Princeton not as green as Harvard, Yale

While the University’s green rating of 94 was not high enough to place it on the Honor Roll, David Soto, director of college ratings at the Princeton Review, said that the University had earned a high score because of a variety of campus-wide efforts.

Soto noted that the University has a “very commendable” 87 percent diversion rank, which reflects the quantity of waste not sent to landfills and that 38 percent of food used on campus is organically grown.

The green ratings rank a given institution in three general areas: “whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable, how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges, and the school’s overall commitment to environmental issues,” according to the Princeton Review’s website.

The Review decided to develop the rankings after a survey of 10,000 high school students showed that 63 percent considered a college’s commitment to the environment a significant factor in deciding where to apply and attend, Soto explained.

Soto noted that that the green rating is useful to schools in addition to applicants. “Schools ... tend to use them as a barometer for how they are doing in a certain category,” he explained.

The University released a sustainability plan in February designed to lower its overall environmental impact by addressing transportation, food, waste management and new-building design, among other factors. The ultimate goal of the plan is to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Soto noted that Princeton’s efforts include the commitment that new construction projects on campus will be carried out to minimize carbon dioxide emissions.

Every new building, according to the plan, will be Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design-certified and thus water and energy efficient, he explained, adding that this commitment helped bump up the University’s green rating.

“Princeton and all other schools are taking the right steps towards providing students with environmentally sustainable resources and campuses,” Soto added.

Greening Old Nassau

University Facilities also plans to increase the rate of recycling from 38 percent to 50 percent by 2012 by targeting students’ recycling habits.

“Students are our biggest area of opportunity [to increase recycling],” Building Services director Jon Baer said. “Students on the whole do not recycle as much as our staff.”

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Over the summer, washrooms across campus were retrofitted with dual-flush toilets and low-flow showerheads. By 2020, the University plans to reduce water consumption from 2007 levels by 25 percent.

Two construction projects, the new chemistry building and the new Butler College, will be built with cisterns to collect rainwater. The Butler cistern will be used for irrigation purposes, and the chemistry building will use the water for plumbing.

In the past year, Building Services has been equipping dorm rooms with recycling bins. Additionally, most buildings now have waste receptacles that can hold plastics, paper waste and garbage separately.

Building Services also plans to encourage greater recycling of furniture and school supplies that are typically thrown out at the end of the school year.

Building Services also relabeled outdoor garbage and recycling bins on campus this year. Baer noted that this change dramatically reduced the amount of garbage and recyclables placed in the incorrect bin.