(in alphabetical order)

Arizona State University at the Tempe campus 

At Arizona State University, sustainability is a fundamental precept underlying its teaching, learning, research and business missions. ASU President Michael Crow is co-chair of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. The Tempe campus has the largest collection of energy-providing solar panels on a single U.S. university campus.

Established in 2007, ASU’s School of Sustainability, the first of its kind in the U.S., offers transdisciplinary degree programs that advance practical solutions to environmental, economic and social challenges. The school has over 60 faculty representing over 40 disciplines and offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs along with a professional certificate. ASU subsidizes bus and light rail passes for all students and employees and offers car-sharing and a carpool program with special parking privileges. A student-run bicycle co-op offers low- or no-cost bike repairs and free bike rentals.

College of the Atlantic has one major, Human Ecology. How humans relate to our environment is on the minds of all at COA—artists, scientists, and social activists. And COA practices what it teaches: It has been carbon neutral since 2007. All electricity comes from renewable hydropower; new buildings and some old are cleanly heated via renewable wood pellets.

An organic Beech Hill Farm (partially powered by a wind turbine, thanks to student effort) offers organic produce to campus, local schools and food banks. COA has a new Trans-Atlantic Food Systems program and a growing undergraduate green and socially responsible business program. Recycling bins are in every office, composting bins in every kitchen and composting toilets in all new buildings. Alumni take on the environment in Congress, business and global negotiations—including those that created the world’s largest underwater preserve.

The Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA)

The Evergreen State College’s thousand-acre campus features miles of trails, a half mile of beach on Puget Sound, wetlands, forests and even an organic farm. The farm is used to teach a broad range of courses such as small-scale organic agriculture, ethnobotany, visual arts, beekeeping, forest ecology, and ecological agriculture.

The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education at Evergreen has launched the Curriculum for the Bioregion, an effort that focuses on incorporating environmental and sustainability issues into general education college courses throughout the Pacific Northwest. Students recently launched the Center for Sustainable Entrepreneurship, an effort to put their business skills to use in socially responsible ventures.

Evergreen has purchased a fleet of electric cars to replace many of its gasoline and diesel vehicles.  Evergreen students pay a self-imposed clean energy fee to ensure that 100 percent of the college’s electricity comes from renewable sources.  The school has also reduced its landfill waste by more than 97,000 pounds since 2008.
 

Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)

Georgia Institute of Technology has 21 endowed chairs, 23 research and more than 100 classes that include significant sustainability components. Sustainability is a key component of Georgia Tech’s Campus Master Plan and Landscape Master Plan. In 2008, Georgia Tech was recognized as a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation – quite an accomplishment for an urban campus.   

Besides using environmentally friendly hand soap, paper products, cleaning equipment and other supplies, Georgia Tech requires that all vendors provide green products. The Institute’s cleaning equipment uses 70 percent less water and 90 percent less chemicals than traditional equipment. To further conserve water resources, Georgia Tech’s dining halls initiated a trayless system. The Institute’s inaugural football game day recycling program collected nearly 12 tons of aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles from home game attendees.

Harvard College (Cambridge, MA)

Harvard College is dedicated to confronting the challenges of climate change and global sustainability both through academic research and by translating that research into action on campus. Harvard’s goal is to reduce emissions 30% below a 2006 baseline by 2016.  These commitments are administered through the Harvard Office for Sustainability.

Harvard now has 62 building projects in process toward achieving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, a 55% recycling rate, renewable energy projects on campus, composting in residential and commercial dining halls, organic landscaping in Harvard Yard, and a drive-alone rate of only 16.5%, to name just a few examples.

Northeastern University (Boston, MA)

Northeastern University has integrated energy conservation into its facilities management plans since the 1980s. Most recently, a campus-wide installation of 70,000 low wattage T-8 fluorescent lamps was completed that will reduce carbon emissions by 686 tons annually. Over 8% of buildings under University operational control are now LEED Gold certified.  International Village, NU’s new 1,200 bed mixed-use dorm/office building, was awarded LEED Gold certification in 2010. IV's college dining facility was the first in the U.S. to earn both the 3-star certified Green Restaurant® distinction and LEED Gold status. 

As a result of “Compost Here”, an aggressive food composting initiative formerly known as “Project Clean Plate” approximately 594 tons of dining hall service and catering food waste were composted in 2009.  Northeastern's recycling program started over 20 years ago and has expanded to include thirteen different categories of collected items, including asphalt and construction materials.

Northland College (Ashland, WI)

In 1971, Northland College built a commitment to green into the curriculum when it added an environmental focus to its liberal arts mission. Today, students take classes in subjects ranging from Sustainable Business to Sustainable Agriculture. Northland’s environmentally-conscious residence hall, the McLean Environmental Living and Learning Center, was a model of excellence for green building before LEED existed. The college has committed to obtaining LEED Silver certification on all new buildings on campus.

Northland has two wind towers, numerous solar panels, geothermal heat in the campus center and library, and furniture made from recycled materials. Students have even built a campus building that is entirely off the grid, using locally-produced materials.

Northland’s dining services is a model of green eating. It offers sustainably-harvested seafood, organic and fair trade options, free-range meat, and plenty of non-meat options. Dining services provides each student with a free mug, and offers drink discounts when they reuse it.

State University of New York at Binghamton 

State University of New York at Binghamton has established innovative and creative opportunities both inside and outside the classroom to engage and educate students in ‘going green.’ An energy conservation contest pits residential communities against one another to see who can reduce energy consumption the most over a nine-week period. The 2009 contest resulted in a 7.5 percent overall reduction in electricity consumption.

The Binghamton campus encompasses almost 900 acres of land, of which a large proportion is undeveloped and in its natural state. The core of this undeveloped land is officially designated the Nature Preserve, and includes hiking trails and a 20 acre wetland. Each year approximately 2,500 pounds of compostable waste is collected around campus. Binghamton either recycles or composts more than 90 percent of its current service ware.

Unity College (Unity, ME)

Unity College goes by the moniker “America’s Environmental College.” It derives 100 percent of its energy from renewable energy sources, all of its grounds are maintained organically, and it uses only Green Seal-certified cleaning products.

Unity offers unique green majors like Sustainability Design and Technology, and Adventure Education Leadership, as well as more traditional offerings like Ecology and Marine Biology. The university’s location on 225 wooded acres of farmland with plenty of diverse ecosystems, including a peat bog and a pond, provides students with experiential learning opportunities. Unity’s Center for Environmental Education teaches students how to become effective environmental educators, and the career services office offers over 80 environmental internships each year.

University administrators serve as role models for the eco-conscious student body. The president and his wife live on campus in the Unity House, which is built from local wood and recycled building materials. The house uses solar energy for electricity and hot water, and has zero net-energy consumption and carbon emissions.

University of California–Berkeley 

University of California–Berkeley has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2014 (six year sooner than the rest of California).  To meet this target the campus will complete over 200 energy efficiency projects.  The university’s primary food service operator was the first in the country to receive organic certification, and organic salad bars are now a staple at campus dining facilities. 

Berkeley has more than 80 academic degrees, 90 research centers, and 25 student-run organizations with an environmental focus.  Student projects have reduced energy consumption by over 8.5 million kWh and water usage by 3 million gallons. UC Berkeley publicly reports its sustainability metrics each year. 

University of California–Santa Barbara 

University of California–Santa Barbara’s sustainability goals are ambitious: to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to be carbon neutral by 2050. Home to the most LEED-certified buildings in the UC system (six), all new construction at UCSB must meet LEED Silver standards.

Through HVAC and lighting retrofits, delamping, and campaigns like “Flex Your Power,” the campus has decreased its electrical consumption by 31 percent and its natural gas consumption by 23 percent since 1998. UCSB’s Custodial Services department uses only Green Seal-certified products, and its Housing and Residential Services department heads an extensive waste reduction program that includes recycling used cooking oil for biofuel, composting food waste, and purchasing local and/or organic foods.

Students have many opportunities to study sustainability through UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, and the Academic Senate is currently working on a sustainability general education requirement for all undergraduates. The Ecological Coalition is the organizing body for more than 35 environmentally-related student groups.

University of California–Santa Cruz 

University of Georgia (Athens, GA)

The University of Georgia has taken aggressive steps to conserve water on campus, such as installing rain gardens, planting native species, installing low-flow toilets and showerheads, recycling water in research labs, and even limiting flushes in stadium bathrooms during football games. The result of this “Every Drop Counts” campaign is that water use on campus is down 30 percent.

More than 100 members of the UGA faculty have joined together to create the Academy of the Environment, “a venue for cross-disciplinary collaboration in research, graduate and undergraduate training, and public education and outreach.” UGA is home to the Eugene Odum School of Ecology, and students and faculty from a variety of academic departments conduct research related to environmental issues—engineering students conduct energy audits on campus buildings, students in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication look for ways to promote energy conservation and recycling, and students in the River Basin Science and Policy Center research water quality in area streams.

University of Maine (Orono, ME)

University of Maryland, College Park 

University of Maryland—College Park’s recycling rate increased from 17 percent in 2003 to an impressive 50 percent in 2008. The Career Center hosts an annual Green Jobs Fair to help students incorporate sustainability into their career plans. In October 2009, the university was named “America’s Greenest Campus” by Climate Culture for having the largest number of campus community members register to calculate their carbon footprint, which brought a $5,000 prize to student organizers to support sustainability on campus.

A new University Sustainability Council is spearheading new green efforts on campus, including a commitment to LEED Silver standards for new buildings, energy-conserving renovations, a green roof, low-flow faucets, toilets, and showerheads in dorms, water- and energy-efficient dishwashers used by dining services, a composting program, discontinued use of styrofoam containers in favor of biodegradable ones, and use of water-conserving grass on the university’s golf course.

Warren Wilson College (Asheville, NC)

Environmental Studies is a popular major at Warren Wilson College, with six different concentrations and a new cross-disciplinary sustainability curriculum available.

The school was one of the first in the country to institute on-campus recycling in the 1980s. Much of the food served by the school’s dining halls comes from an on-campus farm and garden. An Environmental Leadership Center provides sustainability-focused events and opportunities for both students and the local community, including a regular radio program broadcast on Asheville’s WPVM.

Among the residence halls on campus is the LEED Platinum EcoDorm built by student teams with wood that was repurposed or sustainably harvested on campus. The dorm also features solar panel window awnings, compost toilets, a rainwater catchment system that helps irrigate the adjacent garden, and many other waste-minimizing features.

West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV)

West Virginia University is a national leader in energy research. Over the past four years, 100 faculty members have completed $98 million worth of energy-related research in everything from enhanced fuel cell production to textile recycling. WVU’s Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions (CAFEE) is working on new technology to reduce exhaust emissions and dependence on imported oil.

WVU’s trayless dining initiative has reduced waste in dining halls by 42 percent. Excess food is donated to charities, and used cooking oil is sent to a biodiesel processor. WVU promotes student involvement in campus sustainability through events like Ecolympics, a competition between residence halls to conserve the most energy and recycle the most waste. Last year, the two winning buildings reduced energy consumption by 20 percent and recycled more than 2500 pounds of waste. During WVU’s A-WEAR-ness campaign, students collect bags of clothing and donate them to the homeless. Over 1,700 bags of clothing were collected for this project in one year.

Yale University (New Haven, CT)

Yale University has a comprehensive campus sustainability plan in place, highlighted by a commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas. Yale has implemented solar and wind projects to provide renewable energy. It also has its own co-generation power plant and is building another. Kroon Hall, the new home of its school of Forestry & Environmental Studies is a model of energy-saving design and is expected to earn a LEED Platinum certification.

Several undergraduate organizations seek to educate students in environmentally responsible practices. The Yale Sustainable Food Project directs a sustainable dining program, manages an organic farm and runs diverse educational programs. In addition to its sustainable practices, Yale is conducting leading research on climate change and other environmental issues, and educating the environmental leaders of tomorrow in its college and graduate and professional schools.