By Cory Trusty, President USGBC Students UCSD.

Did you know that the Mission Bay Aquatic Center (MBAC) at UC San Diego is the largest waterfront instructional facility in the world? Well lucky for us, we now have another bragging right. MBAC recently achieved LEED EB: O&M Platinum certification, quite the milestone for both the students and faculty involved in the process. The best part about it? The certification was coordinated by only two staff members, with the help of over 30 student volunteers. As an active member of UCSD's USGBC Students group, I was fortunate to serve as the student lead on this amazing ...

Hannah Debelius
Center for Green Schools Associate

We just wrapped up this year's Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN) - the nation’s largest energy and water reduction competition - and the 300,000 students who participated have a lot to be proud of!

Through efforts from students acting on their commitments to reduce energy and water use on campus, CCN 2013 participants saved 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, reduced their energy use by 2.1 GWh (equivalent of taking 187 homes off the grid for a year), and saved enough water to equate to almost 11,000 water bottles. 

The competition, ...

By Christopher Davis
LEED Specialist

Trying to green the operations of all of the various buildings on a college campus can be a bit like trying to get all of your family members to go on a healthy diet and exercise program at the same time. It can be a daunting task. They have a range of ages, sizes, shapes and activities; they consume different things in different quantities and their aspirations vary widely. Some are ready for the quinoa salad and a marathon right now, while others are passionate about their red meat and haven’t jumped on a bike ...

By Sarah Buffaloe
LEED Specialist

In 106 days, Team Capitol DC will be presenting Harvest Home, an off-the-grid showcase of all things sustainable in Irvine, California for the Department of Energy’s bi-annual Solar Decathlon from Oct. 3-13. 

Team Capitol DC is a joint effort of the Catholic University of America (CUA), George Washington University (GW) and American University. CUA leads with architecture and design, GW covers landscape and engineering and American is on point for communications and marketing. The design of Harvest Home takes advantage of sun, water and material resources to create a true net-zero house. The entire design ...

By Anisa Baldwin Metzger
School District Sustainability

This week, the Center for Green Schools honored 10 teachers who are leading the way in environmental education. Our brand new "Trailblazing Teacher" award aims to honor teachers across the country who are working to bring sustainable learning into the classroom and their students' lives. We were flooded for applications for this award, and were humbled by the incredible work educators are undertaking to introduce creative ways to incorporate environmental components into their classrooms and curriculums.

This year’s awardees received $250 to advance sustainability efforts already in place, through the purchase of instructional equipment, curricular materials, ...

By Rob Johnson,
Sustainability Officer for Northern Virginia Community College

Earth Day has been around my whole life.

This year, we celebrated 43 years to the day from the first one, April 22, 1970. What’s changed? And is anything better?

This is the first year I can say I’m working to do what I hope Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes intended when they started this in 1970.

As the first environmental sustainability officer for Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), I’m working to reduce our college’s carbon footprint using the gamut of sustainability ideas, initiatives and projects. One of those ...

By Kristin Simmons Ferguson
Strategic Projects

Every once in a while, it’s kinda nice to see that over 300 colleges and universities are taking action based on the work you're doing. That’s exactly what happened last week when the Congressional Green Schools Caucus hosted a reception at the U.S. Capitol honoring higher education institutions featured in The Princeton Review’s Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition. Now in its fourth year of publication, the guide highlights exceptional colleges and universities for leadership in sustainable operations, sustainability in curriculum and green living on campus. The guide was produced, in part, with ...

By Nathaniel Allen
Center for Green Schools Advocacy Lead

Since the beginning of 2013, the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council has followed more than 90 bills across 30 states that seek to advance healthy, high-performing schools.  This number is up even from last year, and continues to validate what our movement has long understood – that there’s a lot of common ground around the potential that healthy, high-performing schools provide (see our related advocacy campaign).

USGBC’s state activity report for 2012 counted almost 90 new laws that advance green building (see blog and ...

By Nathaniel Allen
Center for Green Schools Advocacy Lead

On Monday, April 22, 2013, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley celebrated the 43rd Earth Day at Mundo Verde Charter School in Washington, D.C., to announce the second year of honorees of the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools (ED-GRS) award program. A total of 78 honorees, including 64 schools and 14 districts across 29 states and the District of Columbia, received a prestigious Green Ribbon Schools award for their excellence across the initiative’s three pillars: ...

By Marisa Long
Public Relations Director

The Center for Green Schools team was up bright and early this morning for the Earth Day segment on the TODAY Show, where we worked with the Green Bronx Machine to build living walls on the plaza and teach the crowd about the importance of sustainability in schools. The segment was a huge success – the students build six living walls on the plaza, and were joined by TODAY Show hosts Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and Natalie Morales, along with celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, who used herbs from the wall ...