Green habits are learned young: Universities aggressive with recycling, energy-saving habits
Those of you with college-age children getting back to school this weekend will be happy to know that their schools is teaching them to turn out the lights, even if you haven't been successful.
A full two-thirds of the member schools in the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education have adopted energy-savings programs or some other initiative meant to instill environmental consciousness. There are 780 member schools in the association and the poll was taken at the national conference last month.
As you might expect, distance learning and online education programs are a big thing. About 65 percent of the schools have bought new equipment with the purpose of starting such an effort, which has interesting implications for the very future of higher education.
Roughly 80 percent of the schools, a number astonishing given the Forrester Research survey I wrote about yesterday, are recycling their computers or networking equipment. A slightly smaller number of the respondents (73 percent) have bought energy-efficient equipment with an eye toward saving electricity costs, 63 percent have adopted printing-reduction strategies and 55 percent have embraced power management in order to shut down equipment whenever it's not in use. (That must be an interesting exercise, if my memory about my own midnight-hour study habits serves me.)