The Top 10 Greenest Colleges and Universities in the U.S.

By Jennifer Hattam, Sierra Magazine. Posted November 6, 2007.

During finals last winter at Northeastern University in Boston, students blew off steam playing Guitar Hero, producing the video game's juice with a pedal-powered generator. Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, handed incoming freshmen energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs along with their campus IDs. And collegians nationwide turned down thermostats; performed waste audits; and lobbied their schools to reduce energy use, provide healthier and organic food, and set a sustainable example for the rest of the world.

Many young people see environmental problems -- especially global warming -- as the challenge of their generation, and 400 college and university presidents have responded by signing a pledge to make their institutions carbon neutral. Students at almost 600 U.S. and Canadian schools are organizing around clean-energy solutions as part of the Campus Climate Challenge, a two-year-old campaign initiated by youth environmental groups (including the Sierra Student Coalition) that has added sass and sex appeal to a somber topic.

Along with condoms, student educators are passing out CFLs and sponsoring candlelit "Do It in the Dark" events. At the New School in New York City, an "I [Heart] Slutty Paper" campaign helped convince the college to switch from virgin paper (get it?) to 100 percent recycled stock in all campus computer labs. At both party schools and evangelical universities, competitions between dorms, Greek houses, and neighboring campuses to reduce energy and water use are yielding more than just bragging rights: The winning residence hall at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, for example, received an energy-efficient flat-screen TV.

The RecycleMania competition has been pitting colleges against each other for six years, with this year's grand champion, California State University San Marcos, recycling nearly 60 percent of its waste. Even MTV has gotten into the act, anointing student groups at Cornell and Rutgers Universities winners of its Break the Addiction Challenge for their climate-friendly campus activism.

All of this activity made picking our top ten U.S. campuses inspiring and exhausting. We looked at everything from colleges' clean-energy purchases and green-building policies to their bike facilities and the food served in their dorms. We checked out how many victories their Campus Climate Challenge group had won and whether organizations such as the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education or the Sustainable Endowments Institute had lauded their efforts.

As the biggest purchasers and employers in many communities, colleges can create demand for ecofriendly services and products. High-profile schools have a bully pulpit -- and the financial resources -- to lead by example with their actions and investments. Research institutions are primed to develop technological solutions. And even small community colleges are educating tomorrow's leaders. If students start their adult lives in a culture of sustainability, they just might take that ethos with them wherever they go.

The List

1. Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH (2,800 students)

Oberlin College's environmental accomplishments are music to a tree hugger's ears. A third of the food served in its dining halls is produced locally, the school hosts the first car-sharing program in Ohio, student activity fees subsidize public transportation, and half of its electricity comes from green sources. A real-time monitoring system tracks 17 dorms and displays how much juice all those laptops, blenders, and iPod chargers are burning at any moment. Last spring Oberlin held its first ecofriendly commencement, with biodegradable utensils and programs printed on 100 percent recycled paper.

2. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (20,000 students)

This Ivy League exemplar is a front-runner in getting the most structures certified by or registered for the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. A $12 million loan fund provides interest-free financing for ecofriendly projects -- such as installing motion-sensor lights in classrooms and converting a recycling truck to run on waste vegetable oil from one of the dining halls. Such efforts generate enough savings to pay back the loan.

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