Westchester County and the Department of Environmental Facilities selected Purchase College for the 2025 EcoAward. Purchase was selected for the College’s leadership and initiative in implementing numerous waste reduction programs.
The Environmental Services team at Upstate Medical University is carrying out Bi-weekly audits at their Downtown campus. This initiative helps the identify high traffic with high contamination. Upstate was recently awarded the Practice Green Health Partner for Change Award for this past awards cycle.
SUNY Morrisville is transforming an old apple orchard into a food forest, a regenerative agricultural system that mimics a natural forest. This self-sustaining ecosystem will support biodiversity and sustainability, providing educational experiences, fresh food, and habitat for pollinators and wildlife. The project serves as a dynamic classroom for students to learn about environmental stewardship and community impact.
| Year | Recommended actions | Status |
| 1 | Track and assess food purchasing on at least an annual basis to inform ongoing improvements. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Encourage food service vendors to develop seasonal menus and recipes that highlight plant-based, minimally processed foods, to develop halal and kosher options to meet student demand, and to highlight such options in signage. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Encourage food service vendors to prioritize the preferential purchase of sustainable and New York products in cost-competitive categories. | 50% Complete |
| 2 | Model innovative food procurement, menu development, food education, and waste practices with educational and research initiatives, particularly at SUNY’s agricultural-technology campuses. | Not Started |
Sustainable Operations - Waste |
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| 1 | Implement SUNY’s policy of phasing out single-use plastics, keeping the stated preference for durable and reusable materials at the forefront of planning efforts. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Maintain and begin implementation of waste reduction plans for each state-operated campus that were compiled and submitted as one SUNY submission in July 2024. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Conduct annual trash and recycling audits, track waste (including food waste), and continuously improve education, separation, collection, and diversion practices. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Facilitate the use of surplus food on campus through creative engagement tools, such as the Free Food Alert applications used at some campuses already. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Facilitate the donation of surplus food in partnership with community-based organizations. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Develop and expand on-site and off-site compost programs, with an initial focus on pre-consumer food waste. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Include a requirement in all construction contracts that all construction and demolition debris beneficial and other use will be tracked, to better implement SUNY Construction Fund Directive 1B-7’s requirement of diversion. | 100% Complete |
| 1 | Work with applicable state agencies and internal partners to ensure that centralized OGS or SUNY hauling and moving contracts used by campuses include reuse and do not solely focus on recycling and disposal. To the greatest extent possible, awarded contractors shall provide actual material weights rather than merely volume or weight estimates. | Not Started |
| 1 | Work with surrounding municipalities and communities to develop more options for reuse, recycling, and composting facilities. | Not Started |
| 1 | Implement the SUNY system's printer and paper reduction plan, provide electronic data management training, and share best practices. | 50% Complete |
| 1 | Encourage campuses to reduce post-consumer waste by limiting unnecessary packaging and using reusable containers wherever possible. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Amend waste contracts to include pre-consumer (back of house) and post-consumer (front of house) food waste diversion from landfills and incinerators. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Work with communities to develop more composting facilities, including on SUNY land, where appropriate. | Not Started |
| 1 | Improve the entirety of the current surplus property process, including exploring options to transition the current email-based means of offering surplus property within and between campuses to a web-based platform, exploring how to increase the speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of the OGS public auction platform, and working to formalize a process to allow for the transfer of materials to pre-approved non-profit organizations after other options have been exhausted. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Establish battery collection systems on campuses, ensuring they are segregated from other types of hazardous waste to make it easier to feed collection, reprocessing, and remanufacturing operations. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Seek funding to install bottle filling stations and provide refillable bottles at student, faculty, and staff orientations. | Not Started |
| 1 | Establish recycling programs for additional recyclables, including film plastic, e-waste, and compact fluorescent light bulbs. | Not Started |
| 1 | Support and guide campus efforts to reuse or otherwise divert furniture, clothes, and other materials from landfills and incineration during student move-out and encourage every campus to offer such programs. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Develop, publish, and implement sustainable events guidelines. | Not Started |
| 3,4,5 | Seek opportunities to pilot the deconstruction of a building and assess the results. | Not Started |
| Sustainable Operations - Ecosystems | ||
| 1 | Complete campus-level recommendations for areas that can be left unmowed, converted to native habitat, planted with native trees and plants, or converted to pollinator, rain, food farms, or food forests. | Not Started |
| 1 | Conduct outreach and sharing of best practices to facilitate a culture shift that redefines the general perception of acceptably managed grounds to sustainable practices. | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Develop relationships with the Indigenous Nations that historically inhabited campus lands for consultation about incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into operations and curricula and, where feasible, co-management of lands (e.g., in managing deer populations, developing food forests and traditional gardens, conducting appropriate land-based ceremonies and rituals, and other cultural connections to historic Indigenous lands). | Launched or underway |
| 1 | Participate in the DEC Reforestation Plan and plant trees on campuses. | 50% Complete |
| 2 | Adopt Integrated Pest Management plans at all campuses to reduce the use of toxic substances for weed and pest controls and reflect those plans in all grounds management contracts. | Not Started |
| 2 | Train ground crews in ecological land management methods and increase the number of employees with a commercial pesticide license so more grounds management can be done in-house under campus-specific management plans. | Not Started |
| 2 | Develop early detection rapid response plans to monitor and manage invasive species that may threaten healthy ecosystems. | Launched or underway |
| 2 | Adopt native species seeding and planting guides. | Launched or underway |
| 2 | Encourage students and educational programs to improve habitat and nesting boxes or platforms for native species. | Launched or underway |
| 2 | Develop and adopt outdoor lighting standards that preserve safety lighting while minimizing undirected, ambient light pollution. | Not Started |
| 2 | Develop and adopt bird-friendly glass standards to reduce bird strikes. | Launched or underway |