This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

While Detroit has benefited from Cash for Clunkers, foreign automakers have gained even more. Some critics of the program warned that because it let consumers buy domestic or foreign cars, Clunkers could end up spending more American tax dollars to help foreign companies than American ones. More on this story here.

With irresponsible banking practices taking the blame for bringing about the global economic crisis, there has been a surge of interest in Islamic finance.Now, a slew of academic courses are springing up to meet the demand of those wanting to break into an expanding market. According to ratings agency Moody’s, the global Islamic finance sector is worth $700 billion and has the potential to be worth $4 trillion. More on this story here.

n an effort to curb solid waste pollution, China banned the import of scrap polysilicon at the beginning of August, an effort supported by its current environmental laws according to its Environmental Protection Ministry. Scrap polysilicon is a low-grade form of silicon not pure enough to use in microchips. However, it can be used as a component of solar wafers, which contain a variety of types of silicon, including up to 30% scrap polysilicon. More on this story here.

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To help us wade through all the green hyperbole, a growing list of sustainability ranking projects has emerged including the Princeton Review Green Honor Roll, the College Sustainability Report Card, and the Sierra Club’s just-released Cool Schools ranking. Each of the guides uses a different methodology but all of were helpful when formulating the following compilation of the top green colleges and universities in the United States.

Recognizing that defining the word ‘green’ can be problematic in its own right and that there are tons of colleges doing really great things in terms of sustainability, this list is certainly incomplete and/or inexact. Think we missed something? Have an example of campus sustainability that needs to be told? Tell the world in the comments section. In alphabetical order:

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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

Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota)

The sustainability initiatives at Carleton College rank right up there with those you’ll find at the Ivies and other large, well-endowed universities. Carleton unveiled its own 1.65-megawatt wind turbine in 2004, the first of its kind in the nation. The school is also proud of its LEED-certified buildings and campus wide compost and single-stream recycling programs.

Image via resedebear

College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine)

Named by Grist as the “Greenest college in the world,” College of the Atlantic earned that honor for a reason: because it was the first college to be a net-zero carbon emitter in the country. Since then, hundreds of other universities have made similar such pledges. Since the college opened in 1972, it has specialized in healthy, local and frequently organic eats. There is also a thriving campus community garden and a nearby organic farm, which is owned and operated by the school.

Image via College of the Atlantic

The Evergreen State College (Olympia, Washington)

Evergreen State College maintains a thriving organic farm that produces enough food to have leftovers after selling to the campus food service. It also has a massive composting program in place, replete with a compost reactor, worm bins, and food-scrap collection at residence halls.

Image via wonderjunkie

Middlebury College (Middlebury, Vermont)

On track to become carbon neutral by 2016, Middlebury made steps toward their goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2016 by building a biomass gasification plant that replaces one million gallons of fuel oil annually with locally and sustainably produced wood chips. The plant generates steam for heating, cooling and electricity and reduces the college’s net carbon dioxide emissions by an impressive 40 percent. Middlebury is home to the country’s oldest undergraduate environmental studies program and currently is the home institution of resident scholar Bill McKibben, well-known climate activist and author of The End of Nature.

Image via cogdogblog

Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio)

Also listed in the top tier of US News and World Report’s annual ranking of colleges in the country, the Ohio liberal arts college has always been considered a little lot left of center. Sustainability is taken seriously at Oberlin including a wastewater processing system that creates reusable grey water via the natural cleansing methods that occur in a wetland. As part of Oberlin’s Buy Local program, about 35 percent of the total food budget is spent on items sourced from approximately 30 local farms and a local dairy.

Image via La Sequencia

University of California at Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, California)

One of the top five renewable energy purchasers of any university in the country, the UCSC Banana Slugs’ green power program is the result of a ballot initiative that was approved in May 2006 by the student body. UC Santa Cruz has even developed a sustainability vision statement which says the university will strive to integrate sustainability into every aspect of the three pillars of university education: research, teaching, and public service.

Image via davidsilver

University of Colorado at Boulder (Boulder, Colorado)

Home of the nation’s oldest student-run environmental center, established Earth Day 1970, and the nation’s first collegiate recycling program, established in 1976, the University of Colorado in Boulder has long been at the forefront of campus sustainability.

Image via University of Colorado

University of New Hampshire (Durham, New Hampshire)

The first college to run off of a landfill gas cogeneration plant which covers 85% of heating, cooling and electricity, The University of New Hampshire also buys buy food from 54 local farms thereby supporting local farmers.

Image via UNH Office of Sustainability

University of Vermont (Burlington, Vermont)

The University of Vermont supplies 60 percent of campus power needs with renewable energy; composts more than 20 tons of waste each month. And when those frigid winter winds come blowing off nearby Lake Champlain, students and faculty are thankful they can ride free on biodiesel-powered shuttles.

Images via zappowbang

University of Washington at Seattle (Seattle, Washington)

Despite campus growth in the same period, overall energy use actually decreased at ‘U-Dub’ by 10 percent between 2000 and 2005. The university buys 100% of their energy from renewable sources, and has a hybrid and electric fleet of over 300 vehicles.

Image via Wonderlane

Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut)

Home of the legendary School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale has always been well regarded in terms of its academic programs in the environment and natural resource sciences. Enter the 21st century and Yale hasn’t lost a step. The Connecticut Ivy now has a forward-looking office of sustainability and publishes one of the best regarded environmental blogs on the internet.

Image via loop_oh

Honorable Mention…

The following colleges and universities were also repeatedly in the top tier of the green rankings.

Arizona State University

Dartmouth College

Dickinson College

Harvard University

University of California Berkeley

University of California Los Angeles

University of Oregon

Warren Wilson College