Environmental Policy

We, the Tufts University community, affirm our belief that university faculty, staff and students have a responsibility to take a leadership role in conducting activities as responsible stewards of the physical environment and using educational activities to promote environmental awareness, local action and global thinking.

In our university functions, Tufts University will strive to:

• conserve natural resources and support their sustainable use
• conduct affairs in a manner that safeguards the environmental health and safety of students, faculty, staff and communities
• reduce the use of toxic substances and the generation of wastes and to promote strategies to reuse and recycle those wastes that cannot be avoided
• purchase renewable, reusable, recyclable and recycled materials
• conduct our business practices in accordance with this policy.

In our education and research missions, Tufts University will strive to:

• foster an understanding of and a responsibility for the physical environment
• ensure that individuals are knowledgeable about the environmental and health issues that affect their discipline
• encourage environmental research
• conduct research and teaching in an environmentally responsible way
• provide a forum for the open flow of information among governments, international organizations, industry, and academia to discuss and study environmental issues and their relationship to other social issues.

In our student and employee relations, Tufts University will strive to:

• delineate individual responsibility
• guide action for ensuring safety and minimizing adverse environmental impacts in the implementation of this policy.

Tufts will consider full compliance with the law to be the minimally acceptable standard and will exercise whatever control is reasonable and necessary to avoid harm to public health and the environment, whether or not such control is required by regulations.

Tufts will initiate, promote and conduct programs that fully implement this policy throughout the university and the global community.