American Eye

Fired up over climate change, US students are turning up the heat on colleges’ green credentials. Polly Ghazi sees this driving a race for the top.

First the bad news: US students will spend an average $600 (£330) each on ‘back-to-college’ gear this autumn, in one of America’s biggest annual binges of conspicuous consumption.

Now the good: America’s future leaders are increasingly seeking universities with good green credentials.

When the Princeton Review did a survey of 10,300 university applicants earlier this year no less than 63% said they would factor information on a college’s environmental commitment into their decision [see Forum's similar survey in the UK]. Wasting no time in tapping into this trend, the Princeton Review’s editors added a new environmental rating to its hugely popular annual guide The Best 368 Colleges, published in August. Alongside more traditional rankings – best professors, best dorms, tastiest food, most beautiful grounds – this rates America’s top colleges and universities on a “green campus” scale of 60 to 99 [see below].

The green rating, developed with non-profit marketing agency ecoAmerica, asks ten questions about institutional commitment to sustainability, covering campus environmental management, facilities and quality of life as well as “how well the institution is preparing students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges”.

Eleven institutions score a perfect 99 in the 2008 guide, ranging from wealthy, trendsetting Harvard and Yale to smaller, under the radar colleges including the universities of New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington. Arizona State University, home to the largest system of windmills and solar panels of any US campus, is another in the top bracket, as is the tiny College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbour, Maine, which specialises in ecology and was the first US college to become carbon neutral.

“I don't think we've seen activism this strong since apartheid"

These forward-thinking colleges are in the vanguard of a nationwide race to respond to student demand for green campuses, fuelled by spiraling concern about climate change among American youth. “I don’t think we’ve seen [student] activism this strong since apartheid,” Cheryl Miller, vice president of Sightlines, a data research company that helps higher education institutions compare their environmental practices, recently told the New York Times.

In response, colleges are setting tough targets for achieving carbon neutrality, hiring sustainability coordinators, and helping to drive a nationwide boom in purchases of wind and solar energy systems. And they are co-ordinating as well as competing. In the past two years, 550 institutions representing about 30% of American students have signed up to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. This binds them to inventory their greenhouse gas emissions within a year, and within two to produce a plan and target date to reach zero net CO2 emissions. They must also implement at least two of seven concrete measures; choices include buying 15% of their energy from renewable sources and constructing new buildings to the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

Robert Franek, the Princeton Review’s publisher, sees major progress in recent years in colleges implementing a comprehensive and holistic sustainability agenda – rather than just picking off the easier stuff like recycling or tree planting, or focusing more on green PR than substance. “The green movement on college campuses is now far more than an Earth Day recycling project or a dining hall menu of organic food,” he declares on the Review’s website. “The commitment that many colleges and their student bodies have made to environmental issues… in their practices, use of resources, and academic and research programs is truly compelling.”

If any more proof were needed that a major lifestyle movement is under way, the mass-market retailers are providing it. Vying for that $600 per student back-to-college budget, Wal-Mart, Target and their more upmarket rivals are all displaying new green merchandise. The eco-sensitive undergraduate can pick up pencils and photo frames made from recycled newspaper at Target, shoe bags fashioned from recyclable bottles at the Container Store and renewable bamboo clothes racks and hemp pillows at Crate and Barrel. Wal-Mart even has the answer for late night essay writers craving that caffeine boost: a $10 four-cup coffee maker, engineered to reduce energy use and complete with biodegradable packaging.

The Princeton Review’s green rating covers:

· renewable energy use
· recycling
· local and organic food
· green building
· transport
· emission reduction plans and goals
· professional sustainability management
· scope for student engagement
· environmental studies courses
· environmental literacy requirement.

Polly Ghazi is US correspondent for Green Futures and writer/editor for the World Resources Institute.

15 August 2008