CSS Factsheets, U-M Environmental Performance
As a world-class academic institution with more than 34,300 faculty & staff and 39,500 students,1 the University of Michigan consumes significant amounts of natural resources. Having a long history of leadership and innovation in environmental issues, the UM Environmental Task Force, led by President Mary Sue Coleman, found it essential to identify measures to track and report the environmental performance of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor campus (UM-AA) over time in order to provide a foundation for a more sustainable future. The Environmental Data Repository (EDR) was developed in 2005 by the co-operative efforts of students and staff from the Center for Sustainable Systems and various operations departments. The EDR is a centralized database that computes environmental data and reports them in terms of 8 key performance indicators and over 50 operational metrics, in the categories of energy, emissions, water, land use, waste, and cross-cutting & emerging issues.2 Some of the metrics are highlighted below.