[Creative Commons photo by Joe Goldberg]
OK, I’ll admit it. On top of being a composting, rainwater harvesting, organic gardening hippie, I am also a huge Phish fan. You can imagine my delight when I got this in my email:
We’re seeing a lot more sustainability-minded colleges, universities and even high schools encouraging their students to walk or bike, rather than drive, to classes. But two institutions of higher learning, one in the north, one in the south, are taking things even further by banning on-campus cars for all incoming freshmen.
For the first time ever, the University of Miami is prohibiting cars for freshmen starting this fall. Instead, new students, returning students and faculty alike will be able to travel around campus and the city using fuel-efficient cars available through a university partnership with Zipcar. The car-sharing program offers users hourly, daily or annual access to cars when needed, gas and insurance costs included.
The Zipcar option will also be offered at Maine’s Bowdoin College, where first-year students will be barred from having on-campus cars starting next fall (2009).
As kindergarteners to post-grads across the U.S. begin returning to school this month and next, they’re finding more and more of their campuses taking steps to reduce energy consumption, save water and go green. All this week, we at EcoLocalizer plan to highlight some of the ways in which schools nationwide are working to becoming more sustainable.
The University of Florida in Gainesville, for example, is launching a campaign to encourage students, faculty members and staff to reduce individual car travel in and around town. UF’s “One Less Car Challenge” (the grammar nag in me has to note it should be the “One Fewer Car Challenge”) asks everyone to explore other ways of commuting, including bicycling, regional transit, car-pooling and car-sharing.
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