UW-Madison Hosts Fifth Annual Sustainability Symposium
The Discovery Building event focused on sustainability and entrepreneurship, featuring student and faculty research and a keynote on lead exposure in Bangladesh.
Updated on Nov. 4, 2026 in Environmental
Live Poll
Should businesses, rather than government, lead on solving environmental health problems?
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Sustainability hosted its fifth annual Sustainability Symposium at the Discovery Building on Oct. 28. Dr. Erica Plambeck, a UW-Madison alumna, presented research on lead exposure and market-based solutions in Bangladesh.
Why it matters
The symposium highlights how campus sustainability research is connecting to real-world health and business problems abroad. Madison readers can see how local university work on environmental health and entrepreneurship is taking shape.
The symposium featured five-minute research presentations from students and faculty, with poster sessions closing the event. The Bangladesh work involves five planned papers on lead exposure, and results of those papers have not yet been reported.
The players
Dr. Erica Plambeck
A University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna and the symposium's main speaker, she researches lead exposure and market-based solutions in Bangladesh.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Sustainability
The campus office that organized the fifth annual Sustainability Symposium and oversees the university's sustainability programming.
The details
Students and faculty presented sustainability research in short formats, followed by poster presentations at the end of the event. Plambeck described how informal battery recycling for electric vehicles drives lead poisoning in Bangladesh, and how her team offered seven-year lithium batteries with a three-year loan and full-term warranty to compete with short-lived lead acid batteries.
Timeline
Oct. 28: UW-Madison hosted the fifth annual Sustainability Symposium at the Discovery Building.
Last year: UW-Madison earned a STARS Gold Rating for its sustainability work.
2015: Bangladesh began domestic manufacturing of lead acid batteries for electric vehicles and recycled them domestically.
Big Picture
The university's STARS Gold Rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education reflects institutional sustainability performance that the symposium builds on through student and faculty research. The Bangladesh lead-exposure work shows that campus research is extending into market-based interventions abroad.
Madison residents and students can attend future campus sustainability events and poster sessions to see research in progress. The lithium battery model Plambeck described shows how lower-lead alternatives may reach consumers through loans and warranties.
The takeaway
Campus research can move from the lab into practical markets, as the lithium battery loan model in Bangladesh illustrates. Readers interested in sustainability can follow how university programs turn research into real-world solutions.
Further reading
Explore more Madison environmental coverage to see how local campus research connects to wider sustainability efforts.
Source note: This article includes information reported by UW-Madison Police Department actively investigating three sexual assault cases - The Daily Cardinal.
Live Poll
Should businesses, rather than government, lead on solving environmental health problems?
