Social Change

The EcoHouse to be hosted at Glen Oaks Campus in Queens by Neighborhood Housing Services of Jamaica from September 19 through October 31 at PS/IS 266, 74-10 Commonwealth Boulevard, on the Glen Oaks Campus in Queens.  The EcoHouse is a free sustainability exhibit and environmental education center. Community Environmental Center (CEC) designed and built the 46-foot-long EcoHouse in 2012 and has taken it to schools, parks and other public sites in all five boroughs, attracting more than 7,000 visitors in the tri-state area.  CEC is a Queens-based not-for-profit that recently won the EPA’s prestigious 2013 Environmental Quality Award. The EcoHouse...

A green education opens doors to a number of  high paying careers and helps to build a more sustainable world. The importance of a workforce schooled in sustainability is critical to the future of our planet. Our environment is in crisis due to the ways we produce energy, grow food and manage water and waste. If we continue with business as usual a systemic collapse is inevitable and in many places it has already begun. People who understand the dynamics of sustainability can dramatically change the ways we do things before we pass irreversible tipping points that will condemn future...

The Princeton Review's Guide to Green Colleges profiles 320 institutions of higher education in the US and two in Canada. These schools demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation. To produce this book, they partnered with the US Green Building Council, a national nonprofit organization best known for developing the LEED green building rating system. The guide is the only free comprehensive and annually updated guide to green colleges.  To download Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges click here. Related Articles The Green Market Oracle's Green School Series for 2012...

The following 22 schools made the Princeton Review's 2014 Green Honor Roll by receiving a score of 99, which is the highest possible score in their rating system. This list was assembled from assessments of 832 colleges. In alphabetical order, here are the colleges that earned a perfect green score from Princeton Review for 2014: American University (Washington, DC) California State University–Chico (Chico, CA) College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, ME) Columbia University (New York, NY) Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA) Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) Green Mountain College (Poultney, VT) Lewis & Clark College (Portland,...

Ecological footprint is a measure of sustainability. In essence an ecological footprint measures how much people or nations consume versus how much they actually have. The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste.Ecological footprints are important because they represent an accounting system that tracks how much biocapacity there is,...

Sustainability is increasingly ubiquitous on university campuses across the country and around the world. But do students and society really benefit from an environmental education and a sustainable campus? More specifically, do environmental academics, renewable energy, recycling and other sustainability initiatives stay with students after they graduate? Do they carry their green experience into the workforce? Sierra set out to answer this question by asking Do Green Schools Matter? They explain that it is hard to respond to this query as are only a few universities that actually track whether environmental curricula make a difference to students after graduate. However,...

Here is the countdown of Sierra Magazine's top ten list of the greenest colleges and universities in the United States. This is their seventh annual ranking. Participation in the Cool Schools ranking is open to all four-year undergraduate colleges and universities in the US. To generate the Cool Schools list researchers scored the responses to an extensive sustainability questionnaire and ranked all 162 participating institutions. 10: University of California, Santa Barbara SCORE: 756.69 | STUDENTS: 22,218 UCSB puts up formidable numbers: 44 of its buildings are LEED certified, 47% of academic departments offer a class about sustainability (for a total...

The number of environmental and conservation issues is vast and expanding. What all of these issues have in common is the fact that they relate to the anthropogenic effects on the natural environment. Here is an alphabetized list of 21 environmental and conservation issues and their 171 sub-categories (many of which are overlapping): Air pollution Environmental impact of fossil fuels • Smog • Tropospheric ozone • Ozone depletion resulting in UV exposure • Indoor air quality • Volatile organic compound • Atmospheric particulate matter• Environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing Climate change/Global warming Global dimming • Fossil fuels • Sea level rise •...

The world looks to America for leadership. Sadly World Environment Day (WED) tends to be a low profile day in the US compared to some other environmental events. This is unfortunate because the day is meant to be global in scope. It is important for Americans to understand the truly global scale of environmental threats and climate change in particular. It is fitting that as we acknowledge WED on Wednesday June 5th, we celebrate the global power of environmental activism. This year marks the United Nations 41st WED, an annual event that aspires to be the world's most widely celebrated...

World Environment Day (WED) is observed on June 5 every year to promote awareness of the importance of preserving biodiversity, the need to identify problems related to the environment and ways to take corrective action. It was on this day in the year 1972 that the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was formed. First celebrated in 1973, Environment Day is used as a means to tackle environmental challenges that include climate change, global warming, disasters and conflicts, harmful substances, environmental governance, ecosystem management and resource efficiency. World Environment Day is an annual event that is aimed at being...