Environment and Sustainability

The effort to grow the University at Buffalo and dramatically transform its three campuses has taken a major step forward with the awarding of a master planning contract to a team of internationally renowned architectural, planning, landscape and design firms.

The University at Buffalo's Center for Integrated Waste Management has been awarded $1.8 million by Empire State Development to expand the use of recycled tires in construction applications through research and education as part of a program that is the state's most comprehensive effort yet to explore and establish new markets for used tires in civil-engineering applications.

Monica Ridgeway, a University at Buffalo undergraduate entering her senior year, knows that when people think of a scientist, they usually think of a white male in a lab coat; but not too far in the future, she hopes they will envision someone more like herself, a young African-American woman with a head full of braids who is curious about correlations between frozen mud and global warming.

Research on global warming is drawing scientists in increasing numbers to the world's polar regions. But as scientists make more journeys northward, some of them find that their mission now extends beyond the ice or sediment samples they will bring back to their labs to analyze.

Extraordinary: That's how University at Buffalo officials describe the response of area high schools to UB's invitation to hear former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore speak on what could be the defining issue of their generation: climate change.

Just about anything anybody needs to start "going green" -- from energy-efficient light bulbs to fast-growing trees -- will be exhibited at an Enviro Fair to be held at 6 p.m. on April 27 in the lobby of the Alumni Arena on the University at Buffalo's North (Amherst) Campus.

In the name of raising environmental awareness, enterprising University at Buffalo students are turning their campus into a virtual -- and real -- playground this week as they conduct a final project for their class in "Pervasive Gaming," an emerging game genre in which virtual and real-life play come together.

Contrary to the unhappy experience of the first little pig, straw bale is a strong, cost-effective, exceptionally insulating, fire-resistant, sustainable, natural building system. University at Buffalo architecture students and community members -- cold, covered in mud and stuck with hay -- recently raised 130 50-pound "two-string" straw bales that will constitute the load-bearing walls of a community greenhouse on Buffalo's West Side.

A light bulb exchange program that encourages students to trade in their old incandescent bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) is reaping economic and environmental benefits for the University at Buffalo only months after the initial launch.

University at Buffalo President John B. Simpson has committed the university to taking a leadership role in fighting global warming by signing the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.