An innovative new project is discovering environmentally friendly ways to keep the campus weed-free. And saving a lot of landscapers from breathing in toxic pesticides or getting bad backs.

The UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) needs your input. We have created an online survey to gather your thoughts on different aspects of sustainability, how the university is doing in this area and how we can do better. We need your candid feedback to continue improving UBC as a sustainable university and community. We are dedicated to making this happen.

We invite everyone--students, faculty, staff, community members, and interested people both on and off campus--to tell us your thoughts.

UBC students staged an extraordinary exercise in resource conservation in November. Do It in the Dark, the university’s first ever energy-saving contest, grew out of a groundbreaking collaboration between staff and students — but it was the students who made it an overwhelming success.

Residents of Totem Park pulled out all the stops — not to mention a lot of plugs — to compete in UBC’s first ever energy-saving contest in November. Their heroic efforts earned UBC a second-place finish in a competition that pitted it against 39 American universities and colleges.

It is a claim that makes Dr. John Robinson, the Executive Director of the UBC Sustainability Initiative, cringe just a little. “’Green’ is too narrow a term.”  says Robinson, the man behind the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, presently under construction on the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus. “And ’greenest’ is a moving target. Every week there is a new green building announced.”

BC Hydro has named the University of British Columbia’s Professor John Robinson as this year’s recipient of the Larry Bell award for his inspirational work in imagining and promoting new sustainability solutions.