It is time for school to start up again. Mary Ann wrote a blog about greening up your children’s return to school, but what about seniors who are beginning to think about college? Here are five colleges that are implementing exemplary green practices:
5. Warren Wilson College (Swannanoa, NC)
Warren Wilson College was named the “Greenest College of the Southeast” two years in a row for features like its 300 acre working farm, 700 acre working forest, recycling program, biodiesel vehicles, and solar-charged carts and street lamps.
4. Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
While Harvard certainly has a prestigious educational reputation, it is now striving to increase its status as a green college by installing energy efficient devices (including motion sensors), fixing school trucks to run on leftover vegetable oil, and purchasing renewable energy. Harvard has also reduced its waste by 73%.
3. Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA)
Evergreen State College made Princeton Review’s Green Rating Honor Roll list. The college buys only 100% clean power, has an organic farm with a compost facility, offers teaching gardens, and is starting to use electric vehicles.
2. Berea College (Berea, KY)
Berea College is where you can find Ecovillage, a five acre community that teaches its residents to be ecologically sustainable. There are 50 apartments, a child care facility, a commons house, and a Sustainability and Environmental Studies house. Among the many goals at Ecovillage is to reduce both energy use and water use by 75%, either recycle, reuse or compost 50% of waste, and treat on-site sewage and wastewater until it is of swimmable quality.
1. College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, ME)
How could you not expect a small college with only one major, human ecology, to be green? College of the Atlantic, the first to go carbon neutral, has green buildings, serves organic, locally grown food, tries to eliminate toxins, and practices land conservation.
(This image of Draper Hall at Berea College is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.)