Green Options » Campus sustainability

Universities Climb Aboard UNEP’s Climate Neutral Ship

Ruedigar Matthes — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:55:09 +0000

Oceans cover close to 70 percent of the earth’s surface. They divide continents and peoples. They are dangerous, swallowing unwary explorers in their great depths. But the danger of the unknown ocean hasn’t stopped sailors in all ages from exploring the treasures that await across the vast blue expanse. With compass in hand and constellation above as guides, brave seamen would embark, never knowing if they would return alive.

In the modern world, oceans, seas, lakes and other bodies of water are generally mapped. There is less adventure on the high seas than there was during Columbus’ time. Now there are new oceans to be explored, understood, and charted. These oceans are not expanses of water; rather, they are expanses of knowledge, technology, and science. In order to explore the great unknown of these oceans, we sail toward the uncharted and the unknown.

The UN has embarked on such an adventure. The treasure buried at the edge of the known world is not gold, silver or precious stones but climate neutrality. And aboard the UN ship are six universities from around the world.

Washington University in St. Louis May Sport Greenest Building in North America

Jeff Kart — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:15:48 +0000

LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has become the alpha acronym when referring to green, or eco-friendly, buildings. The standard, from the U.S. Green Building Council, recently went 3.0.

Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is taking the green diploma to an even higher degree. University officials are betting a new Living Learning Center will meet the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most stringent green building rating system from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of the USGBC and its Canadian counterpart.

Colleges Race to Earn “Most Sustainable Campus” Honor

Carol Gulyas — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:38:01 +0000

Armed with a survey that found that 63% of college applicants would use a college’s environmental commitment as a reason to choose to go to school there, the Princeton Review has added a “green rating” to its college rating system. EcoAmerica partnered with the Princeton Review on the study of students’ attitudes about the environment.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a member organization of colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada working to create a sustainable future, is helping to lead an effort to raise higher education’s green score. According to today’s New York Times, colleges are doing the following things in their race to be the greenest campus:

Setting dates by which they will be carbon-neutral
Hiring sustainability coordinators
Buying green power through offsets

In a contest sponsored by the EPA, athletic conferences competed to see who could by the most green power and the ivy leagues won, with a combined 221.6 million kilowatt hours for the past quarter. However, colleges and universities are lagging behind in accomplishing more substantive actions.

“….some higher education officials worry that campuses are taking easy steps to win the label rather than doing the kind of unglamorous work — replacing air exchange systems, for example — that would actually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. Some campuses are changing little more than their press releases. ‘I don’t think we really have the tools to quantifiably test who’s doing the best and who’s not,’ says David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College. “It becomes a publicity hype type of thing.’”

Universities are dragging their feet in doing the kind of infrastructure improvements that would really move the needle, like:

Converting to alternative energy
Changing over to hybrid fleets
Retrofitting old buildings for efficiency
Composting their food waste
Offering sustainability throughout the curriculum

Let’s hope they can ramp up their efforts.

Image Credit: New York Times