Green College Spotlight: Arizona State University at Tempe

Arizona State University at Tempe is one of the nation’s greenest colleges, gaining a lot of ground since just last year. ASU has been working really hard to green up their campus and get students involved, and all their hard work has paid off – they’re on the ‘Green Honor Roll’ for their B+ grade on the College Sustainability Report Card.

ASU’s President, Dr. Michael Crow, didn’t just sign the Presidents Climate Commitment – he co-founded it. With that kind of initiative in the school’s leader, it’s only natural that ASU has become such a green college rock star.  As part of their commitment to climate neutrality, ASU recently completed the ASU Energy Conservation Project, which retrofitted nearly 80 campus buildings to increase efficiency, reducing annual carbon emissions by 70 million pounds. ASU is also installing solar panels on the roofs of Tempe campus buildings, and will soon install even more on the West campus.

All new buildings at ASU must meet LEED silver certification, and the university already has a whopping 11 LEED-certified buildings including four Gold and one Platinum. The university’s green purchasing policy means that only green cleaning products are used and Energy Star and recycled products are preferred. In the dining hall, you’ll find fresh, local food from 35 local growers and producers and from gardens on campus. ASU also has its own eco-conscious restaurant, Engrained, which features local, organic, seasonal and humanely treated ingredients on its menu.

Students, faculty and staff get around on an inter-campus shuttle, or on bicycles – ASU student government sponsors a half-price bike co-op and a bike-share program. ASU’s fleet will soon be run on alternative fuels, including two solar powered carts.

Arizona State University students are as dedicated to the green cause as the university’s leadership. ASU has seven sustainability-related organizations including a vegetarian/vegan group, and students frequently participate in recycling drives, energy efficiency competitions and other eco-friendly initatives.

ASU even teamed up with environmental site Grist.org to provide students, faculty and staff with the latest environmental news, commentary and advice through a biweekly email. The email newsletter includes not just the latest green headlines, but also news relating to ASU’s local area and coverage of issues relating to the university.

Of course, ASU is probably best known for its world-renowned Global School of Sustainability, which offers undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees that prepare students to become the green leaders of the future.

For the latest news on green goings-on at Arizona State University, check out ASU News.

Link [Arizona State University]

Grist Says: “Screw Earth Day!”

Grist.org, one of the best green blogs in existence, isn’t exactly where you would expect the statement “Screw Earth Day!” to come from. But what they’re really saying is you can’t make up for a lifetime of excess in one day. Planting a tree on Earth Day doesn’t make you green if you spend every other day driving a Hummer and leaving the windows open with the A/C on.

Grist wants you to make Earth Day every day, not just April 22nd. The “Screw Earth Day!” campaign seeks to draw attention to the importance of being green all the time, and having fun while doing it.

“Too many people tokenize Earth Day, using it as an excuse to hug a tree one day and ram it with their SUV the next,” said Chip Giller, founder and CEO of Grist. “We say, screw that. One day is for amateurs. We can do better.”

Sign up for daily and weekly news updates from Grist and you’ll get two awesome extras: a free download of its award-winning book “Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your Day” and a chance to win a free trip for two to popular music and arts festival Bonnaroo, happening in Manchester, TN June 11-14.

Register at ScrewEarthDay.com between April 9th and April 23rd to participate! And, by the way, check out the newly redesigned Grist site – it’s pretty.

Link [ScrewEarthDay.com]

Green Your Office Holiday Party

Parties are already a major bane to the environment; they produce mountains of waste. Holiday parties are even worse, what with all the discarded wrapping paper and packaging. Considering the current economic conditions, many office parties will likely get scaled down this year from frou-frou corporate dinners to casual disposable tableware-laden get-togethers.

As usual, Grist.org has an excellent set of tips for making sure your company’s office party is as green as it can be.  Here are a few of our favorite pointers:

Work the pretty. When it comes to decorations, keep it simple. Buy a few plants, gather up some others from around the office — yeah, even the half-dead ones — and cluster them for an outside-in décor (just be sure you know whose desk they go back to). Ask staffers to contribute a favorite holiday item or their kids’ artwork to brighten up the scene (just be sure you know whose kid they go back to). Or use food as decoration — it’s pretty, it’s colorful, and when it all gets eaten, your Decorations Clean-Up Subcommittee will be happy. For lighting, try LED strings or candles (the non-yucky kind) — or have your party in the daytime so lights aren’t necessary.

Cut the crap. Don’t give out pewter pens or umbrellas stamped with your company logo to every staffer — it creates waste and inspires frustration. Instead, if you have that money to spare, put it into the next paycheck or a gift card. If staffers are pushing to uphold gift-giving traditions, consider a white-elephant exchange, and make it the kind where you bring an item from home, not purchase something new. And if custom dictates that you absolutely must give something to your (greedy, planet-fucking) clients, look into green options geared toward corporations (see Resources, below).

Get the rest at Grist – ‘The Frill is Gone: How to Green Your Office Party‘.

Link [Grist.org]

Who’s Who in Green: Chip Giller

Before Grist.org burst onto the scene in 1999, environmentalism online was all about doom and gloom. Chip Giller, Grist’s founder, had a feeling that all of the dour finger-pointing and long journalistic articles about sea turtles weren’t exactly drawing a jaded public to the cause.  So, Grist’s signature editorial voice was born – one that’s sometimes lighthearted, almost always humorous or satirical.  Grist, which began as a tiny online newsletter, is now one of the most influential environmental blogs, drawing in nearly a million daily readers.

Grist.org paved the way for blogs like the one you’re reading at this very moment. The idea that environmentalism can be fun has undoubtedly helped to catch the interest of millions of people who otherwise would have been turned off by the tone of the movement.

For this reason, Chip Giller was named among TIME Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment, an honor he shares with such illustrious company as Al Gore, Wangari Maathai, David Attenborough and the designers of the Toyota Prius.  He was also awarded the 2006 National Conservation Achievement Award by the National Wildlife Federation, and has been featured in Vanity Fair, Newsweek and on the Today Show.

Check out what Chip had to say on PBS Now:

When asked by Mother Jones recently what he thought it would take to get people to act on the environmental crisis, Chip said:

I think to get society to act as a whole, people need inspiration. I also think things like the Katrina tragedy are definitely a wake-up call. To be fully honest, I think it probably will take some more disasters to really get people to understand the urgency behind these issues. But the other really important ingredient is inspiration. It’s almost like leadership and inspiration from the top, and there needs to be individual initiative from the bottom up.

Grist.org is the ideal place for people on the cusp of interest in ‘going green’ to get their info and news, so be sure to forward it along to your friends and family! And be sure not to miss regular Grist features like From A to Green, Ask Umbra and The Grist List.

Chip Giller’s Green Score: 32,145

Be Green, Get Rich: Money-Saving Tips Good for the Planet, Too

There’s a definite upside to this whole mess with the economy. It’s simple: nearly all of the tips we’re getting from experts on how to save money also benefit the planet.  It’s a matter of consuming less.  We’re reigning in our big-spending habits and instead reusing things, cutting back and doing without. In the process, we’re reducing the amount of junk that’s piling up in landfills, using less energy and consuming fewer resources.

Grist noticed this when checking out budget-saving tips from TheStreet.com.  Among the tips were:

You care what your car looks like: A car is a means of transportation to get from one place to another, but many people don’t view it that way. Instead, they consider it a reflection of themselves and spend money every two years or so to impress others instead of driving the car for its entire useful life and investing the money saved.

You buy things you don’t use: Take a look around your house, in the closets, basement, attic and garage and see if there are a lot of things you haven’t used in the past year. If there are, chances are that all those things you purchased were wasted money that could have been used to increase your net worth.

Your house is too big: When you buy a house that is bigger than you can afford or need, you end up spending extra money on longer debt payments, increased taxes, higher upkeep and more things to fill it. Some people will try to argue that the increased value of the house makes it a good investment, but the truth is that unless you are willing to downgrade your living standards, which most people are not, it will never be a liquid asset or money that you can ever use and enjoy.

After so many decades of pointless, debt-amassing excess, we’re finally learning that small is beautiful, and less is more. Perhaps this shift toward a simpler way of living will help people detach themselves from the obsession with image that has gripped our society for too long.  I won’t hold my breath, but it’s a nice thought.

Link [The Street] via [Grist]
Photo credit: Flickr user Refracted Moments

Grist Explains How to Smack Down Global Warming Deniers, Point by Point

If you’ve ever gotten into an argument about global warming with a skeptic, you know how frustrating it can be. Grist.org has a crazily comprehensive guide to smacking down climate change deniers and their tired, weak arguments as to why they think global warming is a hoax.

Grist guest author Coby Beck has created an entire outline that goes first through the ‘Stages of Denial’ – there’s nothing happening, we don’t know why it’s happening, climate change is natural, climate change is not bad and climate change can’t be stopped. Then it cycles through scientific topics, types of argument and level of sophistication. For example, under ‘Uninformed’ you’ll find the answer to the argument, ‘what’s wrong with warmer weather?’ and under ‘Naïve’ you can read the answer to ‘it’s the sun, stupid’.

Here’s a sample from one of my favorites, which you hear so often: ‘They predicted global cooling in the 1970s’.

Objection: The alarmists were predicting the onset of an ice age in the ’70s. Now it’s too much warming! Why should we believe them this time?

Answer: It is true that there were some predictions of an “imminent ice age” in the 1970s, but a cursory comparison of those warnings and today’s reveals a huge difference.

Today, you have a widespread scientific consensus, supported by national academies and all the major scientific institutions, solidly behind the warning that the temperature is rising, anthropogenic CO2 is the primary cause, and it will worsen unless we reduce emissions. (Read more)

This is the first time we’ve ever seen such an extensive reference of climate change information in one place, laid out in a way that’s so easy to navigate. Props to Grist! This is a great resource.

Link [Grist]
Photo credit: Flickr user Neubie