UVa takes top marks in state on environment

The University of Virginia has topped a list of 10 Virginia schools participating in a national survey that rates the country’s greenest campuses.

Being released today, the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 shows that UVa was rated overall as a B. The university rated overall as a B- in the 2008 report card and received a D+ in 2007.

For UVa the rating comes the day after the school hosted an annual “community briefing” at which officials stressed how the university is making itself more environmentally friendly.

The report has been released annually since 2007 by the nonprofit Sustainable Endowments Institute, which this year rated 290 schools in the United States and Canada.

This year the institute sent surveys to schools with the top 300 endowments, and only 10 schools did not respond to at least one survey. The surveys solicited information from schools about their environmentally sustainable building practices, dining services and the way each is conserving energy, among other things.

The grades released today were based on schools’ responses to the surveys and on independent research, according to the institute.

“We look at both the depth and the breadth,” Mark Orlowski, SEI’s executive director, said.

The report card encourages schools to look at how they stack up sustainability-wise and gives prospective students an insight into what schools are doing to become greener, Orlowski said.

Among the categories in which UVa rated an A included those for transportation and green building.

On the encouraging-people-to-drive-less side of the sustainable transportation plans, the bus routes maintained by the university were recently reconfigured — after being the same for 20 years — to make them more efficient, Rebecca White, UVa’s director of parking and transportation, said Tuesday.

On the building side, David Neuman, architect for UVa, said Tuesday that even as the university continues to expand with new buildings, it is also looking at ways to renovate and reuse old buildings — such as New Cabell Hall, scheduled for renovation after completion of the South Lawn Project in late 2010.

In other report card categories, UVa dropped to an F rating when it came to the transparency of its endowment, a category that, in part, rates the ability of the public to access a school’s endowment investment holdings.

Eight of the 10 Virginia schools scored an F in the endowment transparency category. Virginia Commonwealth University scored an A and the University of Richmond scored a B in the category.

UVa made one of its largest strides in the “food and recycling” category where it was rated a D in 2007 and an A this year, having planned a composting program of food waste — scheduled to launch this fall — and turned to using biodegradable to-go food containers in its dining halls since 2007.

UVa is one of only three Virginia universities — including the University of Richmond and Washington and Lee — to participate in the survey all three years.

Grades for all participating schools can be viewed at GreenReportCard.org.