While Earth Day happens only once a year, efforts to create a greener Bryant occur year-round.
The university recently received its highest-ever score on the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS), a self-reported protocol developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education and in use at Bryant since 2013. “We were about three percentage points away from gold status,” says Robert Patalano, Ph.D., lecturer of Biological and Biomedical Sciences and the university’s Campus Sustainability Liaison.
Ingrained in campus life
From electric buses that move students between Bryant’s Tupper campus and the Business Entrepreneurship Leadership Center (BELC) to Reuzzi food containers in campus dining facilities that help cut down on the use of disposable plastic and paper goods, sustainability is ingrained in campus living. Campus is also home to a composting system, made from a former shipping container. Located outside the Salmanson Dining Hall, the machine has helped reduce the dining hall’s food waste by turning it into fertilizer.
“About 500 pounds or so a week goes into the digester, where it gets broken down into solid and liquid waste,” explains Patalano, noting that Bryant keeps some of the resulting fertilizer to nurture campus landscaping.
LED lighting has also been installed throughout campus and the university emphasized the use of sustainable materials, such as cross-laminated timber, to construct the new Puishys Residence Complex.
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Bryant also has modernized its heating systems by installing heat pumps and more efficient natural-gas powered boilers —a decision that assisted the university in exceeding its goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 10 percent by 2025. Patalano shares that the actual reduction has been closer to 16 or 17 percent.
“Little things like that — they’re not solar panels or wind turbines on campus, they're not flashy — but that's how you make these big differences,” he says.
Celebrating sustainability together
Cultivating students’ environmental wellbeing is one of the eight pillars of wellness at Bryant, which in turn forms one of the key priorities of the university’s Vision 2030 strategic plan. One of the ways the university spotlights issues like sustainability and climate action on campus is through its annual Earth Day celebration.
The day-long event includes a dynamic mix of educational opportunities, including hands-on activities, hikes, a sustainability pitch competition, and creative writing and photography contests with environmental themes.
“Sustainability courses can't reach every student, so Earth Day is something that makes people aware of some of the major issues, and that there are people trying to make a difference,” says Patalano.
“Sustainability courses can't reach every student, so Earth Day is something that makes people aware of some of the major issues and that there are people trying to make a difference.”
This year, Earth Day featured a lecture by Derek Briggs, a professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Yale University and curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at Yale's Peabody Museum, who spoke about the evolution of life through time and different periods of climate change. The celebration also included an Earth Day Sustainability Pitch Competition, which provided fertile ground for student-generated green initiatives.
“The idea is for students to take ownership of these projects and try and come up with ways to solve a campus issue that they notice every day,” Patalano explains.
Last year’s competition winner, for example, suggested that motion-detecting switches be installed in the townhouses to reduce energy use, a step that the university is working to implement. This year, one pitch suggested installing small wind turbines atop lampposts to power street lights on campus, which has prompted a look into whether the devices can be 3D printed in the Sprague Center for Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking’s Makerspace. The winning pitch from the 2026 competition recommended creating ‘portion plates’ that depict the recommended proportions of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and proteins that students should be eating.
The future is looking green
Furthering its commitment to sustainability, Bryant established a program in Sustainability and Climate Action, which students can choose as a minor or concentration. Courses like “Innovations for Sustainable Futures” and “Human Impact on the Global Environment Lab” allow undergrads to find unique solutions to real-world challenges and understand how climate action intersects with organizational practices.
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Sustainability-related classes and topics are also sprinkled throughout a variety of majors, from science to supply chain management.
For example, “You might go into the accounting field, but you don't work with money; rather, you end up accounting for CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, instead,” explains Patalano, who adds, “Actuarial math has so much in common with climate modeling. Our students can get the skill set to go and work for an insurance company and say, ‘This is who we can ensure’ based on climate risks” like hurricanes and droughts.
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Patalano says that a number of other campus sustainability initiatives are underway as well, such as founding a community garden and creating a thrift store where residential students can donate their unwanted appliances and other dorm goods at the end of the school year, to be used by the next incoming group of residents rather than ending up in the trash.
“There are a lot of students that want to be involved in improving sustainability on campus and stay involved after they graduate,” says Patalano.
As Bryant focuses on becoming greener, Patalano has another goal in mind for Earth Day 2027: making the few tweaks in reporting sustainability activities on campus needed to take a step up in next year’s STARS rating. “We're pretty confident we'll get gold next time,” he says.