Image: Ira Allen Chapel and Billings Student Center, University of Vermont, dorsalfin, flickr

Recently The Princeton Review celebrated 15 colleges with 99 percent green ratings. They range from coast to coast and demonstrate a lot of creativity in different ways of going green (in alphabetical order). Do you know of other schools who deserve mention here?

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.

Bates College has environmental sustainability in its DNA: Former U.S. Secretary of State Ed Muskie, a 1936 graduate, authored landmark environmental bills that we know now as the Clean Air, Clean Water and Resource Recovery Acts. Today, 82 percent of Bates’ food waste is diverted from the waste stream, either composted, recycled, or sent to a food bank or pig farmer.

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.

Colorado College’s “aCClimate” conservation campaign has saved close to $100,000 in utility costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 378 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Dickinson College’s Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education was established in 2008. The Center works with all disciplines to integrate the environment and sustainability across the college curriculum.

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.

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.

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.

Middlebury College, home to the country’s oldest undergraduate environmental studies program, is on track to become carbon neutral by 2016. This ambitious plan was championed by Middlebury students and formally adopted by the college’s board of trustees in 2007.

Northeastern University has integrated energy conservation into its facilities management plans since the 1980s. Most recently, the school replaced 70,000 traditional lamps with fluorescent lamps that will reduce carbon emissions by 686 tons annually.

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.’

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.

University of New Hampshire was the first university in the nation to receive the majority of its campus energy needs from landfill gas (the school will receive up to 85 percent of its electricity and heat from purified landfill gas from a nearby Waste Management landfill).

University of Washington is a signatory of the Presidents Climate Commitment, which is a pledge to develop policies and practices that are climate neutral.

Yale University has a comprehensive campus sustainability plan in place, highlighted by a commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas.

Read more details at The Princeton Review

All Images by Glenn Fay, picasa

If you are ever in Vermont during the summer and early fall, Basin Harbor Club should be a top priority to visit for several reasons. Basin Harbor Club and Resort says they have “what families are looking for: time together in a matchless destination. Lake Champlain is the backdrop for lazy days filled with golf and tennis, boating and fishing, picnics, hikes, story tellers, hayrides, bingo and bonfires with s’mores.” And from my experience, service to the customer at Basin harbor is second to none. Another reason I am attracted to Basin harbor is to enjoy the spectacular gardens. Even after a summer of unusual rainfall, their gardens are phenomenal. Pictures don’t do justice to their beauty. You will just have to visit yourself!

Guaranteed to crack a smile a mile long!

Image: Full Circle, flickr

NICE HUMMER

Seen at Mother Nature Network