Green Options

How many of the environmental education initiatives that you know of were started by teachers, parents, or non-profit organizations? That’s typical: from artistic approaches to rainwater harvesting to solar boat building, most efforts at teaching kids about environmental issues start with adults. But students often come up with their own programs, too, and the President’s Environmental Youth Awards aims to highlight those efforts that start with schoolkids.

Started in 1971 by the EPA, this awards program “…recognizes young people across America for projects which demonstrate their commitment to the environment.” Awards are given for one project in each of the EPA’s ten regions. After 38 years, the winning projects have run the gamut — everything from peer environmental education to recycling efforts to wetlands restoration. Recent winners have included

• The Green Books Project in Lewisville, NC: Student Cory Adkins saw textbooks being thrown away at his school, and started his program to sell these books… and use the funds generated to support recycling in his community.

Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

A group of University of Kansas students have rigged up a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle to run on a mix of biodiesel and battery power.

The team, calling themselves the Ecohawks, claim the quirky hybrid is capable of getting 50 MPG from a series of 10 lead-acid batteries and a biodiesel generator.

Performance-wise, although quite cool looking in a retro kind of way, the car isn’t exactly what you’d call a speedster, topping out as it does at a leisurely 30 mph.

That doesn’t seem to bother team-leader Prof. Chris Depcik though, who told reporters, “We have driven it around and reached approximately 30 mph, but this was more of a proof-of-concept drive without pushing the boundaries. We are currently getting the vehicle into road-ready shape to be driven safely in order to determine these values.” (More pics after the jump).

Welcome to another episode of “If college students can do it, why can’t the rest of the world figure it out too?”

An enterprising and organized group of undergraduate and graduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have fitted an old sail boat with a spiffy set of hydrogen fuel cells and plan to run the boat from Manhattan to upstate New York later this month in a “green power” tour of sorts.

I love it when college students do this kind of stuff. Seriously. If I could have stayed in college forever, I would have. Believe me, I tried.

In its time, the MGB was one of the most modern sports cars available. Featuring some of the first crumple zones to ever be included in a production car, as well as a fast-for-its-day 0-60 mph acceleration of 11 seconds. It was also a beauty.

So it’s clear why, in 1984, an engineering professor with a brand-spanking new PhD, who had just begun his professional career at the University of South Carolina, would think it might be cool to drive a 1972 MGB around with the top down in that climatically-pleasant area of the US. And so began Professor Roger Dougal’s obsession with his MGB.

Have you interior designers learned about the USBGC Suite Design Competition? This is not only for professionals, but students as well. And it’s global!

Beware the entry deadline is fast approaching on August 31st, 2009 and judging will be completed by October 1st, 2009. The competition is sponsored by USGBC, The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), and The Hospitality Industry Network (NEWH).

At most college dining halls, they’ll fry just about anything.

Wings, mozzarella sticks, fries and onion rings. Old shoe leather (wait, maybe that’s just a memory of how things tasted at my college dining hall.) All that frying leaves a lot of leftover grease and oil.

At the University of Rochester, a group of students used that oil as the foundation for a business plan that has produced both a biodiesel powered shuttle bus and a new building for biofuel experimentation. The project will hit a milestone on Earth Day, when university President Joel Seligman will help send the shuttle bus off on its first trips around campus, including a tour of the new building.

Despite the common idea that you need to be wealthy to really be green, there are many ways to both save money and be environmentally friendly. One of those ways, a personal favorite of mine, is buying used instead of new. Especially when you are buying books. Choosing to buy a used book rather than a new one saves a tree, lessens the impact from printing the book, and if you buy it from a local used book shop lowers the impact that shipping has on the environment.

But what about renting books? The Netflix CEO is taking the rental idea from movies to textbooks. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars buying new textbooks for a class you will only be in half the year you can now rent them for a fraction of the cost. It is definitely something I wish had been around when I was in college.

Back in the summer, the Princeton Review delivered its Green Rating of US colleges - a measure of how environmentally friendly such institutions are.

A group of students from the University of Michigan have set a new world record for the longest flight ever by a fuel-cell powered plane.

Late last month the team, known as SolarBubbles, flew the $2,500 plane (video) around a field in Milan, Michigan for a total of 10 hours, 15 minutes and 4 seconds - smashing the previous 9 hour record held by a Californian engineering company.

For the entire month of October, Blue Planet Run is hosting a nationwide 30-mile challenge. Athletes can run, walk or cycle anywhere, anytime. So far, over 150 events have sprung up across the country to support the effort to provide safe drinking water to three schools in Tanzania that serve 1,200 students and their families.

It’s not too late to register. You can join a team, form a team or go solo. Cover the miles however you’d like! http://www.blueplanetrun.org/30-mile

One of the Tanzanian schools sent out a message that the 30-Mile Challenge participants can read before they start their 30-mile run, walk or cycling. Blue Planet Run is working to build communication bridges between the athletes and the communities that benefit from their efforts.