By Dave Tyler •
January 28, 2009
Road testing at Vermont’s Green Mountain College on a pair of souped-up plug-in Toyota Prius hybrids has found the cars returning better than 100 miles per gallon in daily commuting. At times, one car topped 140 MPG.
Steven Letendre (pictured above), economics professor and research scientist at GMC, monitored the travels of his colleague James Harding as he drove a plug-in Prius nine miles each way between the college’s campus in Poultney and his home in Middletown Springs during the fall semester. Letendre said he was “amazed” by Harding’s results.
“He’s happy who, far away from business, like the races of men of old, tills his ancestral fields with his own oxen, unbound by any interest to pay.” – Horace
Modern agriculture is completely dependent on fossil fuels, from gasoline to run machinery and transport harvests to natural gas to produce chemical fertilizers. While numerous colleges and universities have introduced programs in organic and sustainable farming to their agricultural curriculum, few schools have gone as far as Vermont’s Green Mountain College in trying to lighten agriculture’s carbon footprint.
Organic fertilizers and biofuels in the tractors may be enough for some schools; GMC went a few steps further and introduced oxen into the College’s Cerridwen Farm operations this year.
Yes… oxen.
By Kelli Best-Oliver •
September 11, 2007
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education announced on Friday four Campus Sustainability Leadership Awards in four different categories. Two other schools were named honorable mention. The awards were given during the 7th biennial Greening of the Campus conference held at Ball State University.
Chandler-Gilbert Community College (Chandler, AZ) won in the community college and other two-year institutions category. Green Mountain College (Poultney, VT) won in the four-year
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