By David Langran
dl@adm.au.dk
College of the Atlantic, United States:
The College of the Atlantic only offers one course: human ecology, the study of our relationship with the environment. Situated on an island off the coast of Maine, with the Acadia National Park providing a backdrop, the College of the Atlantic perhaps seems more like a hippie commune than a university, but its students boast an impressive list of achievements – for instance, four of them had leadership roles at the UN Climate Conference in Poland in 2008. The university itself has been completely carbon neutral since 2007, is powered entirely by renewable energy, and has its own farm providing much of its fruit and veg.
Gothenburg University, Sweden:
Arguably Europe’s greenest university, Gothenburg University in Sweden is the only university in the world which is environmentally certified according to both European and international standards. Sustainable development is a central theme of the university’s research, and its principles are applied to the university itself: all waste is sorted and recycled, all purchases are subject to environmental controls, and the university even supplies staff with bikes for all their work-related transport needs.
EARTH University, Costa Rica:
A private university opened in 1990, Costa Rica’s EARTH University is committed to educating its students on how to contribute to sustainable development in the tropics. Dramatic population growth and intensive farming provoked an agricultural crisis in the Central America region in the 1980s, and EARTH University was set up to try and help to put an end to the region’s difficulties. The university even has its own farms and rainforest reserve, used for research purposes by its 400 or more students.
Australian National University, Australia:
Winner of the 2009 International Sustainable Campus Network award for Excellence in Impact, the ANU’s commitment to environmental sustainability extends as far as having installed waterless urinals, which are estimated to save around 50,000 litres of water each year. Water from the local sewage plant is also recycled on campus to try and combat the effects of drought, which has left many of the university’s trees in poor condition.
Harvard University, United States:
The world’s most prestigious university not only possesses a formidable academic reputation, but is also one of the most environmentally-friendly universities in the United States. The ‘green is the new crimson’ campaign (crimson being Harvard’s official colour) has seen a university-wide push to reduce waste and improve environmental standards. The campaign even made use of Harvard’s fierce competition with fellow Ivy-Leaguers Yale to spur students to double their efforts in order to ‘out-green’ their most bitter rivals.
Copenhagen University, Denmark:
Copenhagen University’s recently-finished ‘Green Lighthouse’, which houses the university’s science faculty, was Denmark’s first public carbon-neutral building. Part of the university’s broader ‘Green Campus’ initiative, the building represented a ‘lighthouse’ for CO2-neutral building in advance of the COP15 summit in December last year. The university has also given several hundred thousand kroner to student-run sustainability initiatives, and has appointed ‘green ambassadors’ from among its employees and students to raise environmental awareness.
