From Green Right Now Reports
U of Conn students collect sneakers to donate to Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program, which turns them into track and playground surfaces.
Sierra magazine’s top 10 “Coolest Schools” are working hard to solve global warming, and their students are literally taking on the world by developing more sustainable food, buildings, energy sources and transportation.
The magazine honored these green-minded universities, today releasing its 6th annual list (see below) of America’s Greenest Colleges for 2012. The annual ranking lauds the schools, and their students, for pushing the envelope in green activities and classes.
It commends Stanford University for its organic gardens, used to provide wheat for bread an barley for beer (Go Farm!); Duke University for generating and buying clean energy offsets; University of Connecticut for aggressive recycling; and No. 1 “Cool School” University of California-Davis for a well-rounded program that includes green purchasing, 70 percent trash diversion and a commitment to low-carbon travel involving 20,000 bikes.
The 10 schools Sierra deemed the “coolest” are:
Students at Appalachian State University learn about weather.
1. University of California, Davis (Davis, CA)
2. Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)
3. Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
4. University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
5. University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT)
6. University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH)
7. Duke University (Durham, NC)
8. Yale University (New Haven, CT)
9. University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA)
10. Appalachian State University (Boone, NC)
Each of the 10 schools is featured in a slide show at the magazine’s website. Your school didn’t make the list? Sierra publishes an honorable mention of 96 schools that “get it.”
“With their ever growing emphasis on environmental responsibility, these schools are channeling the enthusiasm of their students, who consistently cite climate disruption and other environmental issues as the most serious challenges their generation must confront, while demonstrating leadership for other civic institutions,” said Bob Sipchen, SIERRA magazine’s editor-in-chief.
You can read about the magazine’s methodology here.