How green is your college? Do you ride your bike to class? Do you eschew textbooks for e-books? Is your cafeteria trayless?
The folks at Sierra magazine have determined which American schools sparkle a shining emerald through an extensive surveying process. Sierra's lifestyle editor Avital Binshtock explains:
Each year since 2007, we at Sierra magazine have sat in our offices for weeks doing the detailed, quantitative work to rank U.S. universities on their greenness. To derive this year's numbers, we asked the Sierra Club's conservation experts to help us rejigger our 12-page questionnaire to reflect the Club's most pressing priorities. We e-mailed surveys to 940 schools and carefully sifted through the 118 responses we received. We corresponded with many of the colleges' devoted sustainability officers, and we lamented that those at several campuses — including some in last year's top 20 — declined to fill out our survey. Meanwhile, we dispatched writers to Bali, Utah, and the Adirondacks to report on schools where teachers work to make sure that the graduates they send out into the real world actually know what that place looks like.
See below which schools ranked the greenest, and check out Sierra for the full list. Share your green-school stories in the comments section!
