The Pitt Green Spotlight is a monthly series highlighting Pitt’s Green Offices & Labs! Each post highlights Pitt Green Offices and/or Labs, sharing their experiences implementing sustainable practices, tips and tricks, lessons learned, and opportunities for more sustainable work at Pitt.
We hope these Pitt Green Offices & Labs will inspire you to try out new sustainable practices in your own workspace! Want to be included in our next highlight? Contact us.
Pitt Green Office Spotlight:
Undergraduate Child Development Center, 635 Clyde Street
Pitt Green Office Team: (pictured left to right) Connie Kimmel, Jamie Wincovitch, Emily Daller, and all 35 members of the UCDC staff
Pitt Green Office since June 2023
The University Child Development Center (UCDC) educates & cares for 140 children from 6 weeks to 5 years old. Using a “child-centered, extended family, play-based approach to learning”, the UCDC has also centered sustainability in their operation. Undergraduate Program in Rehabilitation Science serves the students and faculty of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Science from their office in Forbes Tower.
To save resources, the UCDC incorporates creative reuse in their process-oriented art program and classroom activities, sourcing art materials from common household items. Several classrooms maintain a creative art area where students can use their imaginations to create anything out of these materials – like the Center for Creativity’s “Reuse Wall” in the University Store on Fifth!
UCDC staff have taken the lead on their own office reuse, too, operating a Little Free Library in their staff lounge space. The team is also dreaming up clothing swaps for families that attend UCDC!
The UCDC has worked to make sure their play spaces are healthy and engaging not only for students, but for the environment. Their outdoor play space, designed by Pashek MTR Associates, incorporates green design principles including rain gardens, pervious surfaces, and an edible garden that is also used for educational purposes.
Food grown in the UCDC garden is also incorporated into students snacks and meals. Pitt Catering provides daily meals for students, served in reusable packaging, which UCDC staff advocated for. Now, due to the efforts and advocacy of UCDC staff members, leftovers from these meals can be composted on site in their own AgRecycle compost dumpster – the 8th building on campus to have added composting to their available waste streams.
The University is expanding compost collection to additional buildings around campus. Make sure you know how to compost correctly by using the new training resources on the Pitt Sustainability website. Or, reach out to sustainability@pitt.edu to request an in-person training for your department, as the UCDC staff did!
Curious what else your office or lab can do to become more sustainable? Reach out to sustainability@pitt.edu to pair up with a Green Ambassador in your area of campus, or for one-on-one consultation to get started!
Thanks to the UCDC team for all their efforts!