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Sustainability
Keeping campus trees—all 6,800 of them—healthy and vibrant
Caring for the trees on Penn’s campus—an official arboretum since last year—is no small undertaking. Staff from Facilities and Real Estate Services and the Morris Arboretum lead the way in ensuring that the University’s trees remain safe, vibrant, diverse, and beautiful.
How Wharton students are using an app to push for a sustainable campus
Through a Penn Green Fund grant, students in the Wharton School helped develop and pilot the Wharton Green Tracker App, meant to unite the campus’s sustainability community.
Growing a ‘culture of cultivation’ on campus
Even on an urban campus, there are numerous places to coax food from the soil. From the Penn Student Garden on Spruce Street to the Penn Park Orchard, Facilities and Real Estate Services staff are expanding opportunities for the community to interact with an edible landscape.
Pro tips from Penn’s gardeners
Community garden coordinator Lila Bhide and Penn Park Orchard intern Cole Jadrosich of Facilities and Real Estate Services offer suggestions for creating a thriving, edible, urban garden.
Envisioning campus as ‘living lab’ to improve bird habitat
The University’s 300 acres in West Philadelphia serve as welcoming habitat for dozens of bird species. Chloe Cerwinka is documenting the area’s feathered inhabitants to improve their habitat.
Survival of the trees on an urban campus
Since 2015, the Office of the University Architect has been partnering with the Morris Arboretum on a tree donation program in order to determine how particular trees fare in an urban environment.
How the Morris Arboretum is working to extend cherry blossom season
The director of horticulture at Morris Arboretum on the beauty, unpredictability, and future for cherry tree season.
What's 'sustainable happiness'? This monk knows
World-traveling monk Devamrita Swami will, in a campus talk, discuss how yoga principles—like the concept of “sustainable happiness”—can be applied to sustainability and even target the root of the climate crisis.
Making Mongolian ger dwellings more energy-efficient
Gers, called yurts in Russian, are the traditional one-room round, tent dwellings of Mongolian herders. In the last twenty years, about half of Mongolia’s population has settled in permanent “ger districts” around the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, bringing their nomadic tents with them.
10 takeaways from Penn’s 2017 sustainability report
The grades are in on how the University is stacking up against its Climate Action Plan goals. Here, find some of the highlights.