and he’s receiving national recognition in the process!  Meet 18-year old Param Jaggi.  His environmentally and energy-friendly inventions landed him on Forbes Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 List for the second year in a row!… Read More

A new study identifies interactions between genes and nutrients that may participate in determining levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. Read More

The effects of climate change will have widespread impact on the state, but there are opportunities to offset it by incorporating “climate-friendly” and “climate-resilient” actions into routine management decisions, say scientists from Vanderbilt University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, University of Memphis and the Tennessee Department of Health in a new report. Read More

The effects of climate change will have widespread impact on the state, but there are opportunities to offset it by incorporating “climate-friendly” and “climate-resilient” actions into routine management decisions, say scientists from Vanderbilt and other major Tennessee research institutions in a new report. Read More

(Steve Green/Vanderbilt) As SEC basketball heats up at Memorial Gym, the Sustainability and Environmental Management Office has an important reminder for fans. Please take advantage of the opportunity to use those green bins awaiting your discarded plastic cups and containers. Read More

Watch video of Van Jones, a pioneering leader in the clean-energy movement and author of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, speaking at Vanderbilt University Oct. 19. Jones’ talk, “Rebuild the American Dream: Green Jobs and Beyond,” is the 2011 Harry C. Howard… Read More

Watch video from the October 5 Thinking Out of the Lunchbox event. David Hess, professor of sociology, spoke on “Building the Local Living Economy.” Two of the great problems facing our 21st-century world are the economic and environmental crises. Increasingly we see that proposed solutions link economic development with the… Read More

  Operation at BP Macondo spill in Gulf of Mexico (photograph by J Henry Fair, 2010) Noted photographer and environmentalist J Henry Fair will give a talk on and do a slide presentation of images from “Industrial Scars,” his exploration of the detritus of consumer society through large-scale aerial… Read More

Flowers, sweets and time spent with a special someone are great Valentine’s traditions, but the Vanderbilt University Sustainability and Environmental Management Office has suggestions for protecting the earth while you celebrate. Read More

Recycling at all Vanderbilt men’s and women’s basketball games  continues for the second year, thanks to a partnership between the Sustainability and Environmental Management Office and Athletics. Sporting events provide the opportunity to recycle much material that otherwise ends up in local landfills, according to Lindsay Walker, recycling coordinator,… Read More

One of the unintended side effects of holiday traditions is the significant increase in waste and over-consumption of natural resources. SustainVU offers a Holiday Greening Guide with tips on everything from wrapping gifts to cooking a turkey dinner. Read More