College Sustainability Report Card Released
GreenReportCard.org recently released a report card, giving a grade to all major colleges and universities in North America. The grades are based on how sustainable the campus is. Not one school received an A or A+. Fifteen out of 300 schools received a grade of A-.
“Columbia University” by Sylvain Leprovost.
The fifteen schools with the highest rating in the report card are (listed in no particular order):
- Columbia University (New York, NY) (See report card.)
- Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT) (See report card.)
- Pennsylvania State University (Philadelphia, PA) (See report card.)
- University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC, Canada) (See report card.)
- University of Washington (Seattle, WA) (See report card.)
- Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio) (See report card.)
- Carleton College (Northfield, MN) (See report card.)
- University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH) (See report card.)
- Stanford University (Stanford, CA) (See report card.)
- Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) (See report card.)
- University of Colorado (Boulder, CO) (See report card.)
- Brown University (Providence, RI) (See report card.)
- University of Vermont (Burlington, VT) (See report card.)
- Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) (See report card.)
- Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA) (See report card.)
Each school was rated based on nine categories: Administration, Climate Change & Energy, Food & Recycling, Green Building, Student Involvement, Transportation, Endowment Transparency, Investment Priorities and Shareholder Engagement. The grades in each category are averaged together for a final grade.
The website allows users to compare several schools and the grades they got for each category.
I commend these schools for their sustainable efforts and hope many other schools will follow suit. And most importantly, I hope more and more students start demanding sustainability. When sustainability starts to truly influence students’ college choices, colleges will have to start making changes.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Thanks for putting all this valuable information for students on the web! My original degree is in environmental engineering in the earliest days of ecology being born as a movement (1970 - yikes!). In my current expertise in college planning it is nice to see it is still alive and expanding on college campuses.
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:55 am
woot! My school got a B+ and was recognized as a Campus Sustainability Leader. I’m not surprised we did well; in my single week here, the obsession with environmentalism has been a downright culture shock, from the recycling receptacles at every turn to the compostable dishware picnic to the locally grown cafeteria food and simply the conversations I’ve had with people. I’m excited that this is something people are looking at more and more closely at schools, and I’m proud of the institutions that have been positively recognized. May this be a way to encourage other schools to get the ball rolling.