Image courtesy of College Sustainability Report Card
Last week, I blogged about the College Sustainability Report Card (CSRC), which evaluates colleges’ and universities’ greenness based on criteria like energy use, building practices, recycling, and investment priorities. It’s an interesting tool, but the program only looks at the 300 best-endowed schools in the US. Bummer, since little schools are often home to the most creative green initiatives.
Treehugger has a slideshow up today profiling ten green colleges, a few of which were passed over by CSRC on account of their small endowments. Warren Wilson, for example, gets props for its solar-powered streetlights and campus carts and its trash-to-treasure store. And the tiny-but-mightily-green College of the Atlantic stands out, too:
In 2006, the college announced it was the first carbon neutral college in the U.S. Not to mention, students all study one thing: human ecology, or the way humans interact with the environment. Since 1972, the school has dished up local and organic food in the cafeteria. Food is all composted or given away, meals are tray-less and meat is confinement and antibiotic-free. Dorms come with composting toilets, ultra-high insulation and heat comes from a wood burning pellet boiler: Getting back to nature and interacting with the environment, indeed.
Composting toilets! In a dorm! Totally doable at, say, a Harvard or a Princeton, but would the aesthetics be too icky for the Ivies?
