Green Honors For Arizona State

ABC News On Campus reporter Maxine Park blogs:
 
Arizona State University is no longer sticking with its school colors of maroon and gold.
 
The school is now going green—well sort of.
 
According to The Princeton Review’s “2010 Green Rating Honor Roll,” ASU ranks as one of the greenest schools in the nation for the second year in a row.

Fourteen other colleges were also selected for having eco-friendly campuses and promoting environmental issues:  Bates College in Lewiston, Maine; Binghamton University, State Univ. of New York; College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine; Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn.; Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.; Atlanta’s Georgia Institute of Technology; Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass.; Vermont’s Middlebury College; Northeastern University in Boston, Mass.;  University of California – Berkeley; University of New Hampshire in Durham; Seattle’s University of Washington; and Yale University in New Haven, Conn.
 
Bonny Bentzin, director of university sustainability practices at ASU, says it’s a great honor for the school.
 
“ASU is like a small city of 80,000 people and it’s great to be recognized for a vision that has been developed and worked on by a lot of people,” Bentzin said.
 
The Princeton Review created its green rating based on the following criteria: 1. whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable, 2. how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental changes, and 3. the school’s overall commitment to environmental issues.
 
Mikayla Freeman, a pre-med biology and society junior, says she’s proud to be going to a “green” school.
 
“It feels good to know that the school you go to is so concerned about the environment and that ASU is taking those steps to go green,” Freeman said. “I think with support from the students and the university we can help to change our environment.”
 
But even with solar-powered compost bins, green restaurants in the student union and the largest collection of energy-providing solar panels on a single American university campus, Bentzin says there’s still more work to be done.
 
“We’re planning on deploying solar panels on all four of our campuses eventually but right now we’re developing a sustainability curriculum and figuring out more ways that we can recycle and divert waste,” Bentzin said.
 
One new program they’ve started is called SunSET and it works like an internal Craigslist—but for office supplies.
 
“This way faculty and staff from different departments can share office supplies and nothing gets wasted,” Bentzin said.

The public can also visit a new Web site called ASU Campus Metabolism  to find up-to-the-minute information on energy use on campus. Users can see the exact electricity, heating and cooling usage of various campus buildings down to the kilowatt.
 
Rob Melnick, executive dean of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability, says there are several things the university needs to do in order to stay on the “green” path.
 
“We need to expand the number of faculty and students who are deeply involved in sustainability issues so that their behaviors reflect this from recycling, to reducing energy use, to commitments outside ASU and to community well-being,” Melnick said. “This award is acknowledgement that the world values institutions that are thinking and acting sustainably.”
 
Nissania Trujillo, a film and media studies senior, thinks ASU is taking a step in the right direction.
 
“I’ve definitely seen how this school has changed and going green is one of the best moves they could have made,” Trujillo said. “I feel strongly about the environment and I’m proud that the school is encouraging others to do so.”