UofL wins Campus Race to Zero Waste again in 2025
Building on our top-place finish in 2024, the University of Louisville raised the bar even higher in this year's Campus Race to Zero Waste.
Thanks to the passionate efforts of students, faculty, and staff who took green actions throughout UofL's Ecolympics 2025, and to the diligent efforts of our Physical Plant team and off-campus partners, the University of Louisville again took top prize for Diversion among large universities in the 2025 Campus Race to Zero Waste! UofL achieved an overall landfill diversion rate of 64.32% over the eight-week competition from February 2 – March 29.
The UofL community joined millions of college students and staff across the country in a competition to reduce the campus waste footprint through minimization efforts by donating, composting, and recycling.
The University of Louisville community rallied to participate in each of the categories of competition:
- In the Diversion category, UofL improved upon our 2024 performance, finishing #1 for large campuses again, but this year we finished 2nd out of all 84 schools with an overall diversion rate of 64.32% (an increase of 3.75% from last year!).
- In the Food Waste organics category, UofL also improved its relative position this year, as the only school in the competition from Kentucky and 17th out of all 37 schools with 55.15 points for our composting efforts.
- In the Per Capita Classic, UofL finished 45th out of 94 schools with a recycling rate of 7.53 lbs/person.
- In the Electronics Recycling category, UofL finished 12th out of 14 schools by collecting 3701 lbs. of e-waste for recycling (or 0.12 lbs/person), including batteries, lamps, phones, computers, peripherals, and other devices.
A total of 84 schools participated in the Diversion category, including Kentucky's own EKU (43rd with 31.7% diversion) and Centre College (84th with 7.2% diversion). The final top 10 standings in the Diversion category were:
| Rank | Institution | Landfill Diversion % |
| 1 | Seattle University | 71.04 |
| 2 | University of Louisville | 64.32 |
| 3 | Macalester College | 62.35 |
| 4 | Aquinas College | 62.22 |
| 5 | Mt. San Antonio College | 60.78 |
| 6 | Amherst College | 59.63 |
| 7 | Younstown State University | 55.02 |
| 8 | Stanford University | 54.96 |
| 9 | Frostburg State University | 54.81 |
| 10 | University of St. Thomas | 53.33 |
While this achievement is a team effort, UofL would like to especially recognize all of the students, faculty, and staff who took action for sustainability during Ecolympics 2025 including our Grand Prize winner, Sophia Anner, who shared 74 sustainable actions! We urge everyone to keep up the great work on campus to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost. All those who wish to support UofL's sustainability and engagement efforts can donate to support the Green Fund for UofL.
Here are the official final results of the Campus Race To Zero Waste:
Diversion category:
• Macalester College, Minnesota (small campus division)
• Seattle University, Washington (medium campus division)
• University of Louisville, Kentucky (large campus division)
Food organics category:
• Bard College, New York, (small campus division)
• Endicott College, Massachusetts (medium campus division)
• California State University Sacramento (large campus division)
Per Capita Recycling:
• Neumann University, Pennsylvania (small campus division)
• Pending (medium campus division) tentative University of Wisconsin Stout - waiting on documentation review.
• Stanford University (California) (large campus division)
GameDay Basketball:
• Valparaiso University, Indiana (diversion category)
• University of Richmond, Virginia (per capita category)
Electronics Recycling:
• Rutgers University, New Jersey (total amount recycled)
• Northwest Missouri State University (per capita recycling)
