This past September the University of Denver started a new on-campus bike sharing program that was created by the school’s sustainability committee. This new program allows current DU students, faculty and staff to rent high-tech bikes for free from a special bike-lending library…all with the swipe of their DU identification card.

The bike share program offered at the University of Denver is part of a citywide bike sharing program that is set to launch in April of 2010. By then, the city of Denver hopes to have 600 bikes offered at 50 solar powered kiosks around the city.

Middlebury College, which we have mentioned in previous 2008 Sustainability Report Card and Sierra Club’s Cool Schools posts, is considered to be one of the greenest colleges in our country. After switching a few years ago to burning wood chips in addition to oil to heat the campus, the college is now going for a cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative green energy fuel resource: willow shrubs.

The college currently buys 20,000 wood chips a year from local loggers to heat half of the campus, and the other half is heated by oil. By switching to willow shrubs as an alternative fuel source the school will save over $1.5 million a year in oil costs.

As the world continues to face environmental and sustainability issues head-on, more college students are becoming interested in what they can do to be a part of the green future, and a large portion of these students are in New Jersey.

While these students follow sustainable practices on their own, like recycling, conserving energy and reducing their carbon footprint, they are also starting to incorporate these practices with what they learn from green classes that focus on science, technology and politics.

For the past 3 years the Sierra Club, one of the largest environmental organizations in the world, has put together a “Cool Schools” list of the top eco-friendly universities in America, and it has been published in the organization’s Sierra magazine.  These schools represent the best in green energy efficiency, waste management and food operations.

In an effort to inspire incoming freshmen students to go green, the University of Virginia Bookstore and Housing Division have filled demonstration green dorm rooms full of eco-friendly products.

These green dorm rooms, which have everything from Seventh Generation trash bags and paper towels to green energy efficient microwaves, will be an alternative to traditional dorm rooms, which usually ignore sustainability efforts.

Bates College, a private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, was recently recognized as a top green school by the Princeton Review and ecoAmerica’s Green Honor Roll, which rated over 600 colleges on their environmental policies, practices and academic offerings.

Maybe Bates received the rave review because 82% of its entire campus food waste is composted, recycled, or sent to a food bank or pig farmer, or maybe it’s because of the annual trash to treasure Trashion Show, which showcases some of the coolest outfits made from trash that was once bound for the landfill.

They’re called “Team California,” and the team is made up of students from Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts. About 200 students from both of these California colleges have been working together to build a solar powered house for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon 2009.

The solar decathlon is a competition where college students across the world compete to build the best solar powered, renewable energy house. Right now there are 20 teams participating, and Team California is the only team from the U.S. west coast.

We’ve shared a lot of PNC Bank’s green efforts with our readers, such as our posts PNC: A Green Bank with Eco-Friendly Service and PNC Bank Expands Green Initiatives, but PNC has really gone to where the grass is greener with its new easy green living wall.

The bank debuted plans last week to build a 2,380 sq. ft. soil-based Green Living Wall, which will appear on the side of its Pittsburgh headquarters.It will also feature a variety of other plants embedded in the green living wall that will make it into living art.

Visiting the zoo has always been a favorite pastime for Americans because they get to see exotic animals from other countries. In fact, over 80% of the cities in the U.S. have their very own zoo complete with animals, rides, refreshments, and….animal waste?

It’s true. Zoos create millions of pounds of animal waste each day, and one of those zoos is the Miami Metrozoo. But the zoo has come up with a “zoo doo” recycling waste plan that takes the waste from animals and composts it into fertilizer.

Today, more people are living an eco lifestyle than ever before, so it was bound to happen: climate friendly food labels.  Most consumers read food labels to check ingredients that are in the product, but now consumers in Sweden will be able to read climate-change friendly labels to check the manufacturer’s total greenhouse gas emissions.