The USF St. Petersburg campus is committed to environmental stewardship and sustainability. In recent years, the campus and its student body have worked to enhance sustainability while reducing its environmental footprint by funding renewable energy projects, improving energy efficiency of buildings, saving water, planting native species, recycling and more.
Such actions have made a big difference. For example, solar arrays on top of the parking garage and outside the Warehouse labs have produced approximately 1,100 megawatt hours of clean energy since 2016, equivalent to removing a year’s worth of electricity emissions from nearly 150 homes; an ORCA biodigester that breaks down food waste in the dining hall has diverted around 16,000 pounds of waste from landfills; and water bottle refill stations found across campus have been used nearly 900,000 times, reducing greatly the need for plastic bottles.
As one of our five core values, care for the natural environment is a large part of the culture and identity of the USF St. Petersburg campus. This video documents many of the recent sustainability accomplishments on campus and what's to come.