Green College Spotlight: Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio

Oberlin College is one of the nation’s leaders in sustainability initiatives at places of higher learning. The students at Oberlin aren’t just dedicated to recycling, gardening, composting and other green efforts often undertaken at colleges and universities – they’ve thrown themselves into living lives that have a positive impact on the environment, down to their practically Olympian competitions to have the shortest shower.

The shining star of the college’s environmental efforts is the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies. The building is an ongoing experiment in sustainable practices, and is constantly studied and improved as new green technology becomes available. Built by William McDonough & Partners, an architecture firm headed by the co-founder of the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy, the building is geothermally heated and uses only about 20% the energy of a typical similarly sized structure. The Lewis Center also features daylighting, recycled materials, a complex ventilation system and a green roof.

Outside the Lewis Center, you’ll find several more green buildings, including the SEED House, or Student Experiment in Ecological Design. Eight students live in the SEED house, and those students strive to be as environmentally conscious as they can be. Inside, you’ll often find worm compost bins, unplugged appliances and students layered under several blankets as the thermostat is never set higher than 60 degrees. One thing you won’t find is a television. The New York Times spent a day at the SEED House – check out the video below.

Professor of Environmental Studies David Orr explained the students’ impressive level of dedication to the New York Times:

“This is a generation that is watching the world come undone.” Projects like the Oberlin house, he said, are “helping them understand how to stitch the world together again.”

Link [Oberlin College] + [YouTube] + [New York Times]

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