Tag Archives | Arizona State University

Degrees of Sustainability

By on November 26, 2012 in Sustainability in Business, Sustainability in Higher Education

by Kelly Wenner

We have been reading a lot about how sustainability should factor into the college experience.  The Princeton Review now has a yearly guide of green colleges, and the Review also reports that students care considerably about a college’s sustainability elements when considering colleges to attend.  Interestingly, it is not always the first-time college student that is concerned with how a college curriculum addresses sustainability.  A Q&A session at the Net Impact conference shed light on another type of student: those who have already graduated and are professionals with non-sustainability related degrees whose companies or industries are invested in sustainable business practices.  To go further with this concept, Green Biz conducted an additional survey in partnership with Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, part of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.  This survey aimed at identifying general career-related needs as well as sustainability-specific needs of a potential field of Executive Master’s candidates.… Read the rest

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5 Years of the ACUPCC

By on May 25, 2012 in American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, APUS Sustainability Efforts, Current Events, Sustainability in Higher Education

by Beth Gray

This year marks the 5th anniversary of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).  The effort originated from discussions at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) conference in October 2006 at Arizona State University.  College and university presidents and their representatives along with representatives from groups like Second Nature and ecoAmerica identified at that time a unique role for higher education in addressing the persistent issues of climate change and disruption.  Within only two months of those discussions, twelve presidents became founding signatories of the ACUPCC and a groundbreaking initiative was established. 

The twelve institutions who served as founding signatories represent a cross section of institutions in the United States.  From Arizona State University in the desert southwest, a very large public research institution to Cape Cod Community College in the northeast and Ball State University in the Midwest, these institutions have committed to advancing sustainability in higher education both through student curriculum and through their own operations.  Despite their geographic and institutional differences the twelve who originally signed the commitment had a common bond: a strong commitment to take advantage of higher education’s unique role in society to make a measurable difference in the state of our environment. 

… Read the rest

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Green Buildings are Not Just for Higher Education

By on April 8, 2011 in APUS Sustainability Efforts, Green-Building, LEED Building, Sustainability in Higher Education

by Beth Gray

As colleges and universities have taken up the cause of environmentalism and sustainability on their campuses, many are using green building as a means toward achieving reduced carbon emissions.  In November 2010, American Public University System (APUS) completed construction of a 45,000 square foot state-of-the-art Academic Center which is anticipated to achieve the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED Gold certification.  (To see a video from the ribbon cutting ceremony for the building, click here.)  While it is too soon to know for sure how much of an impact the newest building on APUS’ campus will have on the school’s carbon emissions, there is great hope (and precedent) that it will have a positive impact.… Read the rest

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The Battle Over Bottled Water on College Campuses

By on February 10, 2011 in Sustainability in Higher Education

by Beth Gray

Scott Carlson notes quite poignantly in a September 2010 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Wars in the past have been fought over oil.  Wars in the future, experts say, will be fought over water.”  Carlson goes on to explore the ways in which the battle over water, in its bottled form, is already being waged on college campuses. 

In 2006, Americans spent $15 billion on bottled water.  According to the organization Back2Tap, nearly 50 billion plastic water bottles end up in landfills every year, noting that not only does that equal 140 million bottles every day but also that it is enough bottles to line up end to end and reach China and back every day.  Aside from the discarded bottles, bottled water’s carbon footprint is much larger than is perhaps immediately obvious.  In 2007, a blogger for TreeHugger.com estimated that to create and transport 1 bottle of Fiji water required 7.1 gallons of water, .26 gallons of fossil fuel, and emitted 1.2 pounds of greenhouse gases.  Largely driven by environmentally conscious student groups, college campuses are beginning to address the issue of bottled water and are taking dramatic measures to do so.… Read the rest

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