Mission

The UH Office of Sustainability’s mission is to cultivate a culture of sustainability on campus by fostering initiatives, collaboration, education, and engagement to instill sustainable principles within future global leaders.

Vision

The Office serves as a centralized hub for all of the University of Houston’s sustainability efforts in order to improve campus life, engagement, community involvement, and student participation.

Initiatives led by the Office of Sustainability include:

• Fostering collaboration on campus and in the community
• Facilitating educational and outreach programs
• Collecting institutional sustainability data
• Managing the campus community garden
• Communicating about sustainability topics
• Recommending campus sustainability improvements
• Supporting sustainability governing bodies 
• Driving institutional sustainability progress
• Encouraging sustainable actions in individuals’ daily lives 

On-campus initiatives include a campus community garden, single-stream recycling, water bottle refill stations, a solar array, educational events, car sharing and commuter clubs. The Cougar Woods dining hall is LEED Silver Certified and the Keeland Design Center features the first sloped green roof in Houston.

UH sustainability history and background

Being in the energy capital of the world—a city that is not generally associated with sustainability—people are commonly surprised that the University of Houston is consistently rated as one of the nation’s greenest colleges. The city of Houston is also making strides in sustainability, and for the third consecutive year, is the top municipal purchaser of renewable power in the nation.

In 2008, the sustainability movement at the University of Houston began with the creation of the sustainability task force and the campus-wide recycling program. Since its inception, sustainability at the university has made many strides. The operational group was initially spearheaded by passionate staff, faculty and students who implemented initiatives as side projects and called GreenUH. In 2011, full-time sustainability coordinators were hired in Facilities Management and Auxiliary Services, and in the fall of 2012, the Office of Sustainability was created. A program manager was hired in March 2014 to re-launch the Office of Sustainability with the goal of uniting all sustainability efforts on campus.

Most recently in 2021, the Office was transferred to Facilities Planning Services where it presently resides.

About the university

The University of Houston is a major public research and teaching institution, serving more than 45,000 students annually, offering undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional degree programs. We are located in the nation’s fourth-largest city and the energy capital of the world. UH is the second most ethnically diverse major research university in the United States.