Mayor Vincent Gray was joined today by nine D.C. university presidents to announce a new initiative to make D.C. the most green college town in America. These nine universities include: American University, Corcoran College of Art + Design, Catholic University, Gallaudet University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Howard University, Trinity Washington University, and the University of the District of Columbia. They all met at American University’s LEED-Gold certified School of International Service Building to offically sign a new pledge for this initiative dubbed “the District of Columbia Mayor’s College and University Sustainability Pledge”. Yes, quite the mouthful, so for the rest of the article I’ll just refer to it as the “green pledge” or just “the pledge”.
The pledge (much better) is going to require universities to create new goals of sustainability for everything on campus, including energy use, buildings, ground maintenance, and managing the progress of reaching said goals. The Washington Examiner describes a few of the goals:
- Achieve LEED certification on all new construction and major renovations
- Purchase renewable energy
- Employ District of Columbia resident sin positions directly related to sustainability
- Provide students with sustainability-related service learning opportunities in D.C.
- Reduce stromwater runoff
- Use tap water instead of bottled water (an initiative I applaud but will be very difficult to assuage students to do)
- Support faculty who engage in sustainability related teaching and research (you can no longer laugh at the professor who rides those awkward bikes to campus)
- Implement LEED compliant cleaning program, policies, and procedures
These are pretty hefty goals to accomplish, considering they are in direct competition with other well known green college towns such as Berkeley, CA and several other green initiative cities with Ivy Leagues. With that said, I definitely applaud the efforts of these universities to make D.C. more green friendly, and the effects of these sustainable projects should be felt not only by the students on these campuses, but by everyone who resides in D.C.
Bravo Mayor Gray and you university presidents, I wish you all the best in this bold endeavor.
[image via campusmedia]
