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Tuesday marked the 38th annual Earth Day, and campuses across the country used the event to celebrate, educate, and advocate environmental awareness. Some campuses held events over the weekend and some on Tuesday, many including a mix of concerts and information fairs. |
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Energy Orbs Gage Energy Consumption at Oberlin Oberlin recently kicked off its first ‘Ecolympics’ by installing energy orbs on campus. The orbs, located in each dorm’s lobby, glow different colors representing that dorm’s energy consumption. |
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Rising Gas Prices Inspire Facebook Organizing As the price of gas continues its steady increase, concerned Facebook users have created more than 500 global groups dedicated to griping about gas and brainstorming ways to lower prices. |
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Last Saturday students from colleges and universities across the country joined others from across the globe in turning off lights and appliances for an hour in observance of Earth Hour, an event to promote Global Warming awareness. |
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RecycleMania – a 10-week competition between college and university recycling programs in which campuses compete in different contests to see which institution can collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate – has passed the halfway point for the 2008 competition and schools are checking out their chances. |
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As students are working to promote clean energy, both by using the university to research new solutions and by pushing the campus to use available clean technology, many are turning to biofuels. |
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A group of students at the University of North Carolina recently created Fair, Local, and Organic Foods – which they call FLO Foods – a group spreading awareness and working with UNC’s Dining Services to implement sustainable buying practices on campus. |
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The University of Chicago’s Student Government recently voted to join seven other Chicago colleges to conserve energy by turning off their lights for an hour on March 29th as part of Earth Hour. |
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Bigger is Better When It Comes to Bottle Bills The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) is teaming up with over 600 organizations in the state to convince the New York State Legislature to include the "Bigger Better Bottle Bill" in the April 1st budget. |
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A group of students at the University of Colorado, Boulder are raising money and looking to find sponsors for their upcoming summer road trip, an adventure they are calling “Option Green.” |
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Students from WashPIRG chapters at the University of Washington, Evergreen State College, Whitman College, Western Washington and Green River Community College united in Washington’s state capitol, Olympia, last week for a day of environmental advocacy and awareness as part of the Campus Climate Challenge. |
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This past Sunday more than 50 students from the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition representing 10 Ohio colleges and universities protested in front of the homes of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency director Chris Korleski and CEO of American Municipal Power – Ohio Marc Gersken, the men responsible for the final decision on a proposed coal plant in southeast Ohio. |
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Students React to Tornadoes Impact on Colleges Along with Super Tuesday’s political excitement came one of nature’s most feared forces: tornadoes. Throughout the southern U.S more than 50 people lost their lives when over 80 tornadoes swept through Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and other areas, destroying nearly everything in their paths. |
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Student Publication on Sustainable Development Students at Columbia University have started a new online environmental journal called Consilience. |
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Student-Developed Tool Tests Campus Energy Emissions The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Calculator, developed eight years ago by a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, has been one of the most influential tools used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of college campus energy emissions. |
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The Green Campus Initiative, a student environmental awareness group at the University of Chicago, kicked off its second annual Battle of the Bulbs energy-reduction competition last Thursday. |
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Toilet Paper Trees Can Support Student members of the University of Vermont Forest Crimes Unit rallied on campus as part of the Kleercut Campaign: a campaign focused on getting the university to join a host of other schools in cutting ties with Kimberly-Clark, the national distributor of Scott and Kleenex tissue products. |
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To celebrate National Campus Energy Reduction month, Students at the University of Florida will soon kick off The Biggest Saver: Battle of the Halls Energy Challenge, a competition in which students cut back on electricity and water used in their halls. |
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Students Encourage River Community to Dream Big Seniors enrolled in the University of Washington’s Community, Environment and Planning Program are conducting neighborhood research and holding community workshops in an effort to clean up Seattle’s heavily polluted Duwamish River, one of the most hazardous sites in the country. |
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Students Drink Water to Save Water In affiliation with the national 1000 Wells Project, students at Texas A&M have organized the “Two Weeks of Sacrifice” fundraiser in which students pledge to give up all beverages except water for two weeks, to pool the money they would have spent on beverages, and donate it to build clean-water wells in impoverished African communities. |
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Focus the Nation, a national teach-in to engage thousands of universities, secondary schools, and businesses in a discussion on finding Global Warming solutions, was held on Thursday at over 1,550 institutions nationwide. |
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The U.S Department of Energy has selected a team of students from the University of Minnesota to participate in the third-annual Solar Decathlon. |
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This past Sunday 350 schools began competing in the second-annual Recyclemania Campaign. |
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Duke Students Protest Power Plant Expansion Students at Duke University are protesting the expansion of Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest power companies, with letters and phone calls. |
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“Green Cup” Inspires Sustainable Living in Campus Dorms Northwestern’s Students for Environmental and Ecological Development kick off their third-annual Green Cup, a six-week competition among the campus dorms to cut energy and increase sustainable living on campus. |
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“American Colleges and University President’s Climate Commitment” Working Its Magic The University of Denver has created a Sustainability Council in response to a nationwide student effort at over 200 universities to combat global warming. |
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Kentucky Students and Community Members Protest Logging Nearby Forest University of Kentucky students and community members opposed to logging nearby Robinson Forest held a protest in an effort to appeal a Board of Trustees decision. |
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Campus Environmental Group Sets Goal to Reduce Carbon Emissions to Zero The University of Pittsburg’s campus environmental group, Free the Planet, has set a goal to collect signatures on a petition to reduce carbon emissions at the university. |
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International Student Team Wins Engineering Contest to Recycle Harmful Waste A team of students from the University of Utah and Birzeit University in Palestine won an international engineering contest last month for developing a method to recycle harmful waste produced by olive oil mills. |
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Students Inspire Universities to Launch Green Transportation Efforts on Campus In response to campus trends toward environmental awareness The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Kansas have launched efforts to increase the efficiency and decrease the volume of cars on campus. |
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NEBRASKA STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT REPRESENTS US YOUTH AT INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE CONFERENCE David Solheim, student body president at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, recently spent 18 days in Bali, Indonesia as part of a delegation of 21 young Americans at a United Nations climate change conference. |
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STUDENTS’ FAKE DOCUMENTARY A “REEL” TACTIC FOR A REAL CAUSE Environmental student activists at the University of California, Santa Barabara staged a protest to protect the Gaviota Coast – the last substantial undeveloped portion of Southern California’s coast. |
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Students at the University of North Carolina hosted a “Fair Food Fair” to promote sustainable and locally grown foods. |
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In early November, close to 6,000 students from across the country gathered at the University of Maryland to attend Power Shift, the first ever youth climate summit. |
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Thanks to the work of two seniors at Stanford, all incoming freshman will receive one energy efficient light bulb |
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Students protest BP-University partnership Students, faculty and community members gathered to protest a soon to be finalized partnership between BP and the University of California, Berkeley. |
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Student at the University of Illinois are working to improve recycling practices on campus and export them to the surrounding community, while students at Kansas State are focused on ‘reusing.’ |
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Students at Tufts are organizing to convince the city of Boston to cuts its contracts with bottled water companies, and proclaim the quality of the city’s public water system. |
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UC Santa Barbara hosts University Sustainability Conference Over 800 administrators, faculty, staff and students from University of California, California State University and California Community College campuses came together at UCSB for the 6th annual Sustainability Conference. |
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The Princeton Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) joined with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to co-sponsor a protest display, and also to hear from PETA's Senior Vice President as he discussed PETA’s tactical choices, as part of their campaign to raise animal rights awareness. |
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Students Push for Greener Campus Three students at the College of William and Mary will present administrators with a plan for making the campus a more environmentally friendly place, focusing especially on making the college carbon-neutral. |
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Harvard to Serve Cage-Free Eggs A student campaign for cage-free eggs in the dining halls at Harvard University was successful; the University will start serving cage-free eggs at the beginning of next week. |
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Students to Vote On Cage-Free Eggs Next fall, students at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh will vote on whether University food services will use cage-free eggs in their meals. The vote is in response to a student-circulated petition that garnered more than 750 signatures. |
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Two schools are showing interest in teaching their students about sustainability, offering new minors in the subject. In other sustainability news, participation in this year’s RecycleMania event was down at the University of California Davis. |
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Students at the University of Chicago celebrated Earth Week with workshops, demonstrations, and lectures—as well as a composting class, vegan food, and mini-golf—to focus on sustainability and environmental awareness. |
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Sustainability, ethics, and endangered species were at the forefront of innovative Earth Day activities. |
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Students at UCLA hoped to raise awareness of how much students waste in dining halls by measuring the amount of food waste students produced in one dining hall in one day as part of the “Waste Watchers” project. |
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Students Push for Climate Change Action University of Maryland students are coming together in support of a Student Government Association referendum on renewable energy. Student activists from several universities initiated a four-day march on Trenton, New Jersey to promote action on global climate change. |
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Students Promote Climate Change Awareness Students across the country are rallying for environmental causes. |
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Students Form Animal Welfare Group Students at Lawrence University have formed an animal welfare and advocacy group to promote the responsible care of animals. |
